What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Kicking off a new series here today.
We’re talking about Red Flags.
Today we’re covering five red flags that your glutes are pretty weak.
As a matter of fact, damn weak, and you need to do something about it.
To make sure that you don’t miss this or any other video in this series, you’ve got
to get off your ass and make sure you hit subscribe and turn on the notifications as
well, so you never miss a video from this channel.
Guys, one by one I’m going to knock out five things that you should be able to do
if you have adequate strength in your glutes.
If you do not, then you need to do something about it.
First off, you might be asking yourself “Why should I even care?”
Besides the fact that most of us would probably like to look good from behind, I’m telling
you that the glutes are designed to be the most powerful muscles in your entire body.
Ironically, they tend to be the weakest because we don’t train them effectively.
Squats, deadlifts; they’re not doing enough, guys.
It’s a single plane motion working the sagittal plane and our glutes are three dimensional
and work in all three planes.
We need to make sure we’re addressing them individually.
If you don’t, you’re going to have bad posture.
You could have anterior pelvic tilt.
I made a whole video on this before.
You could have a weakness in your big lifts.
You’re not lifting as much, nearly as much as you could on your deadlift and squat because
of a weakness in your glutes.
You’re not getting as much power, or speed if you’re athlete.
Everything comes down to the powerhouse of your entire body, your center of mass, and
it’s all centered right around your pelvis, and you need to focus on this.
So, let’s get going.
So, let’s look for that first red flag here.
It’s really simple to do.
You get down on the floor, no equipment required.
You come down to the ground, hands and knees.
This is a two-part sequence here.
You’re not out of the woods if you can do the first one.
What you want to do is get your leg back behind you, start with either one, and you want your
knee straight.
You don’t want to cheat it and roll the pelvis out.
You want to try and keep that parallel to the floor.
From here you’re going to squeeze your leg up toward the ceiling by activating the glute.
Hopefully.
So that means you should be able to feel this intense contraction right here in this cheek.
If you don’t, I’m already starting to get a little concerned because we need to
know that you have that mind-muscle control over the glute.
These small motions are what will reveal whether you do or not.
But let’s say you do there.
You’re not out of the woods.
What you need to do now is bend the knee and repeat the same procedures because by bending
the knee here, we’re shortening the hamstring.
We’re contracting the hamstring a little bit.
Meaning, we’re taking its contribution out of the equation.
The hamstring is capable of extending the hip as well as flexing the knee.
So, when we have this here, now when we try to lift up toward the ceiling, can you still
do that?
And can you still feel any contraction in the glute?
A lot of us will find that we lose that ability.
We don’t feel it squeezing anymore.
We don’t feel that cramping in here.
That means your hamstrings were doing more of the work and the glutes aren’t as strong
as you think they are.
Which means they’re going to need work.
You want to make sure you test this on both sides because there can always be discrepancies.
As a matter of fact, it’s a common occurrence to have a discrepancy in your strength from
right side to left.
Our next red flag here just requires a couple of dumbbells and an exercise you’ve probably
done a whole lot of reps on.
That’s the lunge.
Now, take whatever you’d use on a 12 to 15 rep lunge.
I just have 25lbs in each hand here.
Remember, when you lunge out you’re not just trying to see whether you can get out
here and then come back up to the top.
You want to be able to do that with stability through your pelvis.
Meaning, you don’t want a lot of shakiness, or wobbling through the pelvis because you
want to know that your glutes are doing their job.
Remember, the muscles of the glutes are not single plane.
I said that in the beginning.
They actually control motion in all three planes.
In this case, we’re looking for their ability to control the frontal plane.
So, you take whatever that weight is – 25lbs in each hand – combine it for 50lbs, now
take a 50lb dumbbell, and here’s the test.
You hold it on one side only.
So, I have it on my left side.
I’m going to step out with the opposite leg.
As I step out here, the opposite leg down.
What I’m looking for is that same stability.
I’ve got a lot of weight over here that’s probably going to make this hip kick out if
the glutes are weak on this side.
So, you want to make sure you can get out here with that double weight straight down,
and straight back, nice and controlled, for about three to four reps.
And back, nice and controlled.
You’re not looking – you want to make sure you’re not doing that.
Fall into that side and let that hip kick out on you.
Remember, test both sides here again.
Number three is another one we can do down here on the ground, no equipment at all.
Again, red flag.
You’ve got make sure that we at least reveal these, so we know what we’re dealing with.
I want you to get down on your ground, get on your back, and we’re going to form a
bridge.
When you do the bridge with both feet on the ground and lift your hips up as high as you
can.
Now, a lot of people will shortchange the bridge.
They stop here.
That’s not full hip extension.
To get the full hip extension you’ve got to lift until you’ve basically drawn a straight
line between your quads and your torso.
If you’re going to roll something it will roll right down.
It’s not going to get caught in the middle here.
Some people, right there, are going to already start to feel cramping.
