Whether you are training for sports performance or esthetic purpose, glute training is important. Even from pain management perspective, stronger glutes can help support lower back health. What I would like to share in this article is how you can maximize your glute or hip exercises so you can improve your strength, esthetics, and health.
Anatomy and Mechanics of the Hip Muscles
Anatomy of hip region involves several different muscles. For esthetics, majority of people focus more on big muscle called gluteus maximus. Action includes external rotation and extension of the hip joint. Hence the exercises like deadlift, hip thrust, banded lateral walk, banded clam shells, are some of the popular exercises for the hip.
Underneath the glutes maximus, you’ll find several muscles that we categorize them as hip rotator cuffs. They are piriformis, gemellus superior, obturator infernus, gemellus inferior, obturator externus and quadratus femoris. Where shoulder has 4 muscles for rotator cuffs, hip has 6. Widely known hip rotator cuff is piriformis which originates from sacrum and insert to the hip bone. Although the primarily movement of the hip is coming from gluteus maximus, those 6 hip rotator cuffs do play important role of stabilizing hip as you move your hip into extension and external rotation.
As mentioned before glutes muscles is responsible for extension and external rotation of the hip. Reason why some people have difficult time using those muscle group is because their hip flexion muscles are tight mostly because of sitting. Some of the hip flexion muscles are psoas, illiacus, and quadriceps. Hip flexors are responsible for the movement such as lifting the knees up to go up the stairs and placing a leg forward in walking.
During our everyday living we spend more time in hip flexed position rather than hip extended position. This is a common cause of lower back problem not just because we’ve got weaker glutes but also have tight hip flexors.
You can observe this at the gyms too. When you see people performing split squat or lunges, what is the position of their torso, and knee position for the back leg? Most likely torso is lean forward and knee of the back leg is in front of the hip.
Do you remember what action gluteus muscles provide? Hip Extension. In the pictures, where do you see a hip extension? There may be a partial glutes engagement but not full engagement. When you look at the anatomy of glutes, partial range of movement may stimulate gluteus maximus but main muscles you will be working on is hip rotator cuffs. Where do they locate? Lower portion of glutes. Which means the glutes may only grow at the bottom portion and not fully.
Add Hip Extension Exercises
Biggest issue for not able to engage the glute muscle is mainly due to the tightness of the hip flexors as mentioned before. Therefore, to maximize glute activation, you will need to work on hip extension. In the video, you will see several exercises that you can force the hip to be in extended position. You can stretch them, but you will also need to provide movement. Important pointer in hip extension exercises is making sure the knee of the back leg is behind the hip.
External Hip Rotation
External rotation of the hip is also a function of glutes including gluteus muscles and hip rotator cuffs. Simplest form of exercise is lateral band walk or monster walk. This is the exercise where you place the ring band either at toes, ankle, of above the knee, to retrain both your gluteus muscles and hip rotator cuffs.
Common error that I see is because the band tension is too strong or not understanding the purpose of the exercise, hip goes through internal rotation where knees cave in. This will defeat the purpose of the exercise. Also, foot positioning also becomes an important factor. Easiest foot positioning for hip external rotation or engage to stabilize the hip is toes pointing out. However, how often do we see ourselves walking and running with toes pointing out? Ideally, never. So basic hip external rotation or hip stabilization exercise should be done with toes pointing straight with feet about hip apart.
Of course, depending on the exercise purpose, foot position may vary, however, baseline should be toes pointing forward and able to stabilize and externally rotate the hip.
Have a Purpose to the Exercise
When creating your own training program, it is easy to choose the exercises that are popular on social media, and it may be a good place to start. With said that, make sure to understand the purpose of the exercise you have chosen. What is it for? Is it focusing on conditioning? Is it working on strength? Is it working on arm, back, chest, shoulder, glute, calf, you name it.
If you want to build strong and great looking glutes, you will need to have hip extension and external rotation exercise in your routine. If you have tight hip and cannot extend your hip or not able to externally rotate the hip, then you will need to address that issue before performing exercise like hip thrust, Bulgarian Split, squat, deadlift, sprint and so on.
Kota Shimada
Comments