walking lunges

Walking Lunges are an excellent lower body builder, they are also great for functionality, flexibility and mobility. They’re pretty versatile too, you can do them anywhere. What's more you can easily progress this very simple exercise by adding weight.

Here we will delve into the muscles worked, how to perform Walking Lunges, benefits, common mistakes to avoid, reps and sets, how to progress this exercise, how and where to fit it into your workout plan and finally other exercises targeting the same muscle groups.

Muscles Worked When Doing Walking Lunges

Walking Lunges are a compound exercise, meaning they engage various muscle groups, resulting in a powerful lower body workout. Check out the muscles engaged below:

Quads: The quads are the primary muscle group activated during walking lunges, if you’re not feeling this exercise heavily on the quads, you’re doing something wrong.

Hamstrings: While primarily a quad-focused exercise, Walking Lunges also offer a good workout for the hamstrings, located at the back of your thighs.

Glutes: Your gluteus maximus (buttocks) is the largest muscle in your body and it is actively engaged during Walking Lunges.

Calves: The calf muscles help stabilise your body throughout this exercise.

Core Muscles: Walking Lunges require core stability to maintain proper posture and balance.

You can use the muscle highlighted image at the top of this page for a visual guide of the muscles worked.

Become an exclusive member and get complete workout plans with video demonstrations of all exercises, plus dedicated online support to help you reach your goals faster. Tell me more >>>

How to Perform Walking Lunges

To perform Walking Lunges effectively, follow these steps:

1. Start Position: Stand with your feet hip-width apart and hands straight down by your sides.

2. Proper Posture: Maintain an upright posture with your chest held high and your back in a neutral position. Look straight ahead at all times.

3. Lunge Forward: Take a step forward with one leg and lower your body into a lunge. Ensure your knee of the front leg forms a 90-degree angle and hovers just above the floor.

4. Push Off: Push off the front leg to bring the back leg forward immediately into the next lunge. Continue the Walking Lunge motion by alternating legs.

5. Full Range of Motion: Aim to bring your knee as close to the floor as possible (but not touching) with each lunge.

6. Add Weight: As soon as you’re lunging with good form, add weight. This can be in the form of a barbell across your back or held strong overhead, a kettlebell or dumbbell held in rack position, or a sandbag over both shoulders.

Benefits of Walking Lunges

Walking Lunges offer multiple benefits:

Lower Body Strength: This is an excellent exercise for building strength, power, endurance and functionality into your lower body.

Functional Fitness: This is a functional exercise that will support your long term mobility.

Cardiovascular Workout: Walking Lunges will increase your heart rate, helping you build a stronger cardiovascular system and burn fat.

Core Engagement: Your core muscles are actively engaged throughout this exercise to keep you upright. This translates into better core strength and posture.

Walking Lunges: Common Mistakes to Avoid

Knees Over Toes: Ensure your knees do not extend beyond your toes during the lunge. Step further out if this occurs.

Leaning or Wobbling: Maintain an upright posture at all times, avoiding leaning in any direction during the lunge. Good form ensures maximum benefits and minimises your risk of injury.

Reps and Sets

The number of reps and sets you perform depends on your current strength with this exercise.

Beginners: Start with simply mastering the move. Keep in mind that if you’re just starting out, 3 reps is a valid set.

To determine how many reps/sets of Walking Lunges you should start with, you first need to figure out how many reps you can comfortably perform. Then add 2, and perform that number of reps for 3 sets.

For example; let’s say you can perform 4 reps comfortably. Add 2 to make 6 reps. Perform those 6 reps 3 times over, allowing yourself sufficient rest inbetween.

Experienced lifters: You know your body and its abilities better than anyone, use your own judgment.

We recommend that you avoid performing more than 12 reps per set. If you’re comfortably performing 12 reps for up to 6 sets, it’s time to make the exercise more challenging.

How to Make Walking Lunges More Challenging

To make this exercise more challenging you can add more weight of course, or you can add a different type of weight. Different loads will target your muscles differently. See point 6 above in the how to perform Walking Lunges section for suggestions.

Alternatively you can slow down the range of motion so that you are performing the exercise with more time under tension.

