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Quad exercisesGlute exercises

Lunge

Also called forward lunge, dumbbell lunge.

What is a lunge?

A lunge is a single-leg exercise: step out into a split stance, lower until the back knee is just above the floor, and drive back up through the front leg. The front leg is the focus — the quadriceps extend the knee and the gluteus maximus extends the hip — while the hamstrings and the adductor magnus assist at the hip and the gluteus medius keeps the pelvis level. It needs no equipment to start, and it loads by holding a dumbbell in each hand.

Two frames of an anatomical illustration of a dumbbell lunge, side by side on a white background, both seen in profile. On the left the figure stands upright with a dumbbell hanging in each hand at his sides, feet together, the quadriceps shaded red down the front of the thigh and a narrower red strip running down the front of the shin. On the right he is at the bottom of the rep: front knee bent to about a right angle with the shin near vertical, back leg trailing behind with the back knee just above the floor and the heel lifted, torso upright, dumbbells still hanging at his sides. The red shading there covers the quadriceps of both the leading and the trailing thigh. The buttock is in view at this angle and is not shaded.

How do you perform a lunge?

Set up

  1. Stand tall with your feet about hip width apart, brace lightly, and look straight ahead.
  2. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at your sides, or begin with no weight.

Execution

  1. Step forward far enough to make a stable split stance, keeping your feet about hip width apart from side to side.
  2. Lower under control until your back knee is just above the floor, keeping your torso upright.
  3. Keep your front foot flat and your knee tracking in the same direction as your toes.
  4. Push through your front foot to return to the starting position under control, then repeat with the other leg or finish one side.

Common mistakes

  • Stepping too short

    A cramped stance leaves nowhere to go but forward, so the descent turns into a slide: the front heel lifts, your weight rolls onto the ball of the foot, and you spend the set catching your balance. A long step lets you drop straight down with the heel planted and the hip sharing the work with the knee.

  • Standing up off the back foot

    A strong push from the back toes shifts the effort away from the front leg you are trying to train. Keep the return controlled and focus on driving through the front foot.

  • Letting the front knee fall inward

    A split stance is narrow side to side, so the knee drifts in as you tire, usually on the last few reps. When it dives in, the load runs across the joint instead of through it and the hip muscles that should be holding the leg out have stopped doing it.

  • Dropping into the bottom

    Falling into the rep bangs the back knee on the floor and turns the turnaround into a bounce. Lowering under control is where the front leg does much of its work in a lunge; give that away and the set gets easier without getting better.

Where it fits in a session

Middle or end of a leg session, after the heaviest two-legged work such as squats or leg press.

The front leg is the focus of each rep, so the dumbbells stay modest while the legs work hard — expect to use a fraction of what you squat, and do not read that as the exercise being easy. Eight to twelve controlled reps per leg is a sensible starting point, and remember a set is twice the work it looks like on paper because both legs go before you rest. Add weight only once every rep is balanced: a lunge that wobbles is training your balance more than your legs.

Muscles worked

Front
Front — Schematic surface view. Some muscles are partly visible or not shown.
Back
Back — Schematic surface view. Some muscles are partly visible or not shown.

Primary

Secondary

Select a muscle name to locate it.

Schematic surface view. Some muscles are partly visible or not shown.

The tiers follow the joint actions of the front leg. Standing back up out of a lunge is knee extension and hip extension, and the quadriceps and gluteus maximus are the movers of those two actions. The secondary list is assisters and one stabiliser: the hamstrings and the hamstring portion of the adductor magnus help extend the hip, and the gluteus medius holds the pelvis level while most of the load sits on one leg. The anatomy supports those two tiers; it does not support a finer ranking inside them, so none is attempted.

What lifters actually do

About three in ten regular RepCount users have logged lunges, but they appear in only about one in fifty workouts — widely tried, rarely kept. When they do show up it is nearly always inside a full leg day: squats feature in over four in ten lunge sessions, leg extensions in about the same, and leg curls, leg press and calf raises each in roughly three in ten. Typically about three sets in a session of six or seven exercises, which is single-leg accessory work slotted in around the main lifts rather than the centrepiece of the day.

31.4%
of regular lifters have logged it
3.04
sets per session, on average
6.5
exercises in those sessions

Most often trained alongside

Share of lunge sessions that also include each exercise.

Figures come from workouts tracked in RepCount.

Scientific studies on lunges

Lunge studies examine several different movements: stepping forward and back, keeping the feet planted, or travelling across the floor. Those differences matter when applying a result to the forward step-and-return taught here.

Lunge training has produced thigh-muscle growth in a small trial. Step length and direction also change measured demands, but muscle activity and joint loading do not tell us which variation builds the most muscle or prevents injury.

Can lunges build the quadriceps?

Eight previously untrained women trained one leg with a free-weight lunge and the other with an inclined leg press for nine weeks. Ultrasound measurements of two quadriceps muscles increased after lunge training. The study found no clear difference in growth between exercises.

That supports lunges as an option for building the thighs, with limits: eight participants cannot establish that the exercises are interchangeable. The abstract does not specify the lunge’s step direction or equipment, so this is not direct proof for every detail of the dumbbell version shown here.

Sources

Does stepping backward change the demand?

A laboratory study of nine men compared bodyweight forward and reverse lunges. The forward lunge required a greater turning effort at the hip joint. Hip and knee bending reached similar ranges, with no clear difference detected between directions.

