Written by Travis Halena | ACSM CPT
Fact checked by Kirsten Yovino, CPT Brookbush Institute
FACT CHECKED
Jumping can be intimidating if you aren’t an athlete or are new to working out. And it’s easy to brush jumping off entirely, convincing yourself that if you don’t play any sports, plyo isn't a priority.
However, it’s important to remember that the number one thing we lose as we age is the ability to produce power. Plyometric exercises like lunge jumps are an excellent option for building this type of power in your legs. They'll also get your heart rate up, burn serious calories, and improve your overall fitness.
Movements like squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, and any booty-building exercise with a band tend to get the most attention at the gym. But lunge jumping is an amazing addition to your program that could unlock many benefits you are missing out on. Here's how to do them!
Table of Contents:
- What Is A Jump Lunge?
- How To Do a Lunge Jump
- Common Lunge Jump Mistakes To Avoid
- Jump Lunges Muscles Worked
- Benefits Of The Jump Lunges Exercise
- Jumping Lunges Modifications, Variations/Progressions, & Alternatives
- Jump Lunge Programming Tips
- Jump Lunge Sample Workout
What Are Jump Lunges?
The jumping lunge is an advanced variation of a walking lunge. The walking lunge is a unilateral lower-body exercise, meaning you work one leg at a time. Instead of walking, you will stay in one place, lower down into a lunge, and then explode into the air as high as you can while switching your feet to land in a lunge on the other leg.
This movement falls under the plyometrics or jumps training category. These exercises target your fast twitch (type II) muscle fibers, which are responsible for generating force and helping you get quicker and more explosive1.
How to do a Jump Lunge
If you have never done any jumping or have bad knees, I strongly recommend starting with some modifications or alternatives. Ensure you warm up first and follow these instructions to protect your body.
How to do Jump Lunges:
- Start standing with your feet shoulder width to hip width apart. Step your left leg forward into a lunge position but wait to lower down.
- With 90% of your weight in your front leg and 10% in the back leg, bend your knees and lower down into a deep lunge where your rear knee is close to but not touching the floor. Your upper body should be upright with your shoulders stacked over your hips and core engaged.
- Explosively drive both feet into the floor and launch your entire body into the air. Your knees and hips should be extended as you travel into the air.
- Bring your feet together quickly while in the air, and switch leg positions by bringing your back leg forward and front leg back.
- Land on your mid-foot and make sure your heel comes in contact with the ground. Your back foot should have the balls of your feet on the floor and your heel lifted. Absorb the landing and drop into the next lunge by allowing your hips and knees to bend deeply.
- Explode up from the lunge and repeat, bringing the opposite leg forward, and alternating sides, continuing switching legs mid air for indicated reps or time.
Common Jumping Lunge Mistakes to Avoid
Performing jumping lunges is a great addition to your leg workout when done correctly. Make sure you get the most out of it by avoiding these mistakes.
- Landing on toes: Make sure your lunge stance isn’t too narrow and focus on landing on your midfoot while keeping your heel down. This will help protect your joints.
- Landing too hard: If you hear yourself slamming into the floor and making noise, try to focus on absorbing the force and not making a sound.
- Not warming up: Plyometric movements are more advanced and need an adequate warmup to increase the heart rate. Don’t rush into these first thing in your workout.
- Locking knees: When you land, bend at the knees and hips to absorb the force as you lower into the lunge. Landing with locked-out knees is an injury waiting to happen.
- Rounding your back: When your spine starts to arch, it places your shoulders too far over your hips, creating instability in your spine and core. Keep your body upright with shoulders over hips and engage your core muscles.
- Short range of motion: If you feel yourself stopping short on the way down, try to only do as many reps as you can with a full range of motion.
Jumping Lunges Muscles Worked
What exactly are you working on when doing jumping lunges? Pretty much all of the leg muscles! Here's a look.
- Glutes: The gluteus maximus is the biggest muscle of your butt and works to extend the hip as you start your ascent from the bottom of the lunge. The gluteus medius and minimus (side glutes) are smaller muscles that stabilize during the eccentric phase of the lunge and act as synergists on the way up.
- Quadriceps: This group of four muscles on the front of your thigh contains the rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, and vastus medialis. They act as a synergist during the lowering portion and function to extend the knee during the concentric.
- Hamstrings: Opposing the quadriceps on the back of the thigh, this group of three muscles includes the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris. The hamstrings shorten and contract on the lowering portion and act synergistically on the ascent.
