10 Must-Do Glute Activation Exercises to strengthen and tone your glutes while alleviating and preventing low back pain and hip injury!
This week on TECHNIQUEWOD, we are talking about glute activation. These simple warm-up drills will allow you to use your butt more effectively in the gym, which is an awesome way to quickly boost performance on. Posts about glute warm up written by keirstenalana. Glutes for Sex Appeal, Glutes for Athleticism, Glutes for Strength. Glute Activation Warmup Chris Duffin. THE BEST Warm Up for Big Skwaats and Deadlifts. 14:16 GLUTE TRAINING
Glute Activation - 1. Must- Do Exercises. Many of the AMAZING glute activation exercises that we should all be doing are those funny looking moves that Jane Fonda used to do in her leotard with ankle weights. They are the moves that most people, especially guys, avoid. However, everyone from the professional athlete to the guy or gal sitting behind the desk for 9 hours a day, should do those funny looking glute activation moves!
By activating your glutes, you reduce your risk of injury and can even alleviate the back pain you may be suffering from because of sitting hunched over all day. You can also improve your speed, lift more and have strong, sexy legs all by doing those stupid looking moves. Glute activation exercises should be included in your warm up to get your butt ready and activated for the bigger exercises you plan to do in your workout so that your low back doesn’t try and take over. They can also be included in your actual workout to make sure your glutes continue to work.
Glute Activation Exercises: If you sit much of the day, you may have weak glutes, tight hamstrings, and tight hip flexors.
Below are 1. 0 Must- Do Glute Activation Exercises: 1. It is a great move to strengthen your glutes and open up your hips. You can do it with just your own bodyweight or even add weight! A great variation of the glute bridge for activation is the mini band glute bridge shown below. Just make sure that as you do the glute bridge, you don’t hyperextend your low back to get your hips up higher. You want your glutes to really have to work to raise your hips up.
If you are using the glute bridge for activation, make sure to slow down the tempo and even hold for a few seconds at the top of the bridge. Click here for the basic glute bridge, which is great for activation, as well as some other variations like the Bridge with Curl or Barbell Hip Thruster that are great strength moves. Another great glute bridge variation to use in your warm up is the Thoracic Bridge. This move activates your glutes while also stretching your thoracic spine.
Below is the Sit Thru to Thoracic Bridge. To learn how to do this great bridge variations, click here. Flex your feet. Then keeping the knee bent close to 9. Make sure that as you lift you are squeezing the glute of the leg you are raising. The foot should drive straight up to the ceiling and the knee shouldn’t flare out.
Do not let your elbows bend to get the leg higher. Hold at the top and squeeze the glute then lower and repeat. Make sure you are driving straight back and that the knee of the raised leg is bent to 9.
To get the most out of this activation move, hold at the top for 2- 5 seconds. Do not rush through the reps. Fire Hydrant – The fire hydrant is a great way to wake up the glute medius, which is a critical muscle for maintaining balance and preventing knee and ankle injuries. Strengthening your glute medius will also improve your hip’s stability as well as help you run faster and change direction more quickly. To do the fire hydrant, place your hands underneath your shoulders and your knees underneath your hips. Flex your feet and keep both your feet flexed even as you raise one leg. Then raise one leg out to the side, keeping the knee bent to 9.
Lift it as high as you can while keeping your arms straight. Try to not let the foot get higher than the knee or the knee get higher than the foot. Really squeeze the butt cheek as you lift. Hold for a second or two at the top. Lower down and then repeat. Complete all reps on one side before switching. Hip Circles– This move combines the donkey kick with the fire hydrant while also adding in a great ab activation movement.
To prevent and even ease your low back pain, you need your glutes AND your abs to be active. This move activates both. To do hip circles.
Flex your feet. Then drive one heel back toward the ceiling, keeping the knee bent to 9. Then without lowering to the ground, bring that same leg out to the side, keeping the knee bent to 9. It should look like the top of the fire hydrant move. Then without setting the knee down, drive it forward into the elbow. Keep the foot flexed the entire time and your elbows straight. When you drive into the elbow, you should really feel your abs engage. Then lower the knee down and repeat.
