I think almost everyday I hear from a patient of a complaint about their glutes. They can’t feel them contract, they can’t engage them when they work out, they cannot connect with the muscles, if their life depending on it! Well guess what! There is an easy way to get your glutes to fire. It’s all about setting up an environment where the glutes have no chance, but to contract.
So first off, think of what the glute muscles do for us. They extend at our hip joint and they are also important in rotation of the hip. So you must create an environment where you are forcing extension of your hip to occur, while also adding a rotational resistance, to get after the glute even more.
My Go-To exercise for this is the retro-stair exercise with a resisted glute band around the knees. The ability to walk backward requires you to extend your hip as you are moving up to the next step, so in-fact your glute has to turn on to do this! Also, we add a band around the knee to create some external rotation resistance at the hip joint.
I also love this exercise because it requires a good amount of dorsiflexion of the ankle. This is huge for someone that wants to start using their glutes more in their normal life. Why? Because the glutes engage during the mid to late stance phase of your walk. Now guess what joint needs to have good mobility to get through that phase, without compensation? Yes, you got it, YOUR ANKLES. That’s why many times I will see a correlation of someone that “doesn’t feel their glutes ever” and that same person significantly lacking ankle mobility. This is because in the function of walking, the two come hand in hand.
Not only does this exercise give you some much needed ankle mobility, but it also is working on your single leg balance, coordination and motor control! What else do we need in life!
So if you are looking to wake up your glutes like never before. Go ahead and try to this resisted retro-stairs exercise. I guarantee your glutes will love you for it.
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