Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Glute Activation

I was skimming around different blogs this afternoon and came across this:

How to Optimize Posterior Chain Power: Glute Activation

There is some realy good material here.

Excessive sitting shortens your hip flexors. This stretches the opposite muscles: your glutes. They become dormant. You can’t fire your glutes properly anymore. The solution is glute activation exercises. Here’s how.
The image doesn't have much to do with the article.....but there are glutes:

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris,

Looks like a good list. However, I'm skeptical of the idea that sitting shortens the hip flexors and deactviates the glutes. Sitting with the hip flexors in a shortened position is a natural use of the body so I would guess it doesn't systematically shorten tissues. Hunter gatherers must spend quite a bit of time sitting. And they sit on the ground or in a deep squat, which shortens the hip flexors significantly more than when sitting in a chair. Tissues will shorten if immobilized for long periods of time, but they will retain length with periodic full ROM use. For example, my arms only reach overhead once or twice a day, and this is enough to preserve full ROM.

John Sifferman said...

All great exercises from Mehdi, whom has a great website for beginner and intermediate level strength training.

JamesSteeleII said...

And a fantastic set of glutes they are!

Shawn said...

All I know is I've had significant issues with lower back, and a confirmed inability to 'fire' my gluts on the left side that's caused me a lot of pain - so, I'm willing to try anything that helps! Even these exercises that I remember from my old 'Jane Fonda' workout tapes. Maybe she wasn't as nuts as we thought.... :D