Posterior Plank– The posterior plank is a great glute activation move as well as a great stretch for your chest and hips. This is a tougher move because your legs are out straight. You can also regress this move by bending your knees and bringing your feet in closer to your butt. To do the posterior plank, start seated on the ground with your legs out straight in front of you and your hands on the ground behind your butt. Your fingertips should be pointing toward your butt or out to the side.
Drive through your hands and heels and raise your hips up off the ground toward the ceiling, keeping your legs straight. Press your chest up and out as you raise your hips. Keep your legs straight as you bridge up and relax your head back.
Hold for a few seconds and then lower back down and repeat. Band Monster Walks and Side Shuffle – Mini bands are a great tool to activate your glutes from every angle. Two of my favorite moves are the Monster Walks and Side Shuffle since they hit everything. If you even just include these two moves in your warm up, you are good to go in terms of glute activation! The key with both of these moves is to keep your feet apart and the band tight.
To make it easier, put the band around your knees. To make it harder, put the band around your feet. Do not let your knees cave in as you walk or your glutes won’t be forced to work. Click here for these two moves as well as other great mini band activation exercises (like the clams below)! Clams – This is another move to isolate the glute medius. This move is commonly used by people rehabbing hip injuries and low back pain BUT it is also a great move to activate the glutes and PREVENT those problems!
You can do this move without a mini band, however, the mini band does provide resistance. You can also push down with your own hand if you don’t have a band. For tips on how to do the clam, click here! It wakes up everything from your shoulders to your knees.
The key with the bird dog is to move slowly. You can add a band connecting your hand to your heel if you want to add resistance. You can also advance the bird dog by doing this from the push up position instead of from your hands and knees. To do the basic bird dog, place your hands under your shoulders and your knees under your hips.
Flex your feet. Kick one leg out straight back as if kicking it into the wall behind you while you reach the other arm out straight toward the wall in front of your head (reaching opposite arm and opposite leg in opposite directions). Squeeze your glutes and keep your belly button pulled in toward your spine. As you lower your arm and leg, bend them and bring them together under your body. Try to touch your knee to your elbow before extending back out. Repeat all reps on one side before switching to the other side. All reps should be done in a slow and controlled manner. You should even hold for a second or two at the top of the move.
Reverse Hypers (Single Leg Reverse Hypers) – Reverse Hypers are a great move to activate the glutes and strengthen them. I often use these in my workouts paired with a bigger, compound lift. To do the basic two- leg reverse hyper, lie face down on a table, bench or box. Make sure your hips are right at the edge. Hold on to something in front of you if you want. Keep your upper body relaxed. Squeeze your legs together and point your toes out a bit if you are having trouble activating your glutes.
Lift your legs to basically parallel to the ground, keeping your legs straight. Do not hyperextend your back and lift way higher than parallel. You do not want to feel this in your low back. Hold for 2- 5 seconds and then lower down. Keep your core tight and really squeeze your glutes as you lift. The two- leg reverse hyper can also be done from the ground, however, I prefer to do a single- leg reverse hyper (or lying kickback) from the ground.
I actually like doing the single- leg reverse hyper with a mini band, which is pictured below. Side Plank with Leg Lift – You wouldn’t think of a plank as a glute activation exercise, necessarily, but it is. Especially a side plank with a leg lift! The side plank with leg lift is an advanced move.
You can regress this move and do a lying abductor lift. To do the lying abductor lift, place the band around your ankle and lie on your side on the ground. You can support your head in your hand while lying on your side and place the other hand in front of you on the ground. Stack your feet on top of each other and then lift your top leg straight up as high as you can. Do not lean forward or backward or let your hips rotate forward or backward.
Keep your core engaged as you lift. Also, keep the foot that you lift parallel to the one on the ground.
Prop yourself up with your forearm right below your shoulder (or your hand to advance the move) and stack your feet one on top of the other. Then lift your bottom hip up off the ground as high as possible while keeping your body in a nice straight line. Squeeze your belly button in toward your spine and keep your glutes tight. Do not let your chest rotate forward toward the ground or your top hand touch the ground. Keep your top hand on your hip or reach it up toward the ceiling. Then lift and lower the top leg up toward the ceiling, keeping the bottom hip up and the body in a nice straight line.
