The Importance of Strong Glutes: 5 Big Reasons to Work on Your Glute Strength
Strong glute muscles mean fewer injuries and improved performance (and a nice butt).
Round, perky glutes play a huge role in aesthetics — but have you ever thought about why a nice set of buns is important for your health, performance, and longevity?
In the chance you haven’t, we’ll get to the five big reasons why you should focus on your glute strength in just a bit.
First, you should know what we are talking about here. The gluteal complex is the powerhouse of your body. It also happens to be the biggest and strongest muscle in the body — at least, it should be.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete or not either: All humans need strong glutes. Because, whether you realize it or not, your glutes do so much for you every single day.
Need to extend your hip? Laterally rotate your hip? Abduct your hip? Posteriorly tilt your pelvis? Sit on the toilet? Swing a golf club? Take a step? That’s right: Literally every step you take your glutes are working to stabilize your hips and lower back.
To say the least, your glutes are pretty important. To prove it, here are five huge reasons why glute strength should be at the forefront of your training program.
1. Strong Glutes Help Prevent Injuries
If you’re trying to get in shape or stay in shape, you likely know that one of the easiest ways to delay your progress is to get injured.
Having strong, functional gluteal and hip muscles can help you avoid and recover from injury in your low back, hips, knees, and ankles by creating proper alignment and stability.
In people with weak glutes, it is common to see ‘dynamic valgus’ at the knee. This is when the knee caves in towards your other leg as you go down into a squat, particularly on single leg movement patterns (including walking and running).
Dynamic valgus is a great indicator as to whether someone is at risk of injury. When the knee caves in, the pelvis drops at the hip towards the opposite side, and the femur (thigh bone) rotates inward.
This is a common dysfunctional pattern that can lead to injuries anywhere from your low back to your feet and ankles. The good news is, by focusing on strengthening your glutes and surrounding hip muscles, you can improve and prevent valgus and therefore reduce your chance of injury.
2. Strong Glutes Improve Athletic Performance
Have you ever seen a powerful athlete with a flat butt? Yeah, us either!
When you think of the basic movement patterns in sport you likely think of running, jumping, locomotion, swinging, driving through the legs and hips, twisting through the hips, and/or quick changes in direction.
What do all of these patterns have in common? A need for power and stability in the glutes and hips!
It has been proven that athletes who focus on developing strength and power in their glutes, hips, and posterior chain perform better.
3. Strong Glutes Improve Posture
This goes hand in hand with the first point on injury. When your glutes, hips, and core are strong and stable, you can avoid common dysfunctional movement patterns that cause pain like dynamic valgus and lower cross syndrome.
When your lower body and pelvis are in alignment, this will also help keep your shoulders, neck, and back in alignment (AKA, good posture).
Let’s take knee valgus for example. When your hips are shifted, this will force your spine and shoulders to shift as well. Misalignment can cause many issues up the chain, including painful, tight, or achy muscles and joints that can extend even into your upper back and neck. When you are out of alignment, it’s often because some muscles have become shortened and some have become weak.
For example, modern-day desk jobs have definitely contributed to postural imbalances. Sitting at a desk all day can lead to weak or “sleepy” glutes, shortened hip flexors, and weak upper back muscles.
This is a sure fire way to develop “lower cross syndrome,” a condition in which you exhibit an anterior pelvic tilt, weak glutes, shortened hip flexors, immobile thoracic spine, and forward head or humpback.
While things like chiropractic care can be helpful for these conditions, long-lasting relief comes from stretching the shortened muscles and strengthening the weakened muscles (glutes) to have any long lasting relief.
4. Strong Glutes Improve Balance
Do you remember those, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials? While people poked a lot of fun when those aired, the commercials depict a very real scenario.
If you have an elderly family member, you probably know at least a little bit about issues with balance or falling. This may not be of concern to you right now, but as you get older you will want to have a strong base in your core and glutes in order to live a higher quality life.
Who really wants to have difficulty getting in and out of the shower, vehicle, or even just walking around in general? Improved glute strength means improved balance, and improved balance means improved quality of life even into old age.
5. Strong Glutes are Good for Aesthetics
This one is a given, and honestly is the primary reason that people decide to start working on their glutes (but not the most important one!). In any case, it’s a valid goal to have, and if chasing a good-looking backside gets you to work on your glute strength, we say, “go for it.”
Common Mistakes With Glute Training
Maybe you already knew about most of these factors in strong glutes, and you actively train your glutes a few times a week.“Butt” you just can’t seem to “turn your glutes” on during training sessions. Maybe you feel all glute dominant exercises in your quads and low back.
Unfortunately, this is a common theme and a lot of times it stems from overextending in the low back on hip extension exercises like glute bridges and hip thrusts.
To prevent this, be sure to keep your core engaged, chin down, and your pelvis tucked. While you may not be able to extend your hips as high, this should help you feel the exercises in your glutes. The root of this issue could also be a weak core. Without the ability to keep your core engaged, stability in the trunk will be compromised, and you will likely have difficulty activating your glutes.
How to Train for Strong Glutes
By now, you’ve got the why down. What about the how?
I hate to break it to you, but the band walks and booty kickbacks you do every week won’t cut it. At least, not by themselves.
The truth is, you need to train every function of your gluteal complex. That means you need to train hip extension, hip abduction, external rotation, and single leg balance and stability.
Because your glutes are made up of both fast and slow twitch fibers, they should be trained in a mix of both high and low rep ranges, slow and fast tempos, and isometric holds.
If you struggle with any of what we are from here on out calling “The Big 5”, it may be time to step up your glute routine. If you need effective glute training laid out for you in an easy-to-follow format, know that Smarter Sweat programs all contain adequate glute training to improve the function and aesthetics of your glutes (sign up for early access to programs here).
Stay peachy ;)
By Ashley Pfantz
Ashley is the cofounder of Smarter Sweat, certified personal trainer and professional health and fitness coach. She also owns Pfancy Fitness, an individualized fitness, nourishment, and lifestyle coaching business where she coaches all of her clients remotely.
References
1. Buckthorpe M, Stride M, Villa FD. ASSESSING AND TREATING GLUTEUS MAXIMUS WEAKNESS — A CLINICAL COMMENTARY. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2019;14(4):655–669.
2. Dello Iacono A, Padulo J, Seitz LD. Loaded hip thrust-based PAP protocol effects on acceleration and sprint performance of handball players. J Sports Sci. 2018;36(11):1269–1276. doi:10.1080/02640414.2017.1374657
3. Dunsky A. The Effect of Balance and Coordination Exercises on Quality of Life in Older Adults: A Mini-Review. Front Aging Neurosci. 2019;11:318. Published 2019 Nov 15. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2019.00318
