Barbell Lunge.
The barbell lunge trains each leg independently, which catches strength imbalances a bilateral squat hides. With the bar on your upper traps, you step forward and drop into a split position, loading the front leg through the quads and glutes while the rear leg assists balance.
Step by step.
Set the bar on your upper traps as you would for a back squat, grip just outside your shoulders, and unrack it. Stand tall with your feet about hip width apart.
Take a deep breath into your belly, brace your core, and pull your ribs down so the bar cannot tip you forward.
Step one foot forward roughly 2 to 2.5 feet. The stride wants to feel longer than your instinct tells you, because a long step is what keeps the front shin vertical at the bottom.
Lower under control by bending both knees until your rear knee hovers just above the floor and your front thigh reaches about parallel. Keep your torso upright the whole way down.
Drive through the heel of the front foot to stand back up, pushing the floor away rather than rocking onto your toes.
Finish each rep tall and balanced. Do all your reps on one leg, rack the bar, then switch, until you have the coordination to alternate safely.
The most common fault is taking a stride that's too short. When the step is short, the front shin angles forward past the toes at the bottom, which dumps load onto the knee and off the glute. The front shin should finish vertical or very close to it. That means your stride is probably longer than it feels intuitive to take. A 2-to-2.5 foot step from your starting stance is the right range for most people.
Torso angle is the other thing that quietly goes wrong. The bar on your back creates a moment arm that wants to pull you forward, and if your core isn't locked, you'll start hinging at the hip with each rep. The torso should stay upright throughout the entire movement. If you're leaning forward to get depth, something else is the constraint, usually hip flexor tightness in the rear leg or ankle restriction in the front.
Weight distribution matters at the bottom: drive through the heel of the front foot to get up, not the ball of the foot. If you're pushing through your toes, you're turning it into a quad-dominant knee exercise. Heel drive activates the glute and keeps the shin vertical.
Don't alternate legs if you're new to this. Do all reps on one leg, rack, switch. Alternating while fatigued with a loaded bar is where the wobbles start. Once you've built coordination and confidence, alternating is fine.
Common questions.
Both work, but they feel different. A forward lunge requires you to project the foot out and then decelerate into the bottom position, which demands more stability and puts a little more stress on the knee. A reverse lunge steps backward, which is generally easier to control because you're hinging into the bottom position rather than catching yourself. If your knees are sensitive or you're new to loaded lunges, start with the reverse variation. For barbell work specifically, the forward lunge is the standard, but there's no rule that prevents you from stepping back instead.
Brace hard before you step. The bar moves because your core isn't locked during the stride, not because of anything your arms are doing. Set up like you would for a squat: bar on traps, scapulas retracted, deep breath into the belly, ribs down. Then step. If the bar sways on every rep, you're probably not bracing or the weight is too heavy for your current stability capacity. Wide grip helps some people create more lat tension, which adds to the overall rigidity of the system.
Hip hiking (where one side of the pelvis tilts higher than the other at the bottom) is usually tight hip flexors in the back leg or weak glute medius in the front leg. In the lunge position, the rear hip is in extension and if that hip flexor group is short, it drags the pelvis into an anterior tilt on that side. Spending time in a static lunge stretch for 60-90 seconds per side after training helps. Glute medius work (clamshells, lateral band walks) addresses the front leg stability issue.
It depends on your goal. The lunge pattern works quads and glutes hard and trains balance and unilateral strength that bilateral squats don't develop. However, the loading ceiling is lower. You can't safely move as much weight in a lunge as a squat. If you're chasing max lower-body strength, the squat stays primary. If you want to build leg size, address asymmetries, or train around a lower back issue that makes squatting uncomfortable, lunges can carry much of the same hypertrophy work.
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