Even as you lift, do not let your chest rotate toward the ground. You can lift and lower straight back down or you can lift and then lower to touch the ground behind you and then in front of you. Below are some workouts and warm ups using these 1. NOTES. Pick and choose just a couple to include with warm up and even during the workout. Doing all of them every workout may actually hinder your results.
Dispelling the Glute Myth . Squats and deadlifts aren't the best exercises for building bigger, stronger glutes. Most people can contract their glutes harder during body weight glute activation exercises than during their max in squats and deads.
The movements that target glutes the best will activate them with little to no weight. Follow a gradual progression for best results. The glutes are sleeping giants: Dormant and underused, but having tons of potential. Bodybuilders, models, and athletes need to be training their glutes based upon their specific needs. Since 1. 99. 5 I've read almost every study, article, and book ever written on the glutes.
I've also developed several new glute exercises, which are more effective than what most people have traditionally been doing for their glutes. What I've learned will shock you. Glute Gauges. Early in 2. I was trained to use electromyography (EMG) software that measures and records the muscular activity of exercises. I suspected that the methods and exercises I developed in my gym were more effective than what the typical fitness publications were printing. So after performing thirty straight leg workouts and experiments with wires and electrodes attached to me so I could measure and record the glute, quad, hamstring, and adductor activity of over a hundred different hip extension exercises, it became clear that the glutes have been the most wrongly- pegged muscle group in fitness. I tested common and unique body weight, dumbbell, band, barbell, and machine exercises, and then tested three other individuals with varying anthropometry or body segment lengths to make sure the results I saw weren't atypical.
Knowing that the fitness population would seek scientific explanation to lend support to my data, I knew what my next step needed to be. Fourteen years after reading my first book about glutes, I wrote my own. The Glute Guy. A colleague nicknamed me .
I'm certain that I've done more research on the glutes than any other person on earth. My research made me realize two things: Most experts don't know shit about the glutes.
Despite the fact that the gluteus maximus muscles are without a doubt the most important muscles in sports and the fact that strength coaches helped popularized . Bodybuilders, powerlifters, and physical therapists think they do, but they don't. In fact, the experts are so far off the mark that their best glute exercises can only activate half as many fibers as the glute exercises I'm about to show you. Athletes' glutes are pathetically weak. Even people who think they have strong glutes almost always have weak glutes in comparison to how strong they can get through proper training. Follow the Logic.
Let's keep it brief. Here are the facts: The lower gluteus maximus is involved in three distinct actions; hip extension, hip hyperextension, and hip transverse abduction. The upper gluteus maximus is involved in five different distinct actions; hip extension, hip hyperextension, hip abduction, hip transverse abduction, and hip external rotation. These motions are the most important in sports and include sprinting, leaping, cutting from side to side, and twisting. The strongest joint action at the hip is hip extension/hyperextension.
The hip can hyperextend ten degrees with bent legs, twenty degrees with straight legs, and thirty degrees when forcibly pulled back. Hip hyperextension is safe and occurs naturally during walking, running, sprinting, grappling, throwing, lunging, and hip flexor stretching. Length tension relationships dictate that a muscle contracts best when it's at resting length, which means that the gluteus maximus muscles contract the hardest from zero to twenty degrees of hyperextension.
Hip flexor flexibility allows for hip hyperextension and is an absolutely critical component to maximum glute activation; tight hip flexors prevent hip hyperextension and maximum glute activation. A vertical jump involves maximal vertical propulsion. A sprint involves maximum horizontal propulsion.
A sprint activates 2. Due to the increased glute activation, sprinters commonly experience . Hip extension exercises that mimic sprinting will be referred to as hip hyperextension exercises. The propulsion phase of a vertical jump involves simultaneous hip, knee, and ankle extension, whereas sprinting involves hip hyperextension. Hip extension exercises are usually performed while standing. Hip hyperextension exercises are usually performed in the supine, prone, or quadruped positions. Hip hyperextension exercises can be performed with bent legs or straight legs.