- Hip flexors: This bundle of muscles on your upper thigh flexes the hip and brings the knee closer to the chest. As you lower, the psoas major contracts, while the ilacus acts synergistically.
- Core: Your core muscles are essential for bracing and keeping your spine upright during this movement. The obliques, transverse abdominis, rectus abdominis, and erector spinae all play a role in stabilization during the jump lunge and allow you to produce force in the lower body.
- Calves: The tibialis anterior on the front of your shin contracts as you lower down into the lunge. As you begin the ascent, your gastrocnemius and soleus on the back of your lower leg contract to start exploding upward.
Benefits of the Jumping Lunge Exercise
Including jumping lunges in your workout split will ensure you burn calories, develop lower body power, and train like an athlete.
- Develops lower body strength & power: Not only will you build your fast twitch muscle fibers to produce more explosive power, but it will also translate into strength gains for other lower body exercises.
- Improves balance & stability: Your muscles need to stabilize between the eccentric and concentric portions of the movement. By doing this, lunge jumps can help reduce the risk of injury and even build strength and elasticity in tendons2.
- Builds quicker nerves: Plyo lunges send messages to your brain through your neuromuscular system. The movement forces the system to work faster, increasing its ability to contract and relax your muscles3. Faster nerves help improve balance and stability and reduce the chance of injury.
- Helps you become a better athlete: This exercise will help increase your vertical and long jump, reduce sprint times, and improve postural control and body awareness. A stronger, more explosive athlete will always perform better.
- Burns calories: Aiming for lean legs? Jump lunges play a role. Since it’s an explosive move, your body produces more force and power, so it needs to burn more calories for energy in shorter periods.
- Versatile: You can pair this exercise with a squat to focus on maximum power output, include it in a HIIT finisher to burn tons of calories, or use it in a slower bodyweight circuit if you can’t make it to the gym.
Jump Lunge Modifications
First, master traditional lunge variations and walking lunges before even thinking about performing lunge jumps.
Once you feel confident with these, you can start to do them faster to mimic the explosive portion of the lunge jump. When you are ready, you can start with a lunge jump in place, and instead of switching legs in the air, you’ll just perform a small hop off the ground and land into the lunge again. A small squat jump is also a good starting point, as you will have more stability using both legs.
If you have knee pain, it’s a good idea to stick to stationary or walking lunges. Here are two other variations if you are building confidence for the lunge jump or want to ensure your body is safe.
1. TRX Assisted lunge jump:
Using the straps allows you to have a built-in spotter to ensure you are landing safely, and it even helps propel you upward.
How to do the TRX Assisted Jump Lunge:
- Grab the TRX straps and hold them around chest level with tension in the straps and your arms bent.
- Begin with your left foot forward and set up in your lunge position, lowering down to the bottom of the lunge. As you lower, your arms will naturally extend. Make sure to keep tension on the straps.
- Pulling on the straps for support, explode up from the bottom of the lunge and switch legs in the air, landing on the other side. Use the straps to land safely into the lunge.
2. Back lunge to front lunge:
This isn’t a plyometric exercise, but it mimics how the lunge jump switches legs and will get the heart rate up similarly. You will alternate between a front and a reverse lunge without pausing in the middle.
How to do a Back Lunge To Front Lunge:
- Start standing upright with your feet hip-width apart. Take your right leg and step back into a lunge lowering down until both legs are at 90-degree angles.
- With your left food forward, stand up from that lunge and as you bring your feet together, step directly into a front lunge with your right leg and lower down as deep as you can.
- Push the ground away, returning to the starting position, and again resist the urge to set your foot down as you step directly into the back lunge.
- Repeat.
Back Lunge To Front Lunge Demo on YouTube
3 Jump Lunge Variations & Progressions
Ready to switch things up or make things harder? Try these 3 takes on the jump lunge!
1. Weighted lunge jump:
An easy progression is to hold a set of dumbbells at your sides during this exercise. The weights you select shouldn't be as heavy as a walking or stationary lunge so start lighter than you think. From there, the movement is the same as the traditional lunge jump. You will keep your arms straight and at your sides the entire time.
Another option if you don't want to hold weights is to wear a weighted vest during the jumping lunge. Check out these 9 Best Weighted Vests to find the perfect one for you!
