Can I Do Lunges Every Day?
Lunges are a powerful exercise for your lower body, but avoid training the same muscles every single day—it can put you at risk for an injury.
Lunges are a powerful exercise, targeting the glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, hip flexors, core muscles and calves in one full swoop. Core muscles, too, receive a major boost during lunges by holding the torso upright and improving your bilateral balance. That must mean that you should do lunges every single day, right? Not so fast. It's not a good idea to work any muscle in your body multiple days in a row, including lunges, or you risk injury.
Read More: The Benefits of Lunges
Risk of Overtraining
When you do a strength-training exercise, you cause microscopic tears in the targeted muscles. By giving those muscles time to recover, they repair themselves and grow stronger and bigger. If you do lunges every day, those muscles aren't able to repair themselves.
Although the glutes, hip flexors and hamstrings may benefit the most from lunges, they can also suffer from aches and pains if overtrained by doing lunges every day. You may even experience decreased performance over time.
Lunges are a strength-training exercise and, as with all strength training, the body needs a day of rest in between work days to fully recover and repair the muscles used. Doing lunges every day can also make you fatigued and unable to use proper lunge form, causing undue stress to your lower back, knees and calves.
Read More: What is an Effective Workout Schedule?
A Smart Schedule
Tackle your strength workouts in one of two ways—either do a full-body workout two to three times a week, giving your body at least a day off in between, or alternate the muscle groups that you work. For example, you might do a lower-body workout, including lunges, one day, and then train the upper-body the next day. With this method, you're getting exercise every day, but you're not over-taxing any particular muscles.