Glute Training for Dudes
by Mark Young

It seems every time you pass a newsstand, all the women's
fitness mags are having a "special glute edition," but
very rarely do you see an article dedicated to glute training for
men.
However, the truth is that dedicated glute training can not only
do unsexy things like injury prevention, but it can also increase
strength and it might just land you a date with the girl you hit on
every day by the water cooler.


Injury Prevention
In my personal experience I've found that glute weakness is
related to three types of training related injuries. If
you're not interested in all the anatomy geek details
I've included a non-geek summary at the end of each section to
give you a quick breakdown without all of the scientific mumbo
jumbo.

1) Knee Pain
The main issue here is that most people have excessively tight
hip flexors, particularly the tensor fascia latae (TFL). They
also tend to have weak glutes, causing an imbalance at the hip that
leads to excessive medial rotation of the femur, lateral tracking
of the patella and, most importantly, knee pain.
By strengthening the glutes (particularly the gluteus maximus
and the posterior portion of the glute medius), the medial rotation
of the hip is corrected and the knee pain will start to
disappear. Combine this with some foam rolling of the TFL, IT
band, and some stretching of the tight hip flexors and you have a
recipe for healthy knees.

Ultimately, complete knee rehab is beyond the scope of this
article, but Mike Robertson's Bulletproof Knees program is an excellent resource for those who want more
information on this topic.
Non Geek Summary: Foam rolling and stretching of the hip
flexors along with strengthening of the glutes leads to healthy,
pain-free knees.

2) Lower Back Injury
Technically the glutes and hamstrings are hip extensors and the
erector spinae have no direct influence on hip extension.
However, when performing a deadlift, all three muscles must act to
fully complete the movement. When one muscle (typically the
glutes) doesn't function properly the other muscles have to
take up the slack.
This is very much like when you were a kid getting assigned to
do a group project at school. Invariably there was one guy in
the group named Mikey who was too busy picking his nose and eating
paste to be bothered so the rest of the group had to do all the
work. Fortunately, you could just dunk Mikey's head in a
toilet at recess to resolve the issue.
In the case of the deadlift, when the glutes are weak the
"locked out" position never truly happens because the
hips are never completely extended and the body only reaches the
upright position by contraction of the erector spinae and
hyperextension of the lower back. In this position the discs
of the lower lumbar spine are particularly susceptible to
injury.
Non Geek Summary: Strengthening the glutes causes
less force to be put on the lower spine during exercises like the
deadlift making back injury less likely. If your glutes are
weak the next snap, crackle, pop you hear may not be from your
child's breakfast cereal.

3) Pulled Hamstrings
By now you should know that sprint type training is superior to
endurance type training for fat loss. This is great news for
everyone who finds spending an hour on the treadmill as boring as
watching Terms of Endearment on a Friday night.
Unfortunately, many people trying to take advantage of this type of
training experience hamstring pulls from sprinting as a result of
having weak glutes.
During a sprinting stride both the glutes and hamstrings assist
in propelling the body forward with an explosive extension of the
hip joint. However, as mentioned above, when the glutes are
weak other muscles have to compensate. In the case of
sprinting, the hamstrings are often pulled as a result of trying to
make up for the force not being produced by the gluteals.
Non Geek Summary: Weak glutes can lead to hamstring
pulls which means your lower body training and interval training
will have to take a back seat until you're healed.
Strengthen the glutes and this issue can be easily avoided.


Strength
Whether you want to lift heavy to build a muscular physique or
just for the sake of throwing heavy shit around, it's
absolutely essential to have a strong posterior chain.
Essentially, the goal is to have strong muscles from the back of
the knees to the back of the neck. If you do this, your
squats, deadlifts, snatches, and cleans, will be heavier and your
overall strength will explode.
If only one link in that chain is weak, every movement that
involves the posterior chain will suffer and your weights will
remain wussified for all eternity... or at least until you fix
that link. Instead of focusing on the movements you're
good at, the best course of action is to identify what is weak and bring it up.
If you're like most people, your glutes are probably the
worst offender and by increasing their strength and level of
activation your lifts will blow through the roof like the Kool Aid
guy smashing through a wall.



Physical Appearance
Now I know everybody here is lifting strictly for health (note
the sarcasm), but if you were to consider the effects of glute
training on your physique you might like to know that women check
out your body, too. In fact, you might also like to know that
they don't find it sexy when your ass is so flat that it looks
like you just poured pancake batter down the back of your
pants.
To make matters worse, having weak glutes leads to a postural
fault called anterior pelvic tilt where your lower back is lordodic
(hyperextended), making your butt stick out in the back and your
stomach stick out in the front.


This is one reason why someone who is relatively lean can
actually look like they have a stomach when they actually
don't. As sexy as this sounds, I would guess that most
women don't dream of a guy that has a stomach he can rest his
dinner plate on and a flat butt that sticks out.
Training your glutes can dramatically improve your lordodic
posture and give your backside some shape so you don't have to
staple your pants to your lower back just to get them to stay
up.


The Glute Specialization Routine
The workout below incorporates several exercises that will
heavily emphasize the posterior chain to decrease injury risk, make
you crazy strong, and build a woman attracting glute max.
Several of the exercises are unilateral which will also help you
sort out any side to side imbalances you've developed during
your usual training program.
I should note that many of these exercises look a lot easier
than they actually are. Don't be fooled. If
you're doing these right you'll hardly be able to sit on
the toilet for the next 5 days.


Foam Rolling
I won't go into too much detail here because this topic has
been covered in much more detail HERE.
Simply perform some foam rolling on your hip flexors, quads, TFL,
and IT Band prior to training. These are probably tight or
stiff and will impact your ability to maximally activate your
glutes. If you don't have a foam roller yet, get
on it!


Mobility Work
The primary goal here is to increase mobility at the hips and
ankles prior to lower body work. This also increases muscle
temperature and neural drive to the muscles about to be used for
training. If you don't recognize any of the drills below
I'd highly suggest the Magnificent Mobility DVD.

Ankle Mobility Drill
Front to Back Leg Swings
Side to Side Leg Swings
Knee Hugs
Pull Back Butt Kicks
Walking Spidermans
Glute Activation
If your glutes are underdeveloped, it's imperative you
perform some kind of activation work prior to performing this
program. The goal here is to simply "awaken" the
dormant muscles so we can train them effectively.
The routine is adapted from a program I first saw created by
Mike Robertson. It's based on the concept of reciprocal
inhibition which means that when one muscle is tight (or
contracted), the opposing muscle is shut down. For example,
flexing the biceps relaxes the triceps and vice versa. When
it comes to the hip joint, tightness in the hip flexors can shut
down the glutes so it's imperative that we stretch them prior
to activating the glute muscles.

Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch — Hold for
30 seconds per leg

Make sure to keep the body upright and sink forward until you
feel a moderate stretch in the hip of the back leg. Do not
place the hands on the front thigh to limit the stretch.
Repeat on the opposite leg. With no rest go immediately into
the next drill:

Glute Bridge — Perform 10
repetitions


1 | 2

This exercise, affectionately called "sky humps" by
one of our clients, is performed by lying on your back and pushing
through the feet to raise the hips off the floor until the hip
joint is extended.
The key here is to contract the glutes at the top of the
movement with very little involvement of the hamstrings. If
you feel your hamstrings contracting, try putting your hands on
your quads and pushing out slightly through the toes instead of
pulling the feet towards you. With no rest go immediately
into the next stretch.



Quadruped Piriformis Stretch — Hold for
30 seconds per leg.


Side View


Top View