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3 Reasons You Need To Train Glutes

I’ve chatted pretty frequently about how important the posterior chain is for moms. In fact, I firmly believe everyone should be working on improving their backside. But even more so, their glutes. Many people overlook their glutes and how much they function in everyday life. Instead, we should be strengthening them and making sure they activate properly when needed.

Most people think that the glutes are simply their bum cheeks- and they are! But you also have glutes on the side of your hips as well (medius and minimus). In order to improve the function of your glutes you need to strengthen all of them and ensure they work together.

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Within the movement of your body your glutes have a lot of functions:

• Hip extension
• Hip hyperextension
• Hip external rotation
• Hip transverse abduction
• Hip abduction

These functions aid and support every day movement and by strengthening them you improve your ability to perform day to day tasks.

So why should you train glutes? Having strong glutes comes with the following perks:

Reason #1 They Help Improve Posture & Alleviate Back Pain

Due to our daily lives we tend to have very under activated and weak glutes. Especially as moms our posture tends to be based on how we’re carrying our kids. Instead of using our muscles we lean to different sides of our body to support our babes.

Having stronger glutes is one of the ways in which you can improve your posture. Glutes help pull your pelvis back into place and takes tension off of your lower back. Read more about back pain here.

Reason #2 Glutes Are Part Of The Pelvic Floor

I’m sure you’ve head of your pelvic floor and how important it is to have one that is fully functioning and relatively strong. This is because one of the functions of your pelvic floor is to hold your organs in place, almost like a sling. Through pregnancy and birth our pelvic floors become stretched and/or weak. Since the glutes are one of the muscles necessary for the pelvic floor to function optimally it’s essential to make sure they’re activating when they should be.

Reason #3 Glutes Aid Performance

Having strong glutes is one of the essentials to being a good athlete. Even if you never plan on playing competitively, having strong glutes gives you the power to push, sprint, pivot and perform – all of which we do when playing with our kids!

From a life perspective, having strong glutes lets you keep up with your kids, play, workout, carry groceries and prevent injury while doing it all.

Having stronger glutes is crucial not just for moms but for everyone. And in order to do that you’ve got to strengthen them. Below are a list of some of my favorite glute exercises. Some of these exercises can be done with weights, some with bands and some with bodyweight. Read more about the exercises here.

• Hip thrust
• Feet elevated glute bridge
• Banded clams
• Quadruped hip extensions
• Banded lying leg abductions
• Sumo walks

Your glutes respond to a variety of training stimulus’s. But they do need to be trained.

Learning to activate and engage the glute properly and completely is the first step to improving them. From there, focus on progressing the glutes with weights, repetitions or variations. Great glute workouts can be hammered out in under ten minutes.

Here’s a demonstration video of a few of my favorite glute exercises and how to perform them

Don’t  underestimate the power of strong glutes and how they affect your daily life. Keeping your glutes strong will help prevent injury, improve your posture, help your pelvic floor muscles and keep you able to play with your kids.

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Don’t forget to pin these awesome tips!

What’s your favorite glute exercise?

Looking for more training tips?Check out these Ab Exercises That Are Better Than Sit Ups