It’s always great to pick up the dumbbells and knock out some lunges the good ol’ fashion way, but am I the only one that feels limited with the amount of weight you can actually safely load?

Today I’m bringing you a solution with 3 awesome variations on the lunge that add tension thus challenging the muscles and nervous system.  The beauty is you can do these with just your body weight or even with a med ball.  The added tension on the muscles will leave the legs shaking just as much as they will with heavy weight loaded.

1.  The 1.5 Lunge:  This one is simple, after you lower down to the bottom of your lunge, raise up about halfway, return to the bottom and then back to the starting position.
2. Pause Lunge:  You can do this a lot of different ways, but essentially you are just lowering down to the bottom of the motion and holding for 10 seconds.  During that time you could do some torso rotations, reach the med ball from side to side, do some bicep curls or even just close your eyes and balance.
3. Low Ceiling Lunge:  Start in the bottom position of your lunges and step through to a forward lunge pretending the ceiling is really low and you don’t want to bump your head.  You’ll want to pick a height that allows for you to maintain proper posture.

Throw some of these in to your next workout and I guarantee your glutes and quads will be feeling it the next day!

-S