As human movement professionals, our mission is to be able to transform our principles and concepts of function into the most effective exercises, activities, and techniques with an ultimate goal of enhancing function. 

This month we highlight the exercise of LUNGING.  Simply put, Lunging is stepping away from our starting point and returning.  It is a foundational movement that we perform infinite times to carry-on our daily activities.  It involves a horizontal and vertical displacement of the body, as in lunging out to pick something up off the floor.  This displacement can be in any direction, any depth, and any speed.  These variables are dependent on the outcome you desire.

Today we will focus on an anterior lunge (anterior lunge video) as our technique.  Our tweak for the lunge will be to add a bilateral same side rotational hand reach at shoulder height. (anterior lunge with bilateral same side rotational hand reach at shoulder height video) An effective way to understand how a tweak affects a particular technique is to feel it on your own body.  Please stand up and perform 6-10 alternating repetitions of the anterior lunge at beginning to mid-range and then 6-10 reps adding the hand reach tweak.  Comparing the two exercises, what are the differences that you feel in your body as a whole?  Does your core react differently?  How about your feet?  What about your knees?  Notice how the chain reaction drives the lunging side knee slightly outward.  This is a normal and expected response to this specific task.  We must consider the amount and timing of knee abduction, but a subtle fluid and synchronous motion would be appropriate. Using the bilateral hand driver in same side rotation is one example of an endless amount of tweaks. Consider that every tweak evokes a different Chain Reaction™.  A fun drill that you can do on your own would be to take last month's reaching tweaks and perform them with an anterior lunge similar to the way we used the hand reach in this month's tweak.  Ask yourself the same questions as above.

Ideally, we seek an efficient Chain Reaction™.  Look for ease and fluidity of movement vs. rigid, choppy, or robotic actions.  These can be clues to efficiency.  Have fun with this and next month we will explore more techniques and tweaks!