We love talking about the glutes, but we also love sharing information about the glutes because the glutes are the powerhouse of the body and they’re crucial to having healthy glutes if you care about having a healthy body.
There are three main benefits of having strong glutes, that I want to share with you and dig a little deeper into why it’s important to have strong glutes.
Improved Posture
The first benefit is improved posture.
Outside of the aesthetics and the looks of the glutes, and we all want healthy looking glutes, posture is probably pretty important, because posture can either make or break your body and the longevity and the quality of your life.
So how do the glutes directly affect your posture?
Well, let’s think about it. Your glutes, and I’m talking about the glute max, or your big butt muscles, is responsible for hip extension.
When we’re constantly in a seated position, we call it the sitting disease.
You’re sitting all the time, your hips are flexed in this position. The hip extensors, the glute max, is elongated.
It’s stretched out and your hip flexors are tight. So what ends up happening is your tailbone kind of tucks.
Your anterior pelvic is tilting so your gut sticks out so it actually looks like you’ve got a beer belly of sort.
And what ends up happening is that it rounds your shoulders and all of a sudden now you’ve got forward head posture all because your glutes are under-stretched and under-activated.
Once you wake up your glutes, you’re going to get them strong enough that they can actually hold and stabilize the hips, which in return helps balance and align the lower body, as well as the upper body.
The glutes are, again, an integral part of connecting the upper body and lower body and it’s important for you to have strong glutes to maintain the hip function, the glutes function, which is the stabilize the hips.
Yeah, it’s a lot of information, but just know directly that the glutes can either have a positive or negative effect on your posture. It’s just how strong or active your glutes are.
Athletic Performance
The second benefit of strong glutes is improved athletic performance. Even if you’re not an athlete it doesn’t matter, so let’s just say improved performance overall.
As you can see, the glutes are the powerhouse of the body.
They are responsible for helping you walk, helping you jump, helping you run, helping you climb, helping you push, pull.
They’re pretty much responsible for all movements vertically, horizontally, laterally and even just standing there in a stabilized position.
If you have strong glutes you’re going to run faster, you’re going to jump higher, you’re going to be able to walk longer, stand on your feet longer.
It’s important to have strong glutes because, again, your glutes are the powerhouse of the body and you want them to be as strong and efficient as possible.
Injury Prevention
The third benefit, it’s a very important one, especially as a strength coach, is injury prevention.
If your glutes are weak, there’s a good chance that there’s going to be an injury taking place related to weakened glutes or even inhibited glutes, where your glutes are not as active.
So think about it.
When your glutes are not doing what they should be doing, or any muscle for that matter, secondary and stabilizing muscles kind of have to take the place of the primary muscle and resulting in over-worked and over-stressed secondary muscles.
So if your glutes are not firing properly, your lower back is going to take some of the work, your hip flexors are going to take some of the work and your knees are going to take some of the work and this is not a good thing because the glutes are designed to do glute functions.
The lower back is handling lower back functions, the knee is taking care of the knee stuff. We don’t want the knees taking care of the glutes. We don’t want the lower back taking care of the glutes.
As you can see, if the glutes are inactive and inhibited because you’re not doing the appropriate strength training that we recommend, your glutes will become an issue for other parts of your body.
Strengthen your glutes and you’re going to, hopefully, prevent injuries from taking place.
And that’s probably one of the most important things that you should do when you’re talking about your health, is to make sure you’re staying as healthy as long as possible.
by Brian Klepacki, MS, CSCS, FMS2
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