“I like big butts and I cannot lie!” Whoa, whoa, whoa! You may be thinking to yourself, where the hell is he going with this? I mean, we are living in 2023, we can’t say things like this anymore. Well let me tell you, I am not trying to offend anyone here. For those of you who grew up in the 90’s and listened to rap and hip hop, I was quoting the popular song “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot back in 1992. Why exactly would I be quoting this in a Physical Therapy blog for runners might you ask? Well, as runners, we need back…I mean GLUTES!! Yes, that’s right, we need powerful, strong, stable glutes for effective running to occur not only for efficiency, but also for injury prevention. Some may even say the glutes are the key muscle group for any runner. Let’s take a look and meet these wonderful muscles!
What are your Glutes:
Your glutes are a combination of 3 different muscles on the posterior (back) and lateral (side) chain of the hip and pelvis.
- Gluteus Maