GLUTES – How to Unlock & Grow Your Glute Muscles

What’s going on? Coach Brian here with critical benched.com thanks for watching this video has everything you need to know about the glutes. Okay? Not exactly how to, you know, the right exercises to get strong glutes or whatever, but I’m going to break it down for you in a scientific manner as keeping things as simple as I possibly can. There’s a lot of things that you need to know when it comes to the glutes. Now real quick, there’s three parts of the glutes you have, your gluteus Maximus, your gluteus Medius, and your gluteus minimus. I’m going to be talking about the first two because those are the primary movers and the most, those two. The first two glute Max and glutamate are the most widely used and mostly responsible for your daily movements. So let’s talk about movement for a second. There’s a, you can categorize muscles into two groups.

You’ve got your postural muscles and you listed your phasic or your tonic muscles. Your glutes are considered tonic muscles. And what I mean by that is those are the muscles responsible for movement. Okay? The other ones are responsible for posture. So posture that way real quick. You can’t neglect posture, glutes have a direct effect on your posture, not just that stance or rest, but also throughout movement. So we’re going to talk everything for the next couple minutes about the glute Max and then we’ll go into the glute needs. So gluteus Maximus, if you’re not familiar what it is, it’s pretty much your butt, your butt cheek, your butt talks. Um, the function of it is a two, two really main functions is to extend the hip, but also to laterally rotate the leg and stabilize the sacred Iliac joint deep within that hip socket. Okay, so this is what the hip extension looks like.

Stepping back, this is what we do when we s when we walk, you know, we push off the ground. We’ll talk about walking in just a moment. That’s your hip extension. Lateral laterally rotate, turn your leg out. You know, if you see from the side laterally, rotate, says you’re stepping. Like you know, you change directions, that’s your glute Max. Your glute Max is mostly responsible for doing those two movements there. Uh, so when we walk, you know, we wait, we shift our weight to one side, then it helps stabilize that sacroiliac joint. Okay, go. You’ll see the pattern that I’m trying to get across. So talk about posture again for a second. Posture is responsible for walking from running, for jumping, skipping, sleeping, breathing, digestion. You name it. Posture has a direct effect on your glutes. Vice versa too. Your glutes have a direct effect on your spine.

A lot of your feedback goes through the spinal core to the glutes. Uh, and also in return your glutes have, have to produce some feedback to give to the spine. To go back to the brain might be confusing you a little bit. Um, so let’s circle back and talk about how our glutes and posture affect our gait or our walking pattern. Our Gate is what we do when we, when we walk our arms swing, this contra or this counter rotation. There’s contralateral movement when we, when we walk. Um, but I need you to know two things about, uh, walking. Okay. Your or your gate. You have two phases. Once a stance phase and once a swing phase. Okay. And your glute is very, uh, has a, it’s a, it’s a very strong player in the stance phase. So this is the stance phase. Look at my right side here.

As I’m walking, I’m still in the stance phase as I swing. That’s the swing phase. Stance phase starts here, glue is activated and I’m walking. Okay. Hopefully that makes sense. So that is a hugely responsible for the glute Max doing its job. The second thing that you need to know about your gate in how the glute Max plays with that is it’s called the postier o bleak Myo fashional sling. Okay. I see this a lot when training athletes and uh, also sedentary individuals. You’re right, it’s talking about the right glute for a second, right? Glute Max is controlled or inhibited or restricted from your opposite lap. So think of a sling. You’ve got a sling from your, you’re right, bud chic all the way up to your left lat. That’s that Posterior Oblique, mild fashional sling. So if you have a, uh, tightness in your lats, leg, Lake, leg length discrepancy, I’m not talking about femur length, even though that is, uh, something that does exist.

I’m talking about the shifting of your pelvis. Uh, if you have something like leg length discrepancy or tight lats, your gate is going to become shifted. And what does that mean? Usually when things become shifted outside of the, your perfect good posture, that’s when injuries and pain starts to exist, which is definitely not a good thing. We’ll talk about some pain here in just a moment. So, uh, so, uh, going back to the gait pattern, if you’re walking, you should be walking symmetrically. I’m not telling you how to walk, but if your glutes aren’t doing the glute Max is not doing its job at sacred Iliac joint is not going to be stabilized. Your Shit, your, your, your, your pelvis is probably gonna be shifted. It’s gonna pull down one side by contracting or over contract in your lat, which is not a good thing.

So all of a sudden, if you’re walking in a straight line, things are shifting how they shouldn’t. Now you’re being inefficient in your movement. And guys were just talking about walking here. We’re not talking about squats, we’re not talking about running or jumping or anything like that. We’re just talking about walking very simple. And the glute Max is pretty much the only thing that’s responsible for stabilizing that and keeping the body in that forward linear motion. So hopefully you can see the importance of the glute Max and its role with the gate. So now let’s talk about the antagonistic view. Now a lot of people antagonistic as just opposing muscles. So we’re talking about the glute Max here. The antagonists are opposite. Opposing muscle would be the front your hip flexors. So real quick, um, side note is that a lot of people say, hey, you’ve got weak glutes, strengthen your glutes, strengthen your glutes, strengthen your glutes, however one and it makes sense if you’re spending so much time strengthen it and you still have limitations and you still feel off balance and you still have pain.

