Glute Strength
Strengthening muscles is important for everyday movement. Strength training helps to increase our day to day function as well as prevent injuries. The glute muscles are one of the most powerful muscles in the body and it is imperative that we complete regular strength training to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
What are the glutes?
The glutes are made up of three muscles, the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimis. These muscles are responsible for seven different actions at the hip. The most common functions of the glutes are flexion and extension. Flexing at the hip is common when we are sitting down or bending over to pick something up. Extension is when we are standing up and walking. Ensuring that we maintain glute strength is important for these everyday movements we complete. That’s why we have three exercises for you to try out to help improve strength in the glutes.
Exercises to strengthen glutes.
We want to start these glute strength exercises by lying on our side with our knees bent. Our knees are on the ground and our feet are in the air. From this position we want to lift our top knee into the air, towards the sky. It is important to keep our hips stable and facing forward. We don’t want to twist our hips up into the air. From here, we drop our knee back down to starting position. You can complete 10 of these before moving to the next one.
After we have completed these, we are going to add another step. We start in the same position and complete the first few steps the same way. Once our knee is in the air however, we then kick out or foot to create a straight leg with our top leg. We then bend through the knee to return to our open hipped position, and then return to our starting position. Again, we complete 10 of these before adding our last exercise.
The final exercise is the same up until our leg is straight. Once our leg is straight up in the air at a 45 degree angle with the ground, we will then paint with our toes for 10. To paint with your toes, you want to pull the toe towards your face, then drag the leg down, leading with the heel, until the leg is parallel with the ground. Then you point the toe away and lead the leg up to 45 degrees with the toe pointed. From here we don’t return to starting position, but instead continue to paint with the toes for 10 up and downs.
Once you have completed 10 of these, you can swap legs and complete all of this on the other side. After completing this, have a 60 sec rest, then repeat it all again.
During these exercises you should feel your glutes and abductors, (side of your thigh), start to work. It is important during these exercises that you make sure that the toes don’t turn up towards the sky. If the toes begin to turn upwards then we are engaging our quads and not our glutes.
For more information on how we can help you on your fitness journey, please contact us.
For more information on the importance of glute strength please refer to Assessing and Treating Gluteus Maximus Weakness, by Buckthorpe M, Stride M, Villa FD, on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6670060/