How to Incorporate Walking Lunges into Your Workouts

Walking Lunges will fit nicely into your Bum & Thighs, Leg or Full-Body Strength Workouts. This exercise is a compound movement, meaning it will target multiple muscle groups in a single movement. When it’s loaded with some weight, it’s a pretty powerful move which should therefore be positioned towards the beginning of your workout.

Always start with the biggest moves that move the most weight, and work your way down from there. If your plan includes a squat or a deadlift, do that first, but always perform your Walking Lunges before any cable, machine or bodyweight exercises, including any isolation exercises. You can learn more about exercise order here.

Exercises That Work Similar Muscles to Walking Lunges

Exercises like Squats, Deadlifts and Bulgarian Split Squats are great compound moves to help further strengthen your lower body. Compound exercises are crucial for muscle growth since they allow you to move more overall weight than isolation exercises, helping you build the muscle faster.

You can also pair this exercise with some squat variations, such as the Goblet Squat, Hack Squat or Sumo Squat; if you’re looking for more isolation exercises, you can perform Cable Kickbacks, Leg Extensions or Hip Thrusts. A combination of compound and isolation exercises is recommended for well rounded results.

There are more Leg Exercises at the bottom of this page. Or you can check out our entire exercise database broken down by muscle group here.

Get Complete Workouts

Our exercise database is here to teach you the fundamentals of some key exercises in weightlifting. It is by no means an exhaustive list of exercises and each category is certainly not a workout plan in itself. In order to turn these exercises into a workout plan, you need to know how to combine the right exercises to achieve the best possible results.

Knowing how to put together an efficient and effective workout plan is the cornerstone of achieving your fitness goals. It's the difference between merely working out and truly transforming your body.

That’s why Lipstick Lifters' Members Zone exists. Our goal is to teach you how to build your own workout plans so that you can be gym independent. All of this is possible with our Members Zone portal.

Members Zone annual subscribers have a unique advantage. They don’t need to puzzle over piecing together a workout plan, because we've done the hard work for them. Inside our Members Zone Portal, you'll find full workout plans tailored for women, complete with video demonstrations of each exercise.

Why Choose Members Zone

Members Zone is your one stop shop for weightlifting workout plans, delivered conveniently through our mobile friendly web app.

Here's what you're about to unlock...

Variety: Over 130 individual workout plans to suit a wide range of goals, available for your grab and go convenience.

Targeted muscle building: All plans come with a muscle highlighted image so you know exactly which muscles you’re building. - Simply choose the plan that suits your needs.

Video demonstrations: Form matters, that’s why each exercise in our portal is accompanied by a video demonstration of 3-5 full clean reps. You can watch this through as many times as you need to master the move.

Get started and progress: Plans offer beginner & advanced execution options so you can start with the basics and progress using the same plan.

Learn on the go: Our mobile friendly web portal means you can access plans, and video demonstrations of each exercise, to help you master the correct form, right from the gym floor.

Puts you in control: Our goal is to teach you gym independence, that's why the bulk of our portal is broken down into warm ups, workouts, and finisher plans.

Mix and match these to build a complete workout that fits your own personal preferences and goals.

Pre-built plans: These pre-built plans were put together by our team to demonstrate how the portal works. They are made up of warm ups, workouts, and finishers directly from the portal. Use them to get results, but also notice how the plan comes together. So that next time you can build your own plan from the wide range of options in the main portal!

Workout packs: Do you just want something that tells you exactly what to do and when to do it? These workout packs are ready to go when you are.

Evergreen: For the most part in weightlifting the exercises are the same, it is the execution of the exercises that turns amateurs into pros.

That means that all of our workout plans, featuring 200 different exercises, can be revamped, no end, simply by switching up the exercises and changing the rep/set execution.

All you need to do is get started, everything else comes with experience.

Dedicated online support: We want you to succeed in the world of weightlifting on your own merit. Without the need for an expensive trainer or coach, because few people these days can afford this luxury.

Lipstick Lifters Members Zone is your DIY solution and we are here to support you, for as long as you need, as part of your annual subscription.

Sample our plans for free: Sign up to access a selection of free workout plans to get you started.

Your journey to strength and confidence begins here.

Get in touch: If you have any questions or need guidance, our team at Members@lipsticklifters.com is here to guide you. So don’t hesitate to get in touch.