It’s where you feel the cramping that’s one of the biggest problems.
If you’re cramping in the hamstrings at all you’re in trouble.
It’s going to get worse because what I want you to do is to, in this position, test the
right side.
You’re going to get right there and lift the left leg off the ground.
Two things you’re looking for.
If I lift the left leg off the ground do I immediately start to drop here?
Do I start to sag?
If you do it’s because you don’t have strong enough glutes on this side.
We should all be able to perform a single leg bridge with our own bodyweight.
But if you start to drop that’s sign number one.
Number two: you’ll also start to rotate.
Same deal.
Weakness in the glute.
But more importantly, when you get in that position here and you lift, if you can even
stay up but you start getting cramping in this hamstring, then you have assigned here
that your glutes are weak.
Why?
Because your glutes are what should be driving hip extension.
Not your hamstrings.
Although, they are capable of contributing to hip extension, that’s not their main
focus.
So, if they start cramping that means they’re trying to do as much of the work as possible
because the glutes don’t want to do the work.
That’s a great sign that says “Hey!
Wake up, you lazy ass (literally) and start doing some of the work, and don’t make me
– the hamstrings – do everything that you’re supposed to be doing.”
It’s a great sign, guys.
Remember, test both sides, right and left to find out where you stand.
Number four, and this is one of the big, red flags that’s going to remind you every,
single day that there’s something wrong.
The thing is, you usually don’t understand that the source is your glutes, once again.
That is low back pain.
In this case, I like to call it ‘pseudo low back pain’.
I made a whole video on this.
I’m going to show you what it looks like here and I’ll link it down in the description
below.
You want to watch that if you have what I’m showing you here because I promise it’s
going to fix it.
Even as I promised in that video, instantly; you’re going to feel instant relief.
Watch.
This is what we’re talking about.
This area right here – I’m going to get a little naughty here – but we’ve got,
basically, if I were to rub my hand over the upper portion of my glutes I would feel a
bone right here.
It’s in my pelvis.
If you can just roll your fingers just to the outside of that bone – so roll it over
until it sits on the outside.
Right in here, if you have pain right in that spot, and when you press it, it can radiate
around, down your leg a little bit, up into your low back, and starts to feel like “Wow,
that is exactly – I can pinpoint where that is”, then my friend; you’ve got some issues
with your glute medias.
Likely, it’s really, really weak.
That’s what’s causing your pain.
What you need to do is watch the video I just showed you because I’m going to show you
in there exactly how to treat that.
But for now, the presence of this pain alone in this pinpointed spot – either on the
right side or left – is enough to tell me that I know where the source of your issues
lie.
It is your glute medias, and it’s weak, and you need to fix it.
That video will help you to do that.
Our fifth and final red flag is an ab exercise.
Again, you guys have got to see this by now, that all these muscles are connected.
Especially if they have common attachments to the pelvis.
Of course, one is going to influence the other.
We know that the abs are controlling the pelvis and the glutes as well.
So why are they not impacting each other?
This is the thing, we’re going to jump to one of the hardest exercises there are when
it comes to the abs.
That’s the dragonfly.
But don’t worry.
You might not be able to do the dragonfly, but even if you can do some version of it,
you’re going to see that it’s probably your glutes causing the problem, less than
your overall ab strength.
So, we get in this position, you grab onto something you can anchor your upper body to,
and then you go in and start to do your dragonfly.
Which is going to be this.
Up here, and then drop it down.
Right, under control.
So now, where is the weakness?
I’m going to tell you that your abs are a hell of a lot stronger than you think they
are.
The problem is your glutes.
If you can’t perform this exercise, do this instead.
See how strong your glutes really are by focusing on how much they’re activated during that
exercise.
So, when I come out, what’s happening is, people’s hips are dropping here.
So, the abs have to take on a lot more of the work because the hips and glutes are not
contracted.
If instead I squeeze into extension, all of a sudden, my abs become a lot stronger here
to be able to hold that position.
If you can’t start there, it’s the same principle applied at a higher angle.
So instead of having my legs out, beginners can be up here and see how much they can hold
with their abs.
Remember, I have sunken hips here.
What I have to do is squeeze into full extension and stay there.
So, you’re testing your ability.
If you just can’t get your hips up and you can’t keep them up, you don’t have enough
hip extension strength, and that’s just against the force of gravity.
Imagine what happens when you actually start to apply weighted exercises where they need
to be like that, or you try to get into a barbell hip thrust and you don’t have nearly
the strength in your glutes to do them properly.
Guys, there are a lot of red flags when it comes to a lot of different muscles groups
that you have, but none probably more overlooked than your glutes.
They’re geared to be powerhouses.
They’re probably not doing anywhere near the full capacity of what they’re capable
of for you, and that’s a problem.
We need to fix it.
So, guys, if you’re looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, step
by step, we show you how to do these things because it all matters; all of our programs
are available over at ATHLEANX.com.
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See you soon.