What muscles do forward lunges work?

The quads of the front leg do most of the work, with the glutes extending the hip and the hamstrings assisting. The back leg mostly stabilizes, and your midsection holds you upright while your weight travels.

Forward lunges or reverse lunges?

They train much the same muscles. A forward lunge adds a deceleration, since your front leg catches a body that is already moving. A reverse lunge lowers onto a foot that was already planted. Choose based on whether catching the step is something you want.

How far should I step forward?

Far enough that your back knee reaches the floor with your front heel flat. Beyond that it is a dial: a longer step sends more work to the hip and glutes, a shorter one to the quads.

Why does my front heel lift during lunges?

Usually the step was too short, so the descent has to come through the knee traveling forward and your ankle runs out of range. Lengthen the step before assuming anything about your ankles.

Should my back knee touch the floor?

It should get close, hovering just above it, which tells you the step was long enough and the descent deep enough. Banging it into the ground on every rep is a different matter and easily avoided by slowing down.

How do I make bodyweight lunges harder?

Hold dumbbells at your sides or a weight at your chest. Adding load leaves the movement untouched, which is more useful than adding reps to something that has stopped being difficult.

Back to the library

Bodyweight · beginner · upper legs

Forward lunges

Also called Lunge, Front lunge, Alternating lunge, Bodyweight lunge.

The short answer

A forward lunge steps one foot out in front of you, lowers your back knee toward the floor, and pushes back to standing. The quads of the front leg do the work with the glutes extending the hip alongside them. What separates this from every other single-leg exercise is that you step into it: the front leg has to stop your bodyweight arriving before it can send it back, and that catching is why a lunge feels harder than it looks on paper. The demonstration holds one leg forward for every rep instead of stepping into each one, so what you are watching is the lowering and the drive back up without the step in front of it.

How to do it

Step oneStand tall with your feet together and your hands on your hips or hanging by your sides.
Step twoStep one foot forward into a wide stance and lower your back knee toward the floor by bending both legs.
Step threeDescend until your front thigh is approximately parallel to the floor and your back knee hovers just above the ground.
Step fourDrive through your front heel to push back to the starting position.
Step fiveAlternate legs.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

You push back to standing off the ball of your back foot.

WhyThe back leg has taken over the return. It is the easier way to stand up and it means the front leg, the one you set the whole thing up to train, only did the lowering.

FixPress through the heel of the front foot and think about pushing the floor backward with it. Your back foot should feel like a kickstand you barely notice. If it will not stop helping, shorten the set.

Your front heel lifts and the knee travels a long way forward.

WhyThe step was too short. With your feet close together there is nowhere for the descent to go except through the front knee, and your ankle runs out of range before your back knee gets near the floor.

FixTake a longer step. Your front shin should be somewhere near vertical at the bottom with the heel flat. There is no correct distance, and the right one is the one where the back knee reaches the floor and the front heel stays down.

Your chest folds forward over your front thigh.

WhyThe torso has tipped to help the hip do more, which usually starts happening in the last few reps of a set and then becomes the way you do them.

FixStay tall through the chest and let the descent happen at the knees and hips instead. If you cannot hold it for the whole set, do fewer reps at a time and more sets.

Your front knee wobbles or drifts inward as you land.

WhyA lunge lands you on a narrow base with a body that was already moving, so there is more to control than in a two-legged movement. It is worth noting the hip strength that helps with this was studied in 34 physically active women, and even there it showed only a modest relationship with how far the knee drifts, so it is a factor rather than the answer.

FixStep slightly wider, so your front foot lands under your hip rather than in front of your other foot, and slow the step down. Both give you longer to control the landing.

Forward lunge or reverse lunge

This is the question people actually have, and the answer is not about which muscles they hit, because those are broadly the same.

The difference is what your front leg is asked to do. Stepping forward, you plant a foot and immediately have to catch a body that is already moving toward the floor. Stepping backward, your front foot never moves. You place the rear foot down and lower onto a leg that was standing still.

So a forward lunge includes a deceleration that a reverse lunge does not. That is genuinely useful if controlling a step is something you want to train, and it is the reason a forward lunge is more demanding at the same depth.

It is also why some people find one comfortable and the other not. We cannot tell you which you should do, and we can tell you what the difference is so the choice is an informed one rather than a coin toss.

How long should the step be

Step length is the setting on this exercise, and almost nobody treats it as one.

A long step opens your front hip further and leaves the front shin closer to upright, so more of the work goes to the hip and glutes. A short step forces more bend at the knee, so more of it goes to the quads.

Neither is correct. What is worth avoiding is the step that is too short to reach depth at all, since that is the version where the heel lifts and the range collapses.

Pick a length deliberately depending on what you want tired at the end. Then keep it the same across the set, because drifting from long to short mid-set means the second half trained something the first half did not.

What a lunge is actually for

Lunges get prescribed as a leg exercise, which they are, and that description undersells the one thing they do that squatting does not.

Every other lower body movement in this library starts from a position you set up in. You plant your feet, you brace, then you move. A forward lunge asks you to arrive somewhere first. Your front foot lands, your bodyweight is already traveling downward, and the leg has to absorb that before it can do anything else.

That is why people who squat well sometimes find lunges disproportionately hard, and it is why the exercise is worth having even if you have a barbell and a rack.

The limits are worth being straight about too. With no weight, the load is fixed at your bodyweight and the exercise becomes an endurance test after a few weeks, which is the same ceiling every unloaded bodyweight movement has. Holding dumbbells at your sides is the usual answer and it does not change the movement at all.

And the thing lunges are most often sold for, better balance and coordination, is a claim we will not make. They demand balance, plainly. Whether that transfers to anything else is a different question and not one we can answer.

What it is for

Forward lunges are a bodyweight lower body exercise targeting the quadriceps, with the glutes and hamstrings assisting. Stepping forward and lowering the hips loads one leg at a time, and the demonstration holds the split stance rather than stepping into each rep.

Questions people ask

What muscles do forward lunges work?: The quads of the front leg do most of the work, with the glutes extending the hip and the hamstrings assisting. The back leg mostly stabilizes, and your midsection holds you upright while your weight travels.
Forward lunges or reverse lunges?: They train much the same muscles. A forward lunge adds a deceleration, since your front leg catches a body that is already moving. A reverse lunge lowers onto a foot that was already planted. Choose based on whether catching the step is something you want.
How far should I step forward?: Far enough that your back knee reaches the floor with your front heel flat. Beyond that it is a dial: a longer step sends more work to the hip and glutes, a shorter one to the quads.
Why does my front heel lift during lunges?: Usually the step was too short, so the descent has to come through the knee traveling forward and your ankle runs out of range. Lengthen the step before assuming anything about your ankles.
Should my back knee touch the floor?: It should get close, hovering just above it, which tells you the step was long enough and the descent deep enough. Banging it into the ground on every rep is a different matter and easily avoided by slowing down.
How do I make bodyweight lunges harder?: Hold dumbbells at your sides or a weight at your chest. Adding load leaves the movement untouched, which is more useful than adding reps to something that has stopped being difficult.