Correcting the Lunge

The lunge is a great lower body strength exercise. I’m happy to say that I see many people including them in their routine at the gym. Unfortunately, I do see some pretty ugly lunges around here as well. When you perform a lunge correctly, it’s a tremendous glute/hamstring strength builder. When performed incorrectly, the lunge can be a harmful exercise to your knees.

If you’ve ever done a lunge and wondered why it was hurting your knee, the answer is simple, you’re doing them incorrectly. While performing the lunge, you shouldn’t have a lot of anterior shift (pressing forward) of your weight. This increases the shear force on the front of the knee and can cause pain and damage to the structures of the knee. Shear forces are not good!!!! In a correct lunge, your body weight should be traveling straight downward and upward. This reduces the shear force on the front of the knee and hopefully leads to a more pain-free lunge.

The video below further demonstrates how to perform a “pain free” lunge.

About the Author: Eric Noyes BHSc (Kin), CSEP-CPT

Eric is  Kinesiology Graduate from The University of Ontario and holds his Training Certification with the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology.  He has been training general population and sport specific clients at Body Fit since 2013 and is currently the Lead Trainer.  He can be reached at eric@bodyfit.ca for advice and consultation

Planes of Motion …Explained

One of the most common terms used in the fitness industry today is functional training. However, there seems to be about a million definitions used to explain what functional training is actually all about.

I like to explain it by using the definition of the word functional. Google the word and the part that applies to training is, “of or having a special activity, purpose, or task; relating to the way in which something works or operates. There are important functional differences between left and right brain”

When it come to training I will refer to the part that says, ” the way in which something works or operates “. This implies that you have to know how something operates before you can say you are doing something functional with it.

This is where an understanding of the planes of motion will help with your program design and implementation. We move in different planes; frontal, transverse and sagittal. These three terms are used a lot when talking about functional exercises and I know they can cause confusion. However, once you understand them, it becomes an easy way to communicate how you move or where motion occurs. So, I put together a couple videos. Below I explain those planes in particular and next week I’ll explain how planes can be used to correct alignment when doing common rotator cuff exercises

Tips to Improve Your Balance…Part 2

A few weeks ago, we published a video talking about a single leg balance progression you can work on to help improve your balance. This week we are continuing the balance theme. In this weeks video we look at manipulating vision to increase the difficulty of your single leg balance progression.

We use our vision for approximately 70 percent of our total body balance and when we manipulate the use of our eyes, the single leg progression begins to get quite a bit tougher. Think of when you’re walking around in a dark room. There are a few reasons why. The first being somewhat obvious in that we don’t want to bang into anything. The second is a bit less obvious, and that is, we’re off balance!! It’s not something that is apparent to us in the moment because our bodies go on auto pilot and adapt to the change in the environment. We walk slower, we stick our hands out to feel for objects, and walk with a wider base of support. Give these exercises a try and the next time the power goes out at home, you’ll be more than prepared to handle the conditions.

About the Author: Eric Noyes BHSc (Kin), CSEP-CPT

Eric is Kinesiology Graduate from The University of Ontario and holds his Training Certification with the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology. He has been training general population and sport specific clients at Body Fit since 2013 and is currently the Lead Trainer. He can be reached at eric@bodyfit.ca for advice and consultation.