Here’s to the People Who Lunge

Keep your back erect for the duration of this article.

BY: NOAH FARBERMAN

Art by Daniel Gomes // THE UNDERGROUND

I went for a run today. Only about 700 metres to my favourite coffee shop, but for a non-runner like me it feels like miles. I started this trend last week, running to get my morning coffee instead of walking downstairs and brewing. My theory was that if I get my heart rate up I won’t be as restless when I get to work. So far it’s working. Although last Friday’s run was stalled when I happened to pass a large fitness group doing their own form of a morning workout. 

At first I thought it was a group of children taking their time, all dressed in neon and runners. I put on my sunglasses and tried to figure out what I was looking at. With the sun out of my face I could start to register. It was a group of adults, age 30-50 would be my (hopefully polite) guess. But they weren’t speed walking or running. They were… lunging. Well, sortof. They were lunge-walking, I would later learn it to be called.  A form of fitness marching where participants get into a lunge position and walk great distances without ever returning to full height. Keeping their backs straight, the group of lungers passed me like a herd of ducklings, slowly and in a single file line. As I watched the group hobble away I couldn’t help but think “wow they look stupid.” 

As is turns out, looking stupid hasn’t stopped anyone before. I guarantee some of you supported shake weights, statistically speaking they sold 4.5 million units. It’s never a question of will this fad stick, because that question is never asked about a fad until it's stuck. The question I hope to answer is what kinds of people follow these trends. Who are the people who lunge? 

What’s the big pull? 

Apparently the pull was closer to me than I had realized. I had been talking to some gym owners asking if any of them knew where I could find a lunge-walker’s meeting when I received an email from my mother. She had forwarded me a link her cousin sent her about lunge-walking. My first cousin, once removed, was a “Lunger Leader.” I gave the cousin a call hoping to find out what pulled her in and how she’s going about recruiting herself. 

“The science behind it is unbelievable,” my first cousin, once removed, Erika Gaborsky told me over “vegan tea.” “I read this thing by a Dr. Wilbertilly, it was astounding the leaps and bounds he discovered.” It might be important to note that she was lunging back and forth through the entire meeting. “I’ve noticed results immediately and so I just had to tell my friends.”

My first cousin, once removed, has a skill I don’t. She’s a trendsetter, plain and simple. While she could probably convince a neighborhood their yoga matts were burning too many carbon emissions I would somehow prevent the fanny pack from making a comeback. When Erika gets excited about something, everyone gets excited about it. 

I asked her how she recruited new followers. 

“It sells itself. The workout is magic, social, it’s just all round the perfect way to spend your time. I first started streaming my walks and I even added five minutes of lunge-walking to the end of my pilotes workouts. Pretty soon my regulars were asking if I could run lunge-exclusive classes. I had to rework my website, but that’s little trouble for amazing results.” 

According to Erika, she went from exclusively Pilates classes to exclusively lunge-walk sessions in under a week. 

For a slow walk, that’s a fast turnaround. 

I asked Erika if I could speak to someone from her class and she gave me the number of a lawyer who attends four sessions a week. 

Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis by Unsplash

“How did you get my personal phone number?” Harvey Sypher at Law asks me upon answering. I explained that I was related to his lunge-walking leader and that I was writing about the trend. After realizing that he outed himself for giving his personal phone number to his pilates instructor, Sypher was eager to help. 

“I go where everyone else goes. Same reason I don’t start my own firm, if I stay in the pack no one falls down or we all fall down.” Sypher’s voice was hesitant, like he was hiding something. Speculation, maybe, but I pressed further. I wanted to know why he really followed the trend. “Look, we’re in a group, a bunch of us. We… I’m heading into court. I hope you got enough, goodbye.”

The call ended abruptly. But my questions remained. 

I decided to take action myself and infiltrate a group from the inside. 

Standing on the same corner at the same time of day as the last time I saw the passing lungers, I waited for another wave. Like the hands of a clock, the group passed exactly when I thought they would. Falling into line, I joined the lunge-walkers. 

From inside the pack the world felt different. No one was out of breath so conversation was abundant. “How’s the Tillerman trial?” “Keep those glutes low, Bertram” “I don’t know what my kids do without me.” 

The pack itself was far from diverse. The outfits looked like a uniform, the men looked like cookie cutters, and the women all tied their hair the same way, out of their faces. With about ten people in the group you could probably only make three different sets. I wondered, then, if the people all looked the same because they were clumped together and because I didn’t know any of them well enough to distinguish any features, or if it was because they all actually looked the same. 

I fell to the back of the group and introduced myself to the woman at the end of the line. She introduced herself as “Karen, but I’m not A Karen, as my kids told me to explain.” 

Not A Karen explained that she worked at the corporate office of an accounting firm you’ve probably heard of. She spent a great many hours at the office and most remaining with her three kids. Karen worked hard, and so did everyone else in that group, I learned. Every one of them had a full time job, and good ones: lawyers, accountants, as well as political advisors and business owners, jobs that let you afford to live in neighbourhoods with others who work similar jobs. 

I wondered how much power money held in this game. A lot of the key players had it. The first batch of followers all had it. 

I decided it was time to talk to one of the sources. 

I reached out to a local physiotherapist who has published research on lunge-walking and its many benefits. You might remember Erika mentioning his name. 

Photo by Online Marketing via Unsplash

“Staying low down is better for your abs, in layman's terms,” Dr. Daniel Wilbertilly of the Willbertilly Health and Treatment of Health Treatment Facility Center told me on a brief phone call. “The basic science is that when you’re lower down your centre of gravity is father back. In order to keep yourself upright, you need to tighten your core and take strain off your ankles and calves. Keeping your core tight is essential to proper abdominal growth and staying in the lower lunge position ensures consistent core tightness. It is not revolutionary, just something I thought was interesting and was happy to learn it was.” 

I asked him what sort of people would benefit most from this exercise. 

“That’s an odd question, I mean, people with weaker abdominals, I guess, would be my answer.” 

I tried to clarify the question. “Do you think any certain social groups would benefit more from this type of exercise?”

Dr. Wilbertilly was still unhappy with my question. “People who follow trends. I don’t know. Why don’t you ask an economist? If you clump people together you avoid personal treatment. If people clump themselves together they forsake it.”

If people clump themselves together they forsake personal treatment. 

There was my answer. 

There are followers and there are leaders. Leaders are just the first people willing to try something new, followers are happy to support and join in. Leaders are the ones who take the chance to look stupid, followers are the ones who decide whether or not something is dumb. And the second YOU decide something isn’t stupid anymore, it ceases to be that way. 

To Erika, health trends always shift and change, scientists from the past didn’t know anything, so she follows the scientists of the present. 

To Harvey, being a part of something means safety in numbers. He plays the odds and odds are he’ll keep doing well. 

To Not a Karen, her friends are doing it, and like Dr. Wilbertilly explained, the activity isn’t special, but it is still good for you. Because her work and her family happily took her days and evenings, Karen took initiative and made time for her friends without needing to sacrifice the others. 

And to Dr. Wilbertilly, it’s another piece of research accomplished. Doctors need to constantly be publishing and researching, maybe this truly was a deep interest or maybe it was just another paper to push. But the science is there, it’s real. 

Who are the people who lunge? The same people who started eating kale in 2014. The first group to sign up for a hot yoga class. The test-subjects for electric acupuncture. 

And the people who followed.