How to get firm rock-hard glutes
Most of us in today's world sit at a desk most of the day, or just simply are in seated positions way too often. Our ancestors never sat at a desk for 8-10 hours a day, so this is obviously not natural for humans to sit as long as we do these days. This affects not only the strength of our back muscles, but also the proper balance of our glutes and our hip flexors.
Today's guest article shows you some important things you need to know if you want to get a firm rock-hard butt... and although Sue's main program is designed for females, today's article itself is useful for both men and women...
How to Get Firm Rock-Hard Glutes
by Sue Heintze, Fitness & Nutrition Expert
If you don't have a tight, firm tush, you may not even be aware that it may actually be because you are/have been using the WRONG muscles when you exercise. If you don't activate and engage the right muscles, you'll NEVER have a beautiful butt.
Over time we, as in the human species, have adopted too many seated characteristics in our everyday lives. Given we spend so much time on our backsides, our bodies have become less able to engage and work the glutes properly.
This is because the more time we spend sitting (think desk job...), the tighter/shorter our hip flexors become and the longer or more stretched our glute muscles get - when your muscles stretch it makes it harder to activate them!
So if you want your butt to be nice and firm, tight and toned (as well as avoiding unnecessary back and hip pain), then it's essential to learn to engage your glutes and balance them with your hip flexors.
Consider your glutes and hip flexors as part of a marriage - there needs to a nice even balance between both parties in order for the relationship to function properly. If one side is more dominant than the other, you're very likely to have all sorts of problems! Strains, pulls, tears, lower back pain and many other issues are associated with these major muscle groups of our body.
The gluteal muscles comprise the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus while the hip flexors (in which we will consider the most dominant hip flexor, the Iliopsoas, but keep in mind there are more less-dominant muscles also involved) consists of the psoas major, psoas minor and the iliacus.
This ‘marriage' of muscles is involved in a number of movements about the hip that can greatly affect your posture and daily tasks such as sitting, walking, running and ultimately many areas down (or up) the chain. Hip flexion, extension, internal rotation, external rotation, adduction, abduction, transverse adduction and transverse abduction are among the major roles of the glutes and hip flexor muscle groups. In real layman's terms, they are responsible for a lot of stuff!
There are two main problems that we experience with our glutes.
Some of us are not able to engage our glutes at all - not even for everyday activities, like standing or walking and not for exercising such as running or squatting.
Others are able to engage their glutes but they are very weak because they are dominated by other muscles such as the quadriceps (typically). Even if these people aim to train their glutes when they hit the gym, they often end up missing the mark and allowing the stronger, more dominant leg muscles to take over. This leaves them with a great imbalance that just keeps increasing, and causing a multitude of problems as time goes on.
If you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk and have a rather sedentary job, not only is it good for your eyes to break from that computer screen (if you work at one) but it will also be good for your butt if you get up at regular intervals and take a quick stroll and perform some hip flexor stretches.
Not only will learning to engage your glutes help to build a nice toned, firm butt, it can help to improve lower back and knee pain. For example, by learning to engage your glutes properly during a squat, you take a lot of stress off of the knees.
So, when it comes to training, it's really important that we ‘switch the appropriate muscles on' and activate our glutes prior to a lower body training session.
A great way to do this is to incorporate some activation exercises (such as glute bridges for example) into a 'dynamic' warm up. Rather than jump on the treadmill to warm up, a dynamic warm up involves a series of exercises to warm up and prepare the appropriate muscles and joints for training. This type of warm up will help to mobilize, stretch and strengthen the muscles thereby aiding in rehabilitating any current imbalances or injuries and avoiding future ones.
In my new Targeted Training Program you will begin each of the Cell-u-Burn Workouts with a Gorgeous Glutes Warm Up that includes specific exercises to activate and engage the appropriate muscles and allow you to sculpt a set of amazing glutes!
-----------------------------
Sue Heintze is the author of a new protocol that she's been developing for years to target trouble areas for females of the butt, hips, thighs, and scientific strategies to get rid of cellulite permanently.
