I'm abandoning lunges FOREVER!

[Domestika]

Ugh. Lunges are obviously the exercise of the devil.

I constantly hear about how they are so important, along with squats, and they are recommended all the time. But I have to say...they are butchering my knees!

The first time I tried to do lunges a month or two ago my knees were FUBAR for 2 weeks. I literally had to stop my running program for two weeks. I hobbled around with aching knees, icing them, using anti-inflammatories. No fun.

But they seem so gosh darn important, so I really tried to work on it. I started with little baby lunges and worked my way up to normal lunges, first just a few then more and more. But unpredictably, every few workouts the knees just HATE the lunge movement and I feel like things in there are pulling and tearing. Sometimes I can do 30+ reps. Other times I do 3 and the knees are shot. But I try to rest them when that happens and then build up slowly again. Frustrating!

My last workout was a "3 lunges and I'm shot" and my run the next day was horrible cause my knees are so buggered. So that's it. I'm not going to let some stupid lunges ruin the rest of my workout/cardio plan. I don't care how important they are. My body rejects them and I'm just not going to force it anymore. Nothing else in my routine hurts like that, not even close. So I'm deleting them from my routine altogther.

*delete*

 

[Waitwhat?]

I've read that stress on your knees (that are not a result of contact injuries) are often the result of ankle or hip disfunctions. Have you ever sprained your ankle or anything like that?

Could it be that you may not be doing them correctly? I only ask because I've started doing backward lunges with BB and I think that satan developed that exercise haha... but once I had the correct form and concentrated on pushing my heel through the ground when coming up I put NO stress on my knees at all.

 

[tenpercent]

My body rejects them and I'm just not going to force it anymore.*delete*

This makes twice I have read this on this forum and I think it is BS. Not sure who started using this excuse here but don't. It may hurt, it may not be something you need to endure but your body does not reject it. You have an imbalance, an injury or a preexisting condition making the lunge put undue stress on your knee but your body does NOT reject any exercise.

The lunge is good. Is it necessary? No. Would it benefit you to figure out why you are having issues with it? Yes. I am betting the issue will show up elsewhare later in another move ror situation if you don't.

 

[Karky]

A healthy person should be able to do lunges pain free. Maybe if you jumped into them too quickly they caused some kind of inflammation in a tendon or something? Where is the pain? Is it just below or just above the knee cap, or elsewhere?

Do you let your knee cave in as you do the lunges? They should not cave in. Also, do you put your knee very far out in front of your foot? That would cause knee forces to increase and might be irritating for a knee that's not used to the exercise or a knee that has a preexisting condition.

For a more knee friendly exercise, try reverse lunges with a long stride so your knee does not pass over your toes but stays quite a bit behind them.

If the pain is really bad and not just because of starting with the exercise too abruptly, you probably have some kind of condition and should get it checked out.

 

[Domestika]

I've read that stress on your knees (that are not a result of contact injuries) are often the result of ankle or hip disfunctions. Have you ever sprained your ankle or anything like that?

Could it be that you may not be doing them correctly? I only ask because I've started doing backward lunges with BB and I think that satan developed that exercise haha... but once I had the correct form and concentrated on pushing my heel through the ground when coming up I put NO stress on my knees at all.

I don't have any ankle or hip problems that I'm aware of.

I think my form is ok? Every time I do them and they hurt I spend ages going through videos and descriptions of correct lunge form to remind myself and make sure I'm doing them right. I even do them in a big, full length mirror to make sure it looks right...and it still hurts a lot.

 

[Domestika]

This makes twice I have read this on this forum and I think it is BS. Not sure who started using this excuse here but don't. It may hurt, it may not be something you need to endure but your body does not reject it. You have an imbalance, an injury or a preexisting condition making the lunge put undue stress on your knee but your body does NOT reject any exercise.

The lunge is good. Is it necessary? No. Would it benefit you to figure out why you are having issues with it? Yes. I am betting the issue will show up elsewhare later in another move ror situation if you don't.

Ok, obviously I'm making the "rejection" comment tongue-in-cheek. I don't think my body is rejecting the exercise..there's just something about the mechanics of my knees/tendons/surrounding muscles that makes the exercise unworkable for me.

But yes, I do agree that the intelligent thing would be to figure out WHY the problem is coming up. If I had a doctor here I'd be all over it. But I don't, so I'm doing the only thing I can do in the meantime and just cut them out to prevent my knees from actually imploding and eating my legs from the inside out.