The movements can therefore look similar at the bottom while loading the joints differently. This was a movement study, not a training or injury trial: it does not establish which version builds more muscle, treats knee pain or is best for everyone.

Sources

Does a longer step isolate the glutes?

In a study of 20 adults using weights they could lift for twelve repetitions, longer steps generally increased activity across several leg muscles, including the gluteus maximus. The researchers also compared stepping forward and returning with keeping both feet planted throughout the set. Muscle activity differed between those versions too.

A longer step is therefore not simply a switch that turns the exercise into glute-only work. These were electrical recordings during exercise, not measurements of later muscle growth. They do not establish an ideal step length; the setup here still prioritises a stable stance and a planted front foot.

Sources

Variations

  • Anatomical illustration showing four side-view phases of bodyweight walking lunges, with the thighs and glutes highlighted.
    Walking lungeEach rep travels forward into the next one instead of stepping back, which raises the balance demand and needs floor space.
  • Optional dumbbell version. Two-frame anatomical illustration of a man holding dumbbells at his sides, standing then in a floor reverse lunge with the front foot flat and rear heel raised. The thighs and glutes are highlighted.
    Reverse lungeStep backward instead of forward, keeping the front foot in place. Some lifters find this easier to control. It changes the measured joint demands, but neither direction is a universal correction for the other.
  • Side-view anatomical illustration of the bottom position of a dumbbell split squat, with a dumbbell held at each side, both feet on the floor and the thigh muscles highlighted.
    Split squatBoth feet stay planted in the split stance for the whole set, so there is no stepping to balance and you can load it heavier.
  • Anatomical illustration of a woman performing a dumbbell Bulgarian split squat with her rear foot on a bench and front thigh muscles highlighted.
    Bulgarian split squatBack foot rests on a bench behind you, putting almost the whole load on the front leg.
  • Two three-quarter views of a female anatomical model taking a sideways step with hands held in front. The wider position bends one knee while the other leg is straight; both feet face generally forward. Thigh and hip regions are shaded red.
    Lateral lungeStep out to the side, which takes the inner thigh through a long range the forward version never reaches.
  • Barbell lunge — Loaded with a bar on the back rather than dumbbells at the sides; the higher load placement makes it harder to balance.
  • Two front views of a woman, first standing with her hands joined at chest height, then in a curtsy lunge with one leg crossed behind the other. The thighs and outer hip are shaded red. No weights are shown.
    Curtsy lungeSteps back and across behind the standing leg instead of straight back.

Related tools

Frequently asked questions

What muscles do lunges work?

The front leg does most of the work. Standing back up is knee extension and hip extension, so the quadriceps and the gluteus maximus are the prime movers. The hamstrings and the hamstring portion of the adductor magnus assist at the hip, and the gluteus medius works to keep the pelvis level — the same stabilising job it does whenever most of your weight is on one leg. The back leg mostly balances.

Are lunges better than squats?

They do different jobs, and lifters treat them that way: squats show up in over four in ten of the workouts that contain lunges. A squat loads both legs at once and takes heavy weight easily. A lunge trains one leg at a time and adds a balance demand a squat never asks for. Doing both covers more ground than choosing between them.

Should I do forward or reverse lunges?

Both are useful options. In a small bodyweight study, stepping forward produced a greater hip-joint demand than stepping backward, even though hip and knee bending reached similar ranges. That does not establish a universal winner for growth or comfort. Choose a version you can control and progress it.

Should I alternate legs or finish one side first?

Either — treat it as a preference. Alternating gives each leg a short rest between reps, so the set is limited less by fatigue; finishing one side first keeps the working leg under continuous load and takes less time. The rep itself is identical both ways.

Do I need weights to lunge?

No. A bodyweight lunge is a real exercise, and owning the balance before loading it is time well spent. When bodyweight gets easy, a dumbbell in each hand is the simplest progression — and because the front leg is the focus of each rep, those dumbbells stay small next to what you would put on a squat bar.

How deep should a lunge be?

Until the back knee is just above the floor, or lightly brushes it. That bottom position is what keeps depth honest, because every rep then travels the same distance instead of getting shorter as you tire. If you cannot get near the floor with your torso upright, use a shorter range and work deeper over a few sessions rather than folding forward to reach it.

Are lunges worth doing?

About three in ten regular RepCount users have logged lunges, but they turn up in only about one in fifty workouts — a movement plenty of lifters have tried and few have kept. What the logs show is where they belong: when lunges appear it is nearly always inside a full leg day, with squats in over four in ten of those sessions and leg extensions in about the same. If your leg day is squats plus machines, lunges are probably the single-leg work missing from it.

Sources

  1. Anatomy, Bony Pelvis and Lower Limb: Thigh Quadriceps Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513334/
  2. Anatomy, Bony Pelvis and Lower Limb, Gluteus Maximus Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538193/
  3. Anatomy, Bony Pelvis and Lower Limb, Hamstring Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK546688/
  4. Anatomy, Bony Pelvis and Lower Limb: Thigh Adductor Magnus Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534842/
  5. Anatomy, Bony Pelvis and Lower Limb, Gluteus Medius Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557509/
  6. Amanuma MT et al. Lunge and leg-press quadriceps growth. 2025. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41316621/
  7. Comfort P et al. Joint demands in bodyweight lunges. 2015. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26418958/
  8. Escamilla RF et al. Step length and stride in forward lunges. 2025. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39982282/

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