Better Glutes = Better Movement. "How To" Exercises to Grow Your Glutes

exercises and drills female runners glutes mobility strength training Aug 01, 2023

Let's take a look at our Glutes! How should you exercise to grow your glutes? I want to review and expand on something I posted on IG regarding glute strengthening and “activation.”

First of all, your glutes are active. If they weren’t you would fall flat on your face. However, if you struggle to feel them (or grow them), keep reading…

The exercise where we wrap a band around our knees pressing out into external rotation and/or squeezing our butt to hip thrust into end-range hip flexion in the name of activation is missing something really important when it comes to growing our glutes.

Here's why:

1- Not everyone owns that range of hip extension to begin with so you end up cheating through your back anyway.

2- You're likely just squeezing on a system that needs LENGTH! We need to lengthen to load!

Here’s a visual that might be helpful:

Hip flexion lengthens the glutes, while hip extension shortens them. This same idea carries over to movement in the hips in other planes too: internal/external rotation and ADduction/ABduction (and none of these happen in isolation).

As Gary Ward says, "If you lengthen the muscle you give it no option to shorten."

AKA: do the work. Lengthen to load!

That’s the way I think about “activating” your glutes to do the work AND it's been the key to building glute strength for many of my runners. Here are a few examples for you to try and feel that length/loading in your glutes. Think shift back into the hip(s) and create space in the back pocket of your jeans.

Try this to find the length:

Then this to load it:

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

These are just 2 exercises demonstrating the idea. In my FREE Glute Accelerator Crash Course we progress daily through my favorite yet simple glute exercises that will have you really feeling your glutes work by finding that length. You'll go from heavy and clunky to strong, fluid and powerful in your stride.

Next on your reading list:

Running: Hip Drop Exercise That Actually Works

Running Injury Prevention: Strategies for a Stronger, Safer Run

How To Deadlift Correctly & Why "Hinging" is Important For Runners

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