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Pole Lunge Exercise
The Pole Lunge exercise is one of my all time favourites.
If you want rock hard butt muscles, this is the pole exercise for you!
Start the pole lunge exercise by holding your pole at about waist height. Place one foot forward with the toes almost touching the base of the pole. Lift the other leg behind you with the knee bent. Engage your core, stand tall, and get ready for the fun!
Now take your body weight back, bending the standing leg, and slowly lowering the back knee towards the floor.
You don't need to go all the way to the floor if you're new to lunges. Instead, just focus on control and good form.
Use a light grip on the pole, and keep your hand in place where you originally put it. Resist the temptation to move it higher on the pole, as this will allow you to use more upper body strength to come out of the lunge. And that won't give you tight buns! As you lower into the lunge, keep your body upright, your chest lifted, and your tailbone tucked under. Leaning forward will make this exercise much less effective, and could cause injury. Notice in this picture that the knee is over the heel, not forward over the toes.
In contrast, this picture shows the wrong way to do the pole lunge exercise. Notice that the foot is too far from the base of the pole, which allows the knee to come forward over the toes.
This type of movement can lead to knee problems and is not effectively targeting the muscles we want to to work.
OK, back to the right way to do the pole lunge exercise...
Now for the hard part...squeeze your butt muscles to lift your body back up to the starting point, but try NOT to use the arm that's holding the pole.
You will need to use it to some degree, but put the focus of your effort on your butt muscles. I tell my students to try to relax the biceps muscles as they lift, and to imagine they're squeezing a million dollar bill between their cheeks.
In other words, think of squeezing the butt muscles of the standing leg in order to rise back up again. This is where all the work (and benefit) comes in, so don't start cheating now!
If you've never done a pole lunge before, you may only be able to do 3 or 4 on each leg before your form deteriorates. That's OK, we all have to start somewhere! It's better to do 3 lunges with excellent form, than 8 with with poor form.
Work up to 12 lunges on each leg. By the time you're able to do this with relative ease, you should be getting all kinds of great comments on your new back end!
Here are some quick reminders for this exercise: |