Things were going ok when I first started working on it. I was using correct form and only dipping down maybe 6" to start and then worked into a deeper and deeper dip from there. And I thought I had managed to strengthen up all the muscles/whatever was putting my knees out of wack before. But no. I was wrong!

 

[tenpercent]

Ok, obviously I'm making the "rejection" comment tongue-in-cheek. I don't think my body is rejecting the exercise..

No worries. Just something I picked up on because I see it on this forum in other threads too.

 

[Domestika]

A healthy person should be able to do lunges pain free. Maybe if you jumped into them too quickly they caused some kind of inflammation in a tendon or something? Where is the pain? Is it just below or just above the knee cap, or elsewhere?

Do you let your knee cave in as you do the lunges? They should not cave in. Also, do you put your knee very far out in front of your foot? That would cause knee forces to increase and might be irritating for a knee that's not used to the exercise or a knee that has a preexisting condition.

For a more knee friendly exercise, try reverse lunges with a long stride so your knee does not pass over your toes but stays quite a bit behind them.

If the pain is really bad and not just because of starting with the exercise too abruptly, you probably have some kind of condition and should get it checked out.

I did initially jump into them too quickly, which precipitated the 2 weeks of hobbling and icing. After that I took it very slowly and worked my way up to doing a fair amount of normal lunges and I've been doing them for several weeks now, so it shouldn't be from abrupting increasing the exercise or anything...

The pain is on the inner part of my knee on both legs. Basically exactly where the tendon runs from the top part of the kneecap on the inner part of the leg and down towards the shin. The pain is mostly centralized right beside and slightly below the knee on both sides. My knee doesn't cave in when I do them. I use a full length mirror to make sure I'm doing them right and regularly check my form.

I'll look into the reverse lunge...but anything with the word "lunge" in it makes me cringe right now. And I for sure should get it checked out. The last time this pain occured and I went to a doctor (at a walk-in clinic, ie. someone with little to no knowledge of physical therapy or sport-related injury) he said it was from running in crappy shoes and told me to have a gait analysis done. Which I did, and everything looked fine. The pain eventually went away. But it's become obvious to me now that this pain occures after I have a crappy round of lunges, so it's obviously something else.

It would be smart to see a doctor about it, though.

 

[Domestika]

No worries. Just something I picked up on because I see it on this forum in other threads too.

I've never heard of that before, a body "rejecting" an exercise!

Like the exercise is a sliver or a piercing or something that the body is attempting to remove. As if!

 

[stangelj]

Are you doing stationary or walking lunges? Start with stationary as you have more control, and ensure you are indeed using correct form. Your front shin should never go past vertical, in other words your front knee should not end up over your toes, keep it over your heel at the bottom of the lunge. You'll need to ensure your back foot is far enough back to make this happen. Your upper body should be vertical through-out the stationary lunge. And finally, your weight should be on the heel of your forward foot and on the toes of your back foot. There really should not be stress on your knee if you are doing all these things correctly. If you're already doing all this then you may indeed have some sort of other issue. Hope this helps.

 

[Domestika]

Are you doing stationary or walking lunges? Start with stationary as you have more control, and ensure you are indeed using correct form. Your front shin should never go past vertical, in other words your front knee should not end up over your toes, keep it over your heel at the bottom of the lunge. You'll need to ensure your back foot is far enough back to make this happen. Your upper body should be vertical through-out the stationary lunge. And finally, your weight should be on the heel of your forward foot and on the toes of your back foot. There really should not be stress on your knee if you are doing all these things correctly. If you're already doing all this then you may indeed have some sort of other issue. Hope this helps.

I'm doing stationary. For the longest time I was doing them between two chairs to keep my form straight and help my balance if needed. But I figured I was relying on the chairs too heavily because the lunges seemed harder without them (though I don't think I was actually using them to support my weight).

The one issue I know I do have with the lunges is keeping my front knee over my HEEL. It's usually over my toes (though not past my toes). When I try to keep my knee over my heel that's actually when my knees hurt the most. They feel an intense strain when I do that, and my balance goes out the window. Maybe my legs are still too weak to do them correctly at this point or something...

 

[Karky]

hmmm, where do you feel this strain when ou keep the heel over the knee? Are you sure it's not just your hams working overtime?