2. Lunge jump with medicine ball twist:
Hold a medicine ball at chest level and begin by twisting it over your front leg. As you jump in the air, you switch legs and twist towards the other leg. This is another way to add resistance to the movement and increase your core strength.
3. Rotating lunge jumps:
This advanced plyometric movement causes you to move in a different plane of motion and challenges your core. Instead of jumping and staying in one place, you will turn your entire body to face 180 degrees behind you on each jump.
Start in the bottom of a lunge position with your right leg forward. Put both arms straight in front of you at chest level. From there, reach your right arm directly behind you in line with your leg and reach your left arm across your body.
Explode up from the lunge jump and use your arms and core to drive across your body, twisting to the left and turning 180 degrees. Land on the opposite leg and repeat.
2 Jump Lunge Alternatives
Want something different than a jump lunge but that will work the same muscles? These are for you!
1. Power step-ups:
This is another plyometric exercise that builds single-leg explosiveness and power.
The cool thing is you can do them without a jump but still focus on explosive power by stomping your foot down into the box as hard as you can to explode upward.
How to do Power Step-Ups:
- Set up a bench parallel to your body.
- Lift your right leg and place it on the bench. Power through your right leg and stomp into the bench as your body explodes up in the air. As your feet leave the bench, switch legs in the air and land on the opposite leg.
- Repeat and keep alternating sides.
2. Single-leg leg press:
This strength exercise is excellent for building single-leg power and evening out muscle imbalances. If you use a machine where the seat slides back as you press, you can turn this into a plyometric exercise by jumping off the footplate and landing into the next rep.
How to do the Single Leg Leg Press:
- Put both feet on the footplate in line with your hips. Remove one leg off the plate and keep the other in the same position.
- Press through your midfoot and extend your leg by pushing the seat backward. Extend until your leg is almost straight but not locked out. Lower and repeat.
Jump Lunge Programming Tips
Plyometrics are more challenging to recover from, so it’s a good idea to perform them no more than two times a week with a minimum of two days between sessions to recover.
Here are some other tips you can follow:
- For improving muscular strength and power, try supersetting with a bi-lateral exercise like a squat or deadlift. Try 4 sets of 3-5 reps superset with 3 lunge jumps each leg focusing on maximum power and height. Rest 2-3 minutes between sets.
- For muscle hypertrophy, aim for 3 sets of 10 reps per leg.
- For muscular endurance, target 2 sets of 20 reps for each leg or a timed set of 1 minute and as many reps as possible.
Jump Lunge Sample Workout
Trying to figure out how to include jump lunges into your routine? Give this workout a shot!
|
Exercise |
Sets |
Reps |
|
Warm up on Stair Climber |
1 |
5 mins |
|
Superset: |
|
|
|
KB Swings |
3 |
15 |
|
Single-Leg Leg Press |
3 |
10 |
|
Weighed Lunge Jumps (use light DBs) |
2 |
10/leg |
|
Standing Calf Raises |
2 |
20 |
|
Seated Calf Raises |
2 |
20 |
Jump Lunges: The Plyo Exercise Your Routine Needs
Jumping lunges are a great addition to your workout, whether you're looking for a new move to add to leg day, or one to include in a bodyweight circuit routine. Using this exercise, you can improve your athletic ability and increase your muscular force and power, all while torching calories and building strong lean legs.
So, what are you waiting for? Master your form, figure out exactly where you want to place jumping lunges in your training, and start jumping!
Looking for more great plyo exercises? Check out these 13 Plyometric Exercises for Beginners and the 9 Best Plyo Box Exercises!
References:
- Gjinovci B, Idrizovic K, Uljevic O, Sekulic D. Plyometric Training Improves Sprinting, Jumping and Throwing Capacities of High-Level Female Volleyball Players Better Than Skill-Based Conditioning. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine. 2017;16(4). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5721183/
- Wilkerson GB, Colston MA, Short NI, Neal KL, Hoewischer PE, Pixley JJ. Neuromuscular Changes in Female Collegiate Athletes Resulting From a Plyometric Jump-Training Program. Journal of Athletic Training. 2004;39(1). Accessed April 25, 2021. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15085207/
- Myer GD, Ford KR, McLean SG, Hewett TE. The Effects of Plyometric versus Dynamic Stabilization and Balance Training on Lower Extremity Biomechanics. The American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2006;34(3). doi:10.1177/0363546505281241
Travis Halena
Author