Squats vs Walking Lunges

[Collin304]

I would also like to add to ditch the smith machine squats, it has its time and place for specifically targeting muscle groups but I don’t think it aligns with what you’re trying to accomplish. I wouldn’t worry about the knees over toes on your squat unless it’s causing you pain. Plenty of powerlifters out there with a more narrow stance with a “knees over toes” squat, squatting upwards of 8-900 pounds. It’s more about your biomechanics and building tendon strength over years of training. I wouldn’t worry definitely subscribe to knees over toes guy on YouTube and integrate some of his stuff into your training. Most back country injuries occur on the decent loaded and a lot of those are from knee instability. I start each of my workouts with 3-5 minutes of backward sled drags. That has helped with my overall general physical preparedness and built up my knee strength and stability drastically. I also agree with some of the others use to use uni lateral exercises to build up stability. I would still squat to build overall strength and be sure to brace correctly to build core strength. Suitcase carries would be great for what you’re wanting. I would also focus on postural muscle strengthening. Upper back strength to keep yourself upright and in a good strong position. I think this gets overlooked. I also add farmers carries into my daily warmup along with the backwards sled drags and focus on good posture. Hope some of this helps, best of luck!


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[Poser]

If your goal is to hike with a heavy pack in the mountains, you will see your hiking performance improve the most with single leg exercises. Personally, I get the most benefit from walking toe lunges holding a dumbbell, followed by banded monster walks. Those two exercises do a terrific job of building muscular endurance for mountain hunting with a pack.

What metric are you using to measure this and draw this conclusion?

Also, I do hope that you aware that a lunge is not a "single leg" exercise. It may emphasize one leg more than the other, but your planted leg is still bearing a non-insignificant amount of load and stress and contributing to the movement. For that matter, hiking uphill is ever a "single leg" event with a shared sequence between the two legs, the planted leg pushing and contributing along with the full body under load. Probably most any example of a "single leg sport" anyone can name short of toe wrestling (yes, that is a real sport) involves distribution of load to both legs. Take a football kicker, for example: the planted foot is just as critical to the execution as the swing leg. Even an arm wrestler is leveraging the crap out of the grip on the table with their non competitive arm. If an arm wrestler had to compete with a limp non competitive hand, they would presumably produce noticeably less force.

Yeah, sure, its an easy sell to make a blanket statement: You are hiking up hill so you will benefit more from lunges vs. squats. But, if you strip it back just a little bit and I think that falls apart. You referenced 2x bodyweight for example. I'm not sure if there are very many people in true "mountain shape" who are maintaining a 2x bodyweight squat year around. I've been there before, but not when I'm doing quite a bit of conditioning and its difficult to imagine maintaining the amount of necessary aerobic capacity and muscular endurance training while also maintaining a 410# squat (I'm 205#) as there is just too much cumulative stress going on. I'm not suggesting that lunges can't be beneficial and it may be the case that the less access you have to mountains the more beneficial they may be, but, end of the day, the are an accessory movement and not "the king".

I have not performed a lunge since my crossfit days, at least 10-12 years ago. While I won't be "that guy" who makes the bold claim (which I hate) that "I do X" or "I don't X and have no problem in the mountains", which, anyone who is doing anything hard in the mountains is having problems from time to time at a minimum (I routinely get my ass handed to me in the mountains), I'm quite sure the millions upon millions of uphill steps performed per season drives the necessary muscular endurance adaptations in a manner that is more productive than doing sets of 15 reps for lunges.

The adaptation is to build the desired amount of strength, which the squat is much more efficient at, and then drive the adaptation associated with increased capillary density which is what we call muscular endurance: performing a submaximal movement over and over again without excessive fatigue. These sessions will usually require an hour or more of the specific activity to drive the adaption. I'm sure there are folks out there doing lunges for an hour straight, but doesn't seem to be what is mentioned in this conversation. Beyond that, You can add all of the vocabulary you want: "resilience", "balance", "movement patterns" etc, but the fact it is, we're talking about hiking: a low skill activity. One could even call it a mindless activity that requires no dedicated skill or rehearsal, just the necessary adaptations.

End of the day, do lunges all you want. If you like doing, do them. If you find them beneficial, do them. It doesn't affect anyone else. That being said, they are not "the king" of anything, rather they are a subordinate movement and the reality is they aren't even a "single leg" exercise and nor is hiking/rucking a single leg activity.

 

[JDT1982]

For rucking and climbing up mountains- walking lunges. Or just put a ruck on and find a hill or long flight of stairs ie a local stadium to walk up and down.

 

[Marbles]

Lunges will generally be more useful hunting as they are a single leg exercise. Particularly if using a Smith machine for squats which means even less stability is worked on doing them.

Squats can serve a purpose, doing full range back squats (butt to heels) with more then body weight makes getting a 100 plus pound pack on much easier.

Box step ups and box step downs are also valuable, as are split squat jumps.

 

[JDT1982]

Don't think these guys were ever worried about how much they could squat, but I know they had no problem rucking