Why You Need to Fire Your Glutes

What does it mean when you hear the words “fire your glutes”? In all my years of experience I take that to mean “activate” your glutes because they are not getting used to your advantage. Usually this means that your other muscle groups are being overused when you could be distributing some of the load on your glutes. Why not? After all it is the biggest muscle in our body.

Here’s a good example: A few years ago I had been doing a lot of long distance cycling workouts riding in a big gear. I started having some knee pain and a coach told me that I needed to increase my RPMs to about 90 for an endurance effort, switch to the small chain ring, and start using my glutes more.

I didn’t quite know what he meant until I tried pedaling less with my quads and knees and more with the largest muscle in my body- my glutes. When I did this, I immediately felt like I was getting more bang for the buck on each pedal stroke with the help of that great big muscle.

As athletes, we forget to use our glutes and when that happens we set ourselves up for other problems such as knee pain, hip pain, hamstring tightness, and lower back pain. What I am saying is that strengthened glutes can help prevent injury in other places. We need to train our nervous system to recruit muscle fibers from our glutes on a regular basis if we want them to engage more. This applies to cycling as well as any kind of running.

In this video I show you 5 exercises that I really like for glute activation and strength. You can do anywhere from 15-40 reps per leg for each exercise depending on your level of fitness. These will engage your glutes nicely and who doesn’t like a toned looking butt?

Add these into your strength training program and let me know you are feeling after. Need a triathlon coach for your next race? Click HERE to shoot me an email!