Anyway, you should see a doc.. I think the tension on the PCL will increase if you keep the knee over the heel because of increased ham activation (though this will depend on if you're leaning a lot forward in the lunge or not)

 

[Domestika]

hmmm, where do you feel this strain when ou keep the heel over the knee? Are you sure it's not just your hams working overtime?

Anyway, you should see a doc.. I think the tension on the PCL will increase if you keep the knee over the heel because of increased ham activation (though this will depend on if you're leaning a lot forward in the lunge or not)

I basically feel the strain in my knees. I don't feel it anywhere else. The rest of my leg feels strong while I'm doing them.

Maybe I could try strengthen my hamstrings over the next few weeks and then give them another shot?

I'm not leaning over when I do the lunges. I have a ful length mirror so I can make sure that my torso is straight up and down.

 

[Karky]

If it's the PCL then strengthening the hams probably wouldn't help. Anyways, it's impossible to tell anything without knowing exactly where on your knee it hurts and being able to feel it to see if it's sore anywhere. You should see a physical therapist.

 

[Domestika]

If it's the PCL then strengthening the hams probably wouldn't help. Anyways, it's impossible to tell anything without knowing exactly where on your knee it hurts and being able to feel it to see if it's sore anywhere. You should see a physical therapist.

Would if I could.

For now I'll just stop doing what's causing me stupid amounts of pain.

 

[Karky]

yeah, that's the best idea.

 

[Joey Tribiani]

My girlfriend complains about the exact same thing, so she has stopped doing them. I got her a few programmes done by a personal trainer friend of mine, and on most of them were lunges. I was pleased with this as the majority of ladies I see doing lunges in the gym have a fantastic pair of legs and bum ha!!

I went with her once, and had a look at her form, I'm no expert but it looked ok to me. But she kept complaining about it and this was the only activity that did it. I had her doing squats, leg extensions, hamstring curls, hack squat and some other leg exercises to see if anything else triggered the pain. Everything else was fine, so I told her to stop doing them!

 

[Domestika]

My girlfriend complains about the exact same thing, so she has stopped doing them. I got her a few programmes done by a personal trainer friend of mine, and on most of them were lunges. I was pleased with this as the majority of ladies I see doing lunges in the gym have a fantastic pair of legs and bum ha!!

I went with her once, and had a look at her form, I'm no expert but it looked ok to me. But she kept complaining about it and this was the only activity that did it. I had her doing squats, leg extensions, hamstring curls, hack squat and some other leg exercises to see if anything else triggered the pain. Everything else was fine, so I told her to stop doing them!

Yep, that's pretty much me. The only other time my knees have been in such a bad state was the last time I overdid it with lunges.I can do any other leg exercise but a few deep lunges and I'm hooped.

According to my exercise log it looks like the last time I did lunges was...June 12th. So two weeks ago. And I'm still hobbling around. I'm taking it day by day. I thought they were a bit better today, thought about going for a run...but decided to go for a short walk first to see if they would stay comfortable. Nope, home with ice on the knees. Maybe tomorrow. SIGH.

Thankfully I got a referral to see a physical therapist now, though. I just hope they don't have a 4 week wait for an appointment. Obviously I just need to stop doing lunges, and I have. But there's clearly something not quite right with my knees if doing lunges with proper form cripples me for weeks at a time. So I'd like to figure that out now as opposed to later when it's irrepairable.

 

[malkore]

The fact lunges do that is just an indication that things are worn out, damaged, etc....underlying problems are being exacerbated because of the lunge. The lunge is likely not the problem.

If lunges are that bad, leg extensions, leg press, hip sled, and squats aren't going to be much better.

I'd probably be at the doctor getting knee x-rays, not on a forum complaining that lunges 'aren't all that'

 

[Domestika]

The fact lunges do that is just an indication that things are worn out, damaged, etc....underlying problems are being exacerbated because of the lunge. The lunge is likely not the problem.

If lunges are that bad, leg extensions, leg press, hip sled, and squats aren't going to be much better.

I'd probably be at the doctor getting knee x-rays, not on a forum complaining that lunges 'aren't all that'

When on earth did I say that lunges "weren't all that"? I think what I said was that my knees "weren't all that".

I'm sure lunges are great. I said that straight off. They just aren't great for me and I plan to find out why.

Jebus.