Respecting The Glutes

Boy, if there’s ever been one body part that seems to be misunderstood and mercilessly picked on, it’s the glutes (aka “But-tocks” courtesy of Forrest Gump). They are the Rodney Dangerfield of body parts. For those of you who remember Rodney, his signature line was "I don't get no respect!"

The Glutes are often referred to in a negative context “What a pain in the backside” or the idea of “Sitting around on your bottom”. The second one implying that the glutes are a non active lump of useless flesh. Nothing could be further from the truth and I think it’s time we cut the glutes some slack and gave them their just due!


The fact is, the glutes are the most powerful muscle in the lower body, they can really make a difference in terms of a person having usable lower body strength or speed. They can help you lift heavy objects and help propel you with more force.


In exercise programs the glutes are most often trained for aesthetic reasons (i.e. “because people want their “butt” to look better in a pair of tight jeans”), but I believe it’s really important to think about training it for function as well.


Often in locomotion or lifting, people tend to be more hamstring (back of the thighs) or quad (quadriceps-front of the thighs) dominant. I have learned, by focusing more on learning to activate my glutes using specific exercises, that I can really propel myself with much less effort. This is especially noticeable when I consciously “fire” my glutes when I’m walking or pushing something requiring lower body strength.


The reason that the glutes are often left out of the equation in terms of generating power, is that they are often inhibited because of tight hip flexors. This also create postural issues by creating too much anterior pelvic tilt which creates too much curvature in the lumbar spine (i.e. lordosis).


The body has mechanisms where tightness in one muscle can inhibit (i.e. relax) it’s antagonistic muscle. Antagonistic muscles are muscles on opposite sides of a body part that perform movement in the opposite direction. For example the hip flexors bring your hip forwards, the glutes extend the hip backwards. This relaxation of the antagonist is called reciprocal inhibition. So if you have tight hip flexors then it can create inhibition in the glutes. There’s other factors that are involved in all this (like length-tension relationships) but I don’t want to get into all that in this post.


Anyway, Reciprocal Inhibition is the same mechanism that tells your triceps (the muscles in the back of your arm) to relax when you flex your elbow using your biceps and other flexor muscles. If the triceps didn’t relax you would be unable to bend your elbow because the triceps would “insist” on keeping it extended straight. So antagonistic muscles have an important relationship and reciprocal inhibition is a necessity. It’s only problematic when it’s triggered by chronic muscle imbalances and tightness.


In order to activate the glutes, typically the strategy is to first release the hip flexors via various forms of stretching techniques. Some of these are using Self Myofascial Release. This is done using a foam roller (aka “the poor man’s massage therapist”) and other implements such as tennis balls or "The stick" and the like.


You find the trigger points (i.e. knots/adhesions) in your muscles and fascia and hold the foam roller against that spot for 20 or more seconds until it releases. This is accomplished by a neurological mechanism called “autogenic inhibition” which accomplished via the Golgi Tendon Organ (GTO) .


Note: The Golgi Tendon Organ is a "mechanoreceptor" found at the junction where the muscle and tendon meet.  It's sensitive to change in tension of the muscle and rate of that change. 


When excited, the GTO will cause the muscle to relax in order to prevent the muscle from being placed under excessive stress and sustaining injury.


A Mechanoreceptor is a sensory receptor responsible for sensing distortion in body tissues. (NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness  Training Third Edition)


This is then followed by various forms of more traditional stretching such as static (long stretches held at the point of slight tension) though sometimes more active and dynamic forms of stretching can be used as well.


Once the muscle(s) causing the inhibition is released ( in this case the hip flexors) then you can focus your attention on activating it's antagonistic muscle ( in this case the glutes).


After this process you want to re-educate yourself to fire the glutes in functional types of movements. These are movements that require hip extension, such as when your leg goes behind you when walking or running, or when doing squatting or lunging types of movements.


 A very good exercise for learning to fire the glutes is a "glute bridge". This is performed lying on your back, hands along your sides w/ your palms down. Your legs should be bent with the feet dorsiflexed (pointing your toes towards your shins) so that you are primarily on your heels. Consciously contract (squeeze) your glutes as you lift them off of the ground. Only go as high as you comfortably can but never hyperextend your back (so you want to avoid creating an arch in your back). Rather you should have a straight line from you knees on down to your torso.You often don't need to go very high at all and "your glutes should be talking to you!".


If you are feeling it primarily in your hamstrings, you may need to adjust the position of your feet by moving them either closer to or further from your glutes.


Certainly a nice side effect of activating and strengthening your glutes is that they’ll look a lot better. Of course if there is adipose (fat) tissue covering them up you will need to use nutritional strategies and fat burning exercise (such as metabolic strength training, interval training and other cardiovascular exercise) to get the maximum aesthetic results.


Unfortunately, just working the glutes themselves won’t be enough to get those aesthetic results since you can’t “spot reduce” with exercise. But if you put all the elements together you’ll not only have more functional glutes but you’ll probably be happier with the way they look as well!


So love your glutes, take care of them, learn to use them to help you function better in your life.