Straight- leg hip hyperextension exercises maximize hamstring contribution. Bent- leg hip hyperextension exercises place the hamstrings in a shortened state which limits their contribution and maximizes gluteal contribution. In order, the hip extension exercises with the highest glute activation are the kneeling squat (6. Zercher squat (4. In order, the hip hyperextension exercises with the highest glute activation are the single- leg bent leg reverse hyper (1. Hip abduction, transverse abduction, and external rotation exercises often maximally recruit the upper gluteus maximus muscles to a much greater degree than hip extension or hip hyperextension exercises. A well balanced gluteal routine involves hip extension exercises, hip hyperextension exercises, hip abduction exercises, and hip external rotation exercises.
So Here's The Myth. Most people think they have strong glutes but they don't. They're the ones who believe squats, deadlifts, and lunges are the best glute exercises, and they've spent years getting very strong at these. Squatting, deadlifting, and lunging, can make the glutes sore but they don't strengthen the glutes much. They target the quads and erector spinae. Even box squatting, walking lunges, and sumo deadlifts don't activate much glute in comparison to the exercises below.
If you study glute activation, you'll be blown away by the data. Most individual's glutes contract harder during body weight glute activation exercises than from one- rep max squats and deadlifts. It's not that people don't know how to use their glutes or don't adhere to proper exercise form. It's just that the glutes aren't maximally involved in squatting, lunging, and deadlifting. They're only maximally contracted from bent- leg hip hyperextension exercises. Just because someone's glutes are big, it doesn't mean that they're strong.
In addition to training around three hundred . I taught each the exercises below, and I almost always had to start them off with their own body weight for resistance. Although one of the powerlifters could do raw squats and deadlifts with over three times his body weight, when he first performed hip thrusts, he had to start out with two sets of twenty reps with his own body weight. We initially tried using 1. The NFL players were both 3.
When you weigh 3. Both linemen mentioned that the hip thrust was the best posterior chain exercise they'd ever performed and remarked about how they loved the fact that they didn't have to wrap their knees or wear a belt to perform the exercise. The Olympic sprinter had the best relative glute strength of the bunch, easily being able to perform twenty single- leg hip thrusts on his very first workout. Exercise Progressions. Strength gains for the new exercises come very quickly.
I started off using 1. I could do 4. 05 for five.
The following plan will get your glutes much sexier, stronger, and speedier. Since everyone possesses varying ranges of glute strength, I'm going to provide four phases, which become progressively more challenging and difficult. If you belong at phase one and start off at phase three, you'll just end up increasing your existing dysfunctional patterns, which will lead to a pulled low back, hamstring, or groin muscle. Play it safe by starting in phase one, then spend two to three weeks in each phase. I included an array of exercises, some can be performed at your local gym or garage gym, and some will require specialized equipment.
The equipment below should become staples in glute training and sport- specific training. They effectively train the sprint- vector and maximize glute activation. Don't stop performing your squat, lunge, deadlift, and back extensions movements. Do these on your regular leg day and perform two weekly glute workouts on separate days. The workouts will be brief and won't get you very sore. Always begin each glute workout with a simple warm- up consisting of hip flexor stretches and a couple bodyweight glute activation exercises.
Phase One: Hip Flexor Flexibility and Glute Activation. You must possess adequate hip flexor flexibility in order to open up the hips and maximally activate the glutes. And you must be able to control your own body weight in order to learn how to contract the glutes properly before you begin adding weight. Perform two sets of hip flexor stretches for sixty- second static holds, progressing deeper into the stretch as time ensues. Pick two exercises and perform two sets of ten reps with a five- second isometric hold up top. Single- leg glute bridge. Pick one exercise and perform two sets of ten reps with a five- second isometric hold up top.
Lying abduction. Fire hydrant. Phase Two: Glute Hypertrophy. Now it's time to progress into more challenging exercises and start packing on some functional glute mass. Pick two exercises and perform two sets of ten to twenty reps. Barbell glute bridge. Pendulum quadruped hip extension. Single- leg hip thrust.
Weighted bird dog. Pick one exercise and perform two sets of ten to twenty reps. Band standing abduction. Band seated abduction.
Band external rotation. Phase Three: Glute Strength. At last, we've reached the maximum strength phase. By this time, you'll have developed a superior mind- muscle connection and will be able to maximize your glute activation through heavy strength training.
Pick one exercise and perform four sets of five reps. Barbell hip thrust. Bent- leg reverse hyper.
Bent- leg back extension.