When did it make sense to look at the opposing muscles and treat them instead of the, the site that is already strong. Make sense? Right? I’ve been doing this long enough and I did, I spent a lot of time in Grad school looking at opposing muscles and how they work synergistically with um, the agonist muscle or the agonist prime movers. So instead of spending all your time focusing on the glute Max by doing, um, squats, dead lifts, things like that, all those are great. You want to spend a little more time on the hip flexors, your Ileus, so as a, your rectus for Morris, your upper part of the quad and start opening them up because usually what happens is though those muscle groups are too tight, they’re restricted, whether it’s from injury, whether it’s from sitting too much, so certain stretches that you can be doing to straight stretch out the front part of the body is going to be highly recommended and even suggested that you should be doing in order to get the glutes to be firing is properly.

Okay, so real quick, if your hips, if you can’t fully extend this to the function of the glute, Max is that extension of the hip. If your hips are too tight, what’s going to happen is it’s going to kind of restrict and then things are going to start shifting. Okay? I know this is becoming over overly complex and I apologize, but I need you to understand that there’s a lot going on within just a glute Max. So that’s a quick one-on-one on the function anatomy, physiology behind the gluten Max. Now I want to share with you three common, um, dysfunctions or pain, um, examples if you will, on what this all could mean for your glute Max. So let’s say you have tight hamstrings or even a tight lower back, that can mean your glute Max is week or delayed in it’s input. Simple as that.

The second one is maybe have better balance on one side. So you’re balancing grade on this side. Yeah, you can balance this side. You’re just all over the place. Okay? That usually means the same side glute is either weak or delayed in it’s input. Okay? Now I’ll talk about delayed input in just a second. Um, now let’s say you have excessively tight lats. What that could also mean. Let’s say my left lat is really tight. Remember that sling I talked about? My right glute could be extremely weak or delayed and its input. So there’s a lot of things I can go into effect, but I want to say the weakness of the glutes is the exact cause of it. It’s usually a delayed input, which is usually caused by an Italian antagonistic inhibition of the opposing muscles. Well, I know that I just completely blew you away right there, but all you need to know is that there’s a lot more going on than just doing some glute bridges or doing some knee talks or some squats or jumps.

You need to look at the whole picture here. So the G med, it’s responsible for a couple of different things similar to the g Max, but it’s largely responsible for laterally, immediately rotating, um, the leg and also helping with the abduction of your leg as well as flection and extension. Pretty similar to the glute Max. However, what it, uh, the thing that triggers the glue, uh, the, the glute medius the most is any type of single leg standing. Hey, but look, don’t we walk on one leg at a time. So at the glutamine and the G Med g mean whatever you want to call it is also largely responsible for the stance phase of your walking of your gate. So here, all my weight is shifted. Now it’s on my right g med as I step my way is shifting. Okay. Trying to keep it overly simple.

It’s, it’s kinda difficult to do. Um, but usually what’s happened at, within the gates cycle is that the glute Max is overworked and the g glute medius is underworked. Does that make sense? It’s weak. It’s tightened. The glutamine is responsible for pretty common injuries in the leg and also the hip it band syndrome and also, uh, tight piriformis. People are like, oh, I need to stretch my piriformis. A lot of runners and jumpers experience this is usually because the GI med is most likely weak or delayed and it’s input pretty common. That. So again, like I talked about the antagonistic view of the glutamine, what did it make sense as focus on the internal part of the leg, which is a lot of uh, can become the root of the issue. Not so much out here, but since we do walk with the G med, the, the glue Medius, the adductors are pretty much neglected at that point.

Okay. So if I real quick had to tell you what to do to help strengthen and make your glutes flow a flow a lot easier, focus on the opposing muscles, your hip flexors and your add doctors. I learned in school at uh, that the law of reciprocal inhibition, that in order to increase the strength of the muscle, you have to return muscle or restore muscle length or tone pack into that muscle in order to gain that strength where a lot of people fall and they screw themselves up by going into strength first. So it’s important to restore the length and the, the muscle, especially those tight muscles like it just mentioned, your adductors for your glute medius and your hip flexors for the glute maximus. So those are the two areas that you need to restore first in order to start building strength. So if you think you need to just strengthen your glutes, uh, just because everybody says they’re weak and need to strengthen them, well think about this for a second.

Uh, strengthening the so-called weak muscles will not strengthen them. What they’re gonna do is a, they’re gonna help strengthen them in a weakened position. So you need to apply the law of reciprocal and ambition a, which just means you have to first return the muscle, re restore the muscle back to its original tone in length before you can actually start building the strength. Right? And it makes sense that hopefully you have to first lengthen the muscle. Second, then you have to restore it by adding that strength component. This isn’t my, my, you know, my opinion or my thought. This is actual law that is stated, uh, backed by science backed by research. It’s saying in order to strengthen something that’s weak, you have to return it to its original state. Makes Sense. However, a lot of people neglect that. Um, so hopefully I didn’t confuse you.

I know, I’m sure I did. Um, but this isn’t something that you could just learn real quick and apply it into your training. The glutes are there. They’re there pretty much control everything in the body. They’re responsible for the hips, the back, you’re breathing. I, I mentioned it earlier, I can’t stress enough that glutes are vital, vital to success for the rest of your life, okay? If you don’t treat your glutes how they need to be treated, you’re going to see a lot of injuries like patellar syndrome, a it band syndrome, Shin splints, your, your feet are going to be coming all messed up. Your lats are going to be tight into which could pull on your Scapula, which could lead to migraines. The list goes on and on and on. Okay, so hopefully you see the importance of all this stuff. Now you’re probably wondering, how can I stretch or strengthen my glutes in order to properly get, you know where I should be?

Well, it’s a great question. I’m not going to share with you exactly how to restore them just because it’s not that simple. But what I am going to show you are the top two exercises per muscle group, per glute Max, and a for the also the glute Medius, the two per each that have shown to have the most, the Max of voluntary isometric contraction on an EMG, a electromyography, a scan that shows that these two exercises activate those particular muscles the most out of any exercise. Okay, so the first one where it’s talk about the the glute Max. The first one is a front plank with a um, a hip extension. Second one is going to be a glue, a glute squeeze. So for the the front plank and the hip extension, this is going to be your number one for the glute. It’s also going to target the glute medius too. But this is predominantly the glute Max. All you’re going to do is a front plank. Go into hip extension. That’s it right there. Feel the burn. Okay.

Hmm.

I am not twisting my hips from plank position. Hip Extension.

Okay.

That’s the number one exercise to get the most Max voluntary isometric contraction of your glute Max. The second one, you can do this on a, a flow on laying down position is the glute squeeze. Are you doing? Is pinching your chiefs together? Squeeze in, relax, squeeze, relax. Now if you can, this is pretty cool. It try to start working on a one glued at a time. Squeeze in the right cheek, squeezing the left cheek. The reason why you want to try that, it’s called a bilateral deficit. You don’t, you’re not going to feel as strong as you would are you in half as strong as you would squeeze in both chiefs together also gives you a good sense of a motor awareness on how to activate certain muscles when you need them to. So those are the two exercises that have the most, uh, Max voluntary contraction in the glute Max.

So for the glute Medius, these are the two exercises that give the Max voluntary contraction out of that glute medius. Okay? The first one is a side plank with hip abduction. So you’ll see that in just a second. The next one is a single leg squat. Like I said when we were walking earlier, single leg stance, anything on one foot really activates that glute medius. But actually when you go into a s, a single leg squat stance, this can be done to assist it. Of course. So let’s go to the floor for the side plank, hip abduction. Okay, so we’re on our side plank here. I’m going to be focusing on that right side here. Pick that leg, ups, wheeze, and hold that. Now I’m not pointing my toes up, I’m keeping my hips, my foot parallel with the floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if you actually start cramping up on that one. Again, that exercise is going to give the most contraction, the most. Squeeze a flex, if you will, in that particular, uh, movement there. So the next one, again, a single leg squat. This can be done on a wall. You know, you can have, it doesn’t have to be a pistol squat, it can be a regular squat. So here, stand up.

Sure. You’re saying, yeah, that gets your quads. But anything when you’re shifted off on onto one leg,

okay,

your gate is changed. Your biomechanics are going to be different than you would be on two feet. So those are the two exercises that you need to do in order to get hit that glute medius as much as most as you can. So I know I just shared a whole bunch of information with you on the glutes. Um, and I apologize if I one on tangents or if I lost her and the confusion, but the glutes aren’t that simple to really understand its true value and how important they are with the body and how we move. So in a nutshell, if I had to say, Hey, do these couple of things you need to stretch out the opposite or opposing muscles with the glutes and then strengthen the, the x, the glutes with the exercises I just showed you. Again, that’s just scratching the surface once when it comes to glute training, there’s something else that um, I know you might find beneficial to.

It’s a report that we wrote. It’s called the three best ways to improve your posture. We talk about things like glutes, muscle activation and things like that. The reports right here. Click this box, give us your email and we’re going to send you a free copy of the report right away. If you can’t click this box cause you’re on a mobile device, which you can do to get it, it’s clicked a little error. That’s under our video here. That’s going to open up our video description area. You’ll see a link at the top there. Again, the reports, the three best ways to improve your posture. Click that first link you see at the top, give us your email and the report will be on its way to you. Um, with that said, uh, like us, like this video, share it with somebody you know, subscribe to our channel, leave us some feedback. I know you’re going to have a question or two or maybe just a comment on this particular video and if there’s something that I didn’t make sense, I’d love to help out and clarify anything that I might’ve confused you on. That’s what the comments sections for. Again, coach Brian [inaudible] here with critical benched.com. Thanks for watching and fire those glutes and wake them up. Have a good one. See you soon.