Lunge

For our purposes here lunges are also a very good type of exercise that will greatly help in the development of a sexy butt. Lunges are traditionally thought of as a leg muscle exercises, the lunge is a perfect example of a dynamic stability exercise aswell as a great exercise for the butt. I highly recommend this exercise because it also works wonders for your general stability too. To perform the movement perfectly requires a great deal of co-ordination of all the trunk and pelvic stabilising muscles. You would be surprised how many elite athletes cannot perform the lunge exercise with perfect posture and alignment even with just bodyweight. To perform the lunge perfectly involves the following muscle functions:

• to maintain a neutral lumbar spine support throughout the whole movement requires sufficient flexibility of the hip flexors and spine extensors, plus sufficient recruitment of the transverse abs and gluteals for stabilization;
  
• for one hip to flex and the other to extend slightly requires the pelvis and the lumbar spine to be dissociated from one another. This requires good recruitment of the gluteals where the butt muscles are worked, otherwise the pelvis sways forward as the knee bends instead of lowering down in line with the shoulders;
  
• for the front knee to remain aligned with the hip and the foot (no movements in or outside that line) requires recruitment of the gluteus medius and adductor muscles in addition to sufficient flexibility and good stability in the front ankle;
  
• for the back to remain upright (no leaning forward as the knees bend) requires good strength in the abdominal, oblique and spine extensor muscles;
  
• for the upper back to retain good posture requires sufficient flexibility in the thoracic spine and chest muscles.

The lunge exercise is also as effective if not more than the squats in building butt muscles. It has to be said though that lunges are inharently less stable for of exercise targetting will be much harder compare to squats. Thus I recommend that if you are solely interested in building butt muscles then the squat will be a better exercise as it is more controlled and thus targetting will be much easier.

On the other hand if you already have a relatively developed muscles in the butt and you’d like to tone them with the added advantage of building your stability then lunges will be the best exercise. With this objective in mind I would also recommend that you do higher reps and lower weight so that you won’t loose balance and risk injury.

Lunge - Page 2