#1 For reals build muscle & strength in your legs at home.

This is a mostly single-leg exercise - this means that one leg will be lifting the majority of your body weight all by itself. Which is pretty stinking hard. When something is stinking hard for your muscles, guess what, they react by getting stronger.

Because our leg muscles are already big & strong by design & there are multiple ones - quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves - when they work together to do something, they just naturally can handle a pretty heavy load - compared to say, our much smaller shoulder muscle. This means that to truly challenge all these leg muscles together - enough to the point where doing 8-12 reps of something is really all they can stretch themselves to do, in order for them to respond by building muscle, we have to have QUITE a bit of load.
In double leg exercises like squats &deadlifts, this usually means that you have to use very heavy weights- often with the use of machines or super big dumbbells or barbells with plates - which then typically means a trip to the gym for most of us. But who wants that? We’re about working out at HOME here at Inspireful Women - in a non-intimidating environment, with your cat or dog revering you by your side as you exercise, the wonderful non-gym smell of your living room, the visually pleasing environment of your personal taste in decor whether that be mid-century modern, boho or industrial farmhouse (btw I feel like my style is more like industrial bohemian, & I thought I made that term up until I looked it up on pinterest & it’s already a thing). Single-leg exercises are an effective way to stay out of the gym while still building real muscle in our legs.

#2 Functional - trains multiple muscles to work together just like they do in real life.

Lunges are known as compound (also referred to as complex or combined) movements - the movement requires the coordination of many muscles and joints. These exercises are considered more functional because they work the muscles and joints together in similar ways to how we use them in everyday life. Most of our daily activities involve movement at more than one joint at a time, and a combination of strength, flexibility, joint mobility, balance, and stability.

The reverse lunge is used for strengthening the biggest and most powerful muscles in the hip and leg. The movement works the quadriceps, gluteus maximus, hamstrings, and calf muscles both as you lunge down (eccentrically) and as you press back up (concentrically) to encourage muscle growth and improve power. With stronger and more powerful legs, the back does not have to work as hard - the legs do more of the heavy lifting and moving. The reverse lunge also targets the core and leg stabilizers needed for balance during sports and daily activity and to protect the joints of the spine and lower extremities.

#3 Large ROM for Our Biggest Muscles = Keeps You Young - May Even Make You YOUNGER!

Lunges are taking our bodies through a lot of range of motion through lots of joints - this is EXCELLENT for us because as we get older & move less often, stop doing things like spontaneously running or jumping the way kids do- isn’t it so peculiar that kids do that? Anyhow, we quit all that nonsense + just AGING (definition our body naturally falls apart over time) = our joints gradually become stiffer & less able to fluidly move through their full range.

The reason this is a problem is because many movements in life require using those joints through their full range to do properly, capably, & without pain.

An exercise like this will get a ton of these joints moving all in one exercise, rather than having to do a separate exercise for each joint - all the way down to our ankles & toe joints! Over time, you will find that you simply feel more capable as you go about moving in everyday life. I know I’ve really noticed a difference.

#4 Reverse Lunge = Less Knee Strain

For many of us, we might be using the excuse that lunges hurt our knees and THAT’S why we don’t do them (when really we just hate lunges because they’re stinkin’ hard, which I’m here to tell you is a totally legit reason all in itself).

Really though, it’s true, lunges can present a problem for some of our over 40 knees. My knees are like “Hey woman, I’m over 40 years old now. That’s my get-out-of-lunges-free card, so back off.”

The first thing I want to say is that if you have knee pain in some exercises- there is a way to build up the muscles & stabilizing muscles that surround your knee joint, which can eventually make even those movements pain-free for you. That’s for another discussion.
But back to reverse lunges - this particular type of lunge puts less strain on the front of the knee than a forward lunge because the front leg stays in a balanced and stable position while the body weight is loaded onto the working leg (as the other leg steps backward).
Contrast that to the front lunge, where the working leg steps forward and as it makes contact with the ground - in this case the quadriceps muscle has to work to absorb the impact while slowing down the forward movement of the weight of the body. This can put more force through the knee joint and the tendon.

#5 Reverse Lunge = Great For Feet & Toes (Who Knew?!)

An added bonus of the reverse lunge is that the position of the foot of the “non-working” leg stretches the bottom of the foot and mobilizes the toes. The non-working leg is back behind the body in the lunge position. The toes are pulled back (extension) and planted on the floor, and the ankle is flexed (dorsiflexed - bent so that the toes are brought closer to the shin, not pointed down). The weight of the back leg is on the ball of the foot and toes. This does a nice job of stretching the ligaments that run across the bottom of the foot, the plantar fascia, and working of the joints of the toes. The toes need to be able to bend back (towards the top of the foot) when you push off during walking. It is fairly common for people to lose mobility in their toe joints with age, this can affect stride length and walking speed.

In the reverse lunge, you will be working on transitioning from double-leg strengthening to single-leg strengthening. This transition can be really helpful for identifying and correcting differences in your left and right sides, not only the strength, but also the range of motion, balance, and control.