Squeeze Your Butt!
What specifically are your glutes (AKA butt)?
Your gluteal muscles (“glutes”) refer to the muscles in your butt. Specifically, they incorporate three different muscles. The glute medius and minimus work together to promote hip abduction and prevent hip adduction. These muscles come in handy when you need to balance on one leg. The glute maximus is the largest of the glute muscles and is the primary hip extensor muscle. It also gives you the shape in the backside!
What is the cause and result of weak glutes?
Due to our heavily sedentary lifestyles, many of us suffer from weak glutes. Since we tend to spend less time moving around and more time sitting, we aren’t properly using our glute muscles. Over time this inactivity and lack of glute activation leads to other parts of our legs compensating for their weakness. Weak glutes can result in various symptoms, such as tight hip flexors, knee pain, low back pain, and weak ankles and feet.
What are the benefits of strengthening your glutes?
Strong Glutes Help Prevent Injuries – Having strong, functional glutes can help you avoid injury in your lower back, hips, knees and ankles by creating proper alignment and stability.
Strong Glutes Improve Posture – When your glutes are strong and stable, you can avoid common dysfunctional movement patterns that cause pain. When your lower body and pelvis are in alignment, it will help keep your shoulders, neck and back in alignment leading to better posture.
Increased Power and Athletic Performance – Your glutes are responsible for accelerating, decelerating, changing directions and creating explosive power in jumps. The glute maximus is one of the largest and strongest muscles in the body, therefore it has a lot of influence over the explosive nature of your athletic performance.
Aesthetics – This is a given and honestly is the primary reason that many people decide to start working on their glutes. Hey, it’s a valid goal to have and if you’re looking for a rounder backside then “squeeze you butt!”
What are the best exercises to build stronger glutes?
We all know them and I use variations of them in classes every day. The key is to vary the workload, training the muscles from multiple angles and incorporate instability into the workout to really target those your glutes!
Squats
Hip Thrusters
Deadlifts
Sumos
Step Ups
Donkey Kicks
Lunges
Curtsies
Banded Side Walks
