Quad pain during lunges

[newdawn]

I seem to have the squats and deadlifts down finally but I'm having trouble with the lunges. It's not a joint thing but a muscular thing. There is a sharp-ish pain in my quads when I lunge, like pulling or a charlie-horse. I watch my form in the mirror. I try to engage my glutes but honestly, I don't feel much happening back there. I try to push off with my heels but it's very hard and I find myself pushing off with my whole foot, rolling to the toes even. So the movement feels very awkward and jerky.

I think I have quite developed quads so I don't understand this. Am I lunging too deeply (my knee sometimes inadvertently touches the floor.) Could I need to warm up more? Even after warming up on cardio machines and after the deadlifts? Are my quads too tight? Hamstrings? Any ideas?

[MissRose]

I am not sure what your specific issue would be.. but I just wanted to chime in and say i HATED those lunges at first!! I had balance issues, knee hurt issues, etc. I kept it up and I have my last stage 2 workout tonight and I am not feeling any pain anymore.... Of course, stage 2 does not have you stepping back and forth as they are static lunges in 2. Although I think the knee pain thing went away half way thru stage one.

[newdawn]

I had knee pain with squats and deadlifts...not lunges or step-ups (go figure.) And that has indeed eased a lot in just 6 workouts. I do have an initial PT appt. Monday though and I made sure to get a PT that specializes in sports so I'll mention the lunges to him and see what he thinks. I think perhaps I've got some muscular imbalances going on.

Thanks for your input!

[snorkweezl]

The quad exercises are really frustrating me. I'm finding that I can't get parallel on the squats and still hold myself up, and I can only get through about five reps of dead-lifts before my legs fail. It's not a too-much-weight issue. I can't even do the motion of the dead-lift (without weights) more than about five or six times before my quads give out. I've always been pretty athletic (I downhill ski, and I've been biking about 8 miles daily for the last several weeks prior to starting the program) so this is really distressing. It's not laziness on my part, it really truly is muscle failure. Is this normal?

[missjane]

DL's are not a quad exercise. Are you sure you are doing them correctly? See the video in this thread.

CT workout - This Sunday