Want to build stronger legs, bigger glutes, and improve your balance? The barbell lunge is one of the best lower body exercises for building strength, muscle, and athleticism—but only if you're doing it correctly.
In this video, I'll show you how to properly perform a barbell lunge, the biggest mistakes to avoid, and the key technique cues that will help you get better results while protecting your knees.
In this video you'll learn: ✅ How to do a barbell lunge correctly ✅ Proper barbell lunge form and technique ✅ Common barbell lunge mistakes ✅ How to improve balance and stability ✅ Best cues for stronger glutes and quads ✅ How to keep your knees safe while lunging
Whether your goal is building muscle, increasing leg strength, improving athletic performance, or burning fat, mastering the barbell forward lunge is a must.
If this video helped, be sure to like, subscribe, and leave a comment with what exercise you'd like me to cover next!
Coach Kyle demonstrates the proper technique for performing barbell lunges. He emphasizes the importance of correct rack height, maintaining a tight core, and achieving a full range of motion. The guide focuses on avoiding common mistakes such as knee caving and improper step length to ensure stability and prevent injury.
What is going on everyone? It is your form expert, Coach Kyle, and today I'm going to show you how to
do a barbell lunge with perfect form. So what you're going to want to do is you're going to
want to set this up just like you would a squat. It should be around shoulder height. This is the
best way to make sure that you can walk out properly. It's not awkward when you're trying
to rack or anything like that. This is going to be the most comfortable place on my back.
When I hold my arms like this, I'm going to just get underneath it, get nice and tight,
and what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to take quite a few steps back
compared to the squat. If I was squatting, I'd probably still be about here, but for the lunge,
I'm going to go all the way out here, and all I'm going to do is just keep that bar nice and
tight to my traps, make sure everything is engaged, and from here, I'm going to be looking forward,
starting with shoulder width stance for my feet, and all I'm going to do is just take a big step
forward just like this, where you can see there's two 90-degree angles. From here, my back knee is
almost touching the ground, but it's not exactly, so this is a good point to end, and then I'm going
to walk back. I'm going to do the other leg here, and then I'm going to walk back. Other leg,
walk back. Now, this is obviously very tough because there's a lot of stabilizing involved.
You kind of have to make sure the barbell doesn't tip over. You saw in that last rep,
I also touched my knee to the ground. That was by accident, but that's going to happen.
When you're sinking down nice and low, you can get a feel for what feels right, and I like to
get as low as possible without touching or without smashing your knee down because this is the best
way to make sure you're getting a full range of motion. A lot of people will just do this.
They'll bend their knee just a little bit. They'll use way heavier weight,
and you're not really doing much, so this is obviously a very common mistake. You keep your
core tight. You're looking forward. You get a big step down. You bring it all the way back,
and another really key point here, I'm going to turn around just so you guys can see this,
is making sure your knees are pointed outwards. The amount of people that do a lunge, and all
they're doing is going like this, and their knee caves just so bad for you. It's going to put extra
strain on your knees. You're not going to be stable. You want to avoid that. You want to make
sure you take a big step forward. Your knees are slightly pointed outwards, and that's exactly how
you do it. One more common mistake I really wanted to share because when it comes down to walking
lunges, reverse lunges, anything like that, so many people mess this up. What they do is they
take too big of a step, and it's just really hard to stabilize, or they take too small of a step,
and it's just really hard to get a full range of motion. The best way to think of it is a 90 degree
angle. You step forward. Your knees are just over top of your heels here. If you lean forward
slightly and your knees go past your toes, that's also okay. It's been proven over and over again
that knees going past your toes on any lunge exercise is totally perfect. Once you're done,
all you're going to do is just walk forward. Go like this. Make sure it's nice and safe,
and that's exactly how you do a forward lunge. Because you've watched this video,
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smash that like button, and we'll see you in the next video. Peace out.
