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The gluteus maximus is the biggest muscle in the body, and while a full, round butt looks aesthetically, well, pleasing, working out to train well-developed glutes also offers many benefits. This is of particular interest to me because in traditional vinyasa yoga, we do a lot of back body lengthening postures and not so many back body strengthening postures. So, yeah, we might hold a few chair poses which will strengthen the glutes a bit, but we don’t perform utkatasana as much nor as long as we do with downward dog. Downward dog is a fantastic asana for lengthening the glutes and hamstrings, but many yogis suffer from what’s called dead butt syndrome, or yoga butt syndrome. Essentially, we do so much lengthening of the posterior chain, and many of us also compound that by sitting for extended periods of time throughout the day, that the brain just kind of shuts off that line of communication and the glutes don’t activate like they should. When we experience muscle imbalance like this, other muscles step in to take over. When the glutes don’t fire properly, the hamstrings or low back or lats may take over and overcompensate. Basically, when you get to this point, you’re on your way to injury if you haven’t hit it already. (This post has some variations for your vinyasa practice to build more back body strength and bring balance to your flow.)

My point is, in my own continued education as a personal trainer, a 500hr E-RYT yoga teacher with a strong foundation in anatomy, I believe it’s incredibly important to have balanced bodies. In founding Namaslay® Studios and creating a Namaslay® Strength class, our mission is to help people find that sense of balance. But since not everyone can come check out our studio in person, I thought it would be helpful to offer a series of informational posts on glutes, which is what we’ll be doing every Friday this March on the YBC® App.

Training Glutes Intelligently can Help You Shed Excess Weight

Since the glutes are our largest muscle, training your glutes burns more calories than training other body parts. When you implement a progressive training program - meaning that you slowly progress in the load (amount of weight), you’ll build muscle while simultaneously losing fat.

Training Glutes Helps Bone Health

In order to create well developed glutes, it’s important to perform a variety of movements at different reps and loads during your training. This approach helps strengthen the bones in your body. We lose bone density as we age, and weight bearing exercises is one of the best things you can do to offset that. When your training regimen includes full range of motion (like squatting below parallel), your bones become stronger and you’ll therefore be less susceptible to injury.

Strong Glutes Help Protect Knees, Hips and Low Back

People with weak glutes may have what’s called knee valgus, which is where the knees cave in during knee flexion, such as squatting. Knee valgus can lead to constant knee pain and knee injuries like ACL tears. Now, other factors may contribute to knee valgus, but having strong, well-developed glutes makes it easier for us to stabilize the knnes while walking, running, and landing from a jump.

When glutes are weak, we wind up using our back muscles to lift heavy things rather than the glutes. This can lead to more strain on the erector spinae muscles (the muscles that run alongside the spine). Continually loading the back this way without much help from your glutes can lead to lower back pain, strain, and injury like a herniated disc.

Strong Glutes May Prevent or Help Correct Hip Impingements

If you’re relying on your hamstrings rather than the strength of the glutes to extend your hips in any activity from standing to running, the hamstrings’ leverage on the head of the femur can cause it to jut forward in the socket, which can lad to a hip impingement. Hip impingement is characterized as a pinching sensation in the anterior region of the hip - and often can happen after sitting for long periods of time without moving, or in spending a prolonged period of time in a passive squat like malasana, or yogi squat. (To be clear, there are other things that can cause hip impingement like the shape of the femur head and how it glides within the hip socket, but weak glutes may cause it as well.) Strong glutes will pull the femur back, causing it to center itself back into the socket and reduce the likelihood of anterior hip pain.

Let’s Learn More About The Glutes, and How to Train Them

Every month on the YBC® App, we’ll have a weekly series to explore a topic of interest. Last month, we did a Money Diaries series every Friday. For March, we’ll be discussing glutes with information, tips and tricks on how to train them, and more. Tune in every Friday on the YBC® App, beginning March 6th and let’s learn together!