Anyone seeing this has likely seen the daily boomerang story of me wiggling my foot, with the number of consecutive days of 100 lunges displayed on the screen.
For some of you, it may just be a fleeting thing that you witness and continue scrolling. Others have been inspired to start a 100 lunges a day streak themselves.
And now I’ve had a bunch of people reach out asking Why Lunges? Why 100? What’s the purpose? Does it affect your training?
Let me break it down for you...
MY WALKING LUNGE INTRODUCTION
I was introduced to daily lunges via Cory Gregory of the mighty MAX EFFORT MUSCLE. If you don’t follow him and his company, go do that and come back to this article.
Cory explained to me how he uses lunges as his primary conditioning and how it’s worked for him for bodybuilding, staying lean, staying athletic, and staying young. Not only that, but the time alone in your head gives you a daily opportunity for personal growth. Cory is an absolute savage and was doing 400-800 meters per day.
400 meters seemed a bit much for me as I am still trying to stay as big as possible with very little concern with leanness in general for myself. I decided that 100 lunges, 50 per leg, would be an appropriate place to start. And the journey began.
580+ DAYS IN A ROW
I immediately enjoyed getting a pump first thing in the morning. I loved the fact that I got a chance to put on music or a podcast and disassociate for a few minutes. It was a great way to start my morning.
I also found that 100 lunges were incredibly easy to “recover” from. Let’s be honest, if 50 lunges per leg pushes you into an over trained state, you need to really evaluate what your nutrition, sleep, and training as a whole looks like, as this should not negatively impact any sort of strength training.
As I’m writing this, I am at 580+ days in a row. I’ve had several 200+ day streaks and one over 300 before this current streak.
I’ve lunged the morning of my last three WPO meets and still squatted anywhere from 1037 to 1102 pounds. The recovery, if you can call it that, is a non-factor.
DOING THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE DIFFICULT
I feel like these lunges have made me tougher mentally. No one wants to lunge Saturday at 8am after squatting until 10pm Friday night, but it happens. Week in and week out.
Getting to a point where you can accept that something will be difficult, and doing it anyway, will carry over to all strength training AND in life.
PHYSICAL BENEFITS
The physical benefits have been substantial.
I now have MUCH thicker tendons and musculature surrounding my knees. I had been plagued by knee issues in the past and at 38 years old, with 13 years of ice hockey and nearly 10 years of competitive powerlifting, my knees have never felt better. Building resiliency in the joint is huge, and no one will complain about having jacked quads either!
Overall, I think that everyone should be incorporating these into their daily or weekly routine. It takes discipline. It takes commitment. It takes some grit. But anything worth having, is worth working for.
Now get out there and start day one.
AO
