If you have even been to a Fit4Females class you know how much we focus on butts aka glutes! Booties are my favourite body part and not just because they fill out your jeans and make you look good, but because they are so important to support your hips.
My personal and business training programs at Fit4Females always include glute training. I spend a lot of time working on my own glute muscles in in my personal workouts. Squat deeply, train your glute muscles and you too can have a great and functional booty!
Fit4Females Glutes!
A Better Butt for Hip Surgery
Part of my Pre-hab Training Program before my Hip Surgery (read more) for a labral tear and CAM impingement was pain management and making sure that all muscles were “firing” when they were supposed to be. One of the people on my “Team” of therapists was Andrea Dorman at the Active Relief Centre. She is a Chiropractor and specializes in ART. Andrea was a a big help so I asked her to write an article on the importance of glutes. Here is what Andrea has to say:
Andrea Dorman
“When involved in sports or any physical activity, avoiding injuries should always be on your mind. Using proper form is one way of doing that but sometimes even with good form, injuries happen. There are certain muscles in the body that act as supporting muscles. If those muscles aren’t functioning properly, your body is forced to compensate. Compensating means using muscles that are not meant to be working for that particular movement. These muscles are overworked, are unable to sustain the forces upon them, thus causing injury.
When this occurs, you are still able to, for example, squat or swing a kettle bell but instead of using the muscles that those activities are aiming for, your body will use other muscles. The purpose of squatting is to strengthen your glutes (as long as you get nice and deep) and your thigh muscles. At the bottom of the squat, the glutes are required to work to help you get up. If they are not working like they should, your body will recruit your hamstrings or more of your thigh muscles to work. As you can probably guess, this is when injuries occur. The hamstring is meant to help the glutes when you are standing up, not to bear most of the weight. Those possible forces will stress the muscle enough to cause small tears or even a complete tear of the muscle.
Photo Credit Fit4Females Trainer Trina Medves
The exercises mentioned above are glute dominant exercises so wouldn’t it makes sense that if your glute is weak, do more of them? This is not the case! You have to consider why the glute is weak. The underlying cause of the glutes failing can be due to a problem directly with that muscle or a problem elsewhere that will affect the glutes. For example, having a desk job where you sit all day can cause direct injury to the glute. However, a problem with your lower back affecting the nerves that go to your glute can be an indirect cause of weakness. It is important to find out what the cause of the weakness is.
Weaknesses such as those mentioned above expose the weakest link in the chain. Your body will not allow the major muscles to get stronger if the supportive ones are not doing their job. The ‘prime movers’, or muscles that control the motion, rely on the supportive muscles. With weak supportive muscles, the prime movers have trouble engaging so your body is unable to do certain activities. After using a kettlebell in a workout, it should be your glutes that are sore, not your thighs. Consider doing an overhead press standing on the ground compared to standing on a Bosu ball. The Bosu ball requires the small, stabilizing muscles to work before using the larger muscles. If one of the smaller muscles isn’t functioning properly, that will stop the chain of muscle contractions that help to press, thus limiting the amount of strength available and limiting your overall performance.
The question now is, how do I know if those smaller muscles are working and, how do I keep them working in order to prevent injury? Muscle testing can be used to determine what is weak and home rehab exercises can be given, usually ones that are done a few times throughout the day, to strengthen the proper muscles. Injuries can be prevented so that you can continue to participate at Fit4Females!” – Andrea Dorman, Chiropractor
Click here to contact Fit4Females to join a Program and build a customized plan. Click here to contact Andrea Dorman at the Active Relief Centre for an assessment. Either way let’s get you working towards a better butt!
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