If you missed it yesterday, you can read my thoughts about Sue's new protocol below:
The TRUTH about cellulite
Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Today's guest article shows you some important things you need to know if you want to get a firm rock-hard butt... and although Sue's main program is designed for females, today's article itself is useful for both men and women...
How to Get Firm Rock-Hard Glutes
by Sue Heintze, Fitness & Nutrition Expert
If you don't have a tight, firm tush, you may not even be aware that it may actually be because you are/have been using the WRONG muscles when you exercise. If you don't activate and engage the right muscles, you'll NEVER have a beautiful butt.
Over time we, as in the human species, have adopted too many seated characteristics in our everyday lives. Given we spend so much time on our backsides, our bodies have become less able to engage and work the glutes properly.
This is because the more time we spend sitting (think desk job...), the tighter/shorter our hip flexors become and the longer or more stretched our glute muscles get - when your muscles stretch it makes it harder to activate them!
So if you want your butt to be nice and firm, tight and toned (as well as avoiding unnecessary back and hip pain), then it's essential to learn to engage your glutes and balance them with your hip flexors.
Consider your glutes and hip flexors as part of a marriage - there needs to a nice even balance between both parties in order for the relationship to function properly. If one side is more dominant than the other, you're very likely to have all sorts of problems! Strains, pulls, tears, lower back pain and many other issues are associated with these major muscle groups of our body.
The gluteal muscles comprise the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus while the hip flexors (in which we will consider the most dominant hip flexor, the Iliopsoas, but keep in mind there are more less-dominant muscles also involved) consists of the psoas major, psoas minor and the iliacus.
This ‘marriage' of muscles is involved in a number of movements about the hip that can greatly affect your posture and daily tasks such as sitting, walking, running and ultimately many areas down (or up) the chain. Hip flexion, extension, internal rotation, external rotation, adduction, abduction, transverse adduction and transverse abduction are among the major roles of the glutes and hip flexor muscle groups. In real layman's terms, they are responsible for a lot of stuff!
There are two main problems that we experience with our glutes.
Some of us are not able to engage our glutes at all - not even for everyday activities, like standing or walking and not for exercising such as running or squatting.
Others are able to engage their glutes but they are very weak because they are dominated by other muscles such as the quadriceps (typically). Even if these people aim to train their glutes when they hit the gym, they often end up missing the mark and allowing the stronger, more dominant leg muscles to take over. This leaves them with a great imbalance that just keeps increasing, and causing a multitude of problems as time goes on.
If you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk and have a rather sedentary job, not only is it good for your eyes to break from that computer screen (if you work at one) but it will also be good for your butt if you get up at regular intervals and take a quick stroll and perform some hip flexor stretches.
Not only will learning to engage your glutes help to build a nice toned, firm butt, it can help to improve lower back and knee pain. For example, by learning to engage your glutes properly during a squat, you take a lot of stress off of the knees.
So, when it comes to training, it's really important that we ‘switch the appropriate muscles on' and activate our glutes prior to a lower body training session.
A great way to do this is to incorporate some activation exercises (such as glute bridges for example) into a 'dynamic' warm up. Rather than jump on the treadmill to warm up, a dynamic warm up involves a series of exercises to warm up and prepare the appropriate muscles and joints for training. This type of warm up will help to mobilize, stretch and strengthen the muscles thereby aiding in rehabilitating any current imbalances or injuries and avoiding future ones.
In my new Targeted Training Program you will begin each of the Cell-u-Burn Workouts with a Gorgeous Glutes Warm Up that includes specific exercises to activate and engage the appropriate muscles and allow you to sculpt a set of amazing glutes!
-----------------------------
Sue Heintze is the author of a new protocol that she's been developing for years to target trouble areas for females of the butt, hips, thighs, and scientific strategies to get rid of cellulite permanently.
If you missed it yesterday, you can read my thoughts about Sue's new protocol below:
The TRUTH about cellulite
Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
posted by Mike Geary at
12:27 AM
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