What muscles do hip flexor lunges work?

Your front leg does it. Its quads control the knee under your bodyweight, and its glutes bring the hip back up to standing. The rear leg keeps you steady. The hip flexors in the name are being lengthened at the bottom, which is not the same as being trained.

Do hip flexor lunges strengthen your hip flexors?

Not in any way we can find support for. At no point in the exercise do they push against anything. They are held long for a couple of seconds and then released, and lengthening a muscle under no resistance is stretching it. If you want those muscles working, you need something that lifts your leg against resistance.

What is the pelvic tuck for?

It puts the stretch in the hip instead of the lower back. Without it, most people find the range by leaning backward and arching, which feels like a stretch and is happening at the spine. Tucking the tailbone under takes that option away and leaves the hip to give.

Will the stretch make my legs weaker for the rest of the session?

At 2 to 3 seconds, no. The research on hip flexor stretching found no meaningful effect up to around 120 seconds a side, with impairment only appearing at durations several times longer than that.

Why do I not feel a stretch at all?

Almost always the step was too short, so the rear thigh is still angled forward when you reach the bottom. Take a longer step and the tuck will have something to work on.

Is this a stretch or a strength exercise?

A strength exercise with a stretch inside it. The lunge is the part that trains your legs. The tuck and the hold are an addition, and it is worth keeping the two separate in your head, because doing the whole thing softly gets you neither one.

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Bodyweight · beginner · upper legs

Hips flexor lunges

Also called Hip flexor lunge, Lunge with a hip flexor stretch, Half-kneeling hip flexor lunge.

The short answer

A hip flexor lunge is a forward lunge with a stop at the bottom. You step out, lower until your back knee is close to the floor, tuck your tailbone under so the front of your rear hip lengthens, hold that for 2 to 3 seconds, then drive back up through your front heel. The quads of your front leg are what the exercise loads, and its glutes bring you back upright. The rear hip is where you feel the stretch, and that is a muscle being lengthened rather than a muscle working.

How to do it

Step oneStand with your feet together and your hands on your hips.
Step twoStep one foot forward and lower into a lunge until your back knee nearly touches the floor.
Step threeAt the bottom of the lunge, tilt your pelvis slightly posteriorly to feel an increased stretch in the front of your rear hip.
Step fourHold for 2-3 seconds at the bottom, then drive through your front heel to return to standing.
Step fiveAlternate legs.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

You arch your lower back at the bottom and feel nothing at the front of your hip.

WhyThe tuck is meant to happen at the pelvis. When it does not, the body finds the range somewhere else, and the somewhere else is your lower back, so you end up leaning backward instead of opening the hip.

FixAt the bottom, pull your back pocket down and your ribs toward your hips at the same time, with your chest stacked over your hips rather than behind them. The stretch should show up across the front of the rear hip within an inch or two of movement.

You tuck the pelvis and feel nothing at all.

WhyThe step was short, so the rear hip is still bent at the bottom and there is no length left to take up. A tuck only does something once that hip is already close to straight.

FixStep further forward before you lower. You want the rear thigh close to vertical or slightly behind you at the bottom, which is what leaves the front of that hip somewhere to go.

The pause turns into a rest and standing back up feels like starting over.

WhyYou have sat down onto the position, so the front leg goes slack and the 2 to 3 seconds stop being part of the set.

FixKeep pressure through your front heel for the whole count and come up out of the hold without shifting your weight first. If the count is what makes the set impossible, do fewer reps rather than a shorter hold.

You do it gently and your legs never get tired.

WhyDone softly, this becomes a mobility drill with a lunge attached to it, and the front leg quads never get worked. That is a fine thing to do, and it is not what this is filed as.

FixLower at the speed you would use for any other lunge and let the descent be the strength part. The tuck and the hold are an addition to a lunge, not a replacement for one.

Hip flexor lunge or a plain lunge

Underneath, this is a lunge and it trains what a lunge trains. Same front leg, same quads, same job for the glutes on the way up. If you were picking one purely for your legs, there is not much in it.

What the tuck and the hold add is a position. A plain lunge passes through the bottom on its way back up, so the front of the rear hip is only briefly long and never at its longest. Tucking the pelvis takes that hip to the end of its range and parks it there for a count.

So the choice is not really about which is the better leg exercise. It is about whether you want the bottom of the lunge to be somewhere you pass through or somewhere you stop.

One consequence worth planning for: the hold makes every rep longer, so 8 of these takes noticeably more out of the front leg than 8 without. Count what you can do with the hold rather than importing a number from the version that does not have one.

Whether stretching your hip flexors before leg work makes you weaker

There is a rule of thumb that says stretching before you lift costs you strength, and it gets repeated as though it settles the matter. For the hip flexors specifically, somebody checked.

A review pooling the studies on hip flexor stretching found that stretching up to about 120 seconds a side had no effect on performance, or a positive one, on tasks that need the hip to extend. The only group where a clear cost showed up was the one stretching for 270 to 480 seconds, and even there the average performance change was about 3.6 percent down.

A 2 to 3 second hold at the bottom of a lunge is not in the same territory as either of those. Whatever else is worth thinking about on this exercise, this is not it.

What we will not tell you is that the hold improves your posture, loosens hips that sit at a desk all day, or corrects how your pelvis sits. Those claims are everywhere and we have not found evidence that carries them. What the position does is take the front of one hip to the end of its range under your own bodyweight, briefly. That is a description, and it is as far as we can go.

What it is for

Hips flexor lunges are a bodyweight exercise targeting the quadriceps and hip flexors, with secondary engagement of the glutes and hamstrings. They combine a forward lunge with a posterior pelvic tilt at the bottom to actively stretch and strengthen the hip flexors through a full range of motion.

Questions people ask

What muscles do hip flexor lunges work?: Your front leg does it. Its quads control the knee under your bodyweight, and its glutes bring the hip back up to standing. The rear leg keeps you steady. The hip flexors in the name are being lengthened at the bottom, which is not the same as being trained.
Do hip flexor lunges strengthen your hip flexors?: Not in any way we can find support for. At no point in the exercise do they push against anything. They are held long for a couple of seconds and then released, and lengthening a muscle under no resistance is stretching it. If you want those muscles working, you need something that lifts your leg against resistance.
What is the pelvic tuck for?: It puts the stretch in the hip instead of the lower back. Without it, most people find the range by leaning backward and arching, which feels like a stretch and is happening at the spine. Tucking the tailbone under takes that option away and leaves the hip to give.
Will the stretch make my legs weaker for the rest of the session?: At 2 to 3 seconds, no. The research on hip flexor stretching found no meaningful effect up to around 120 seconds a side, with impairment only appearing at durations several times longer than that.
Why do I not feel a stretch at all?: Almost always the step was too short, so the rear thigh is still angled forward when you reach the bottom. Take a longer step and the tuck will have something to work on.
Is this a stretch or a strength exercise?: A strength exercise with a stretch inside it. The lunge is the part that trains your legs. The tuck and the hold are an addition, and it is worth keeping the two separate in your head, because doing the whole thing softly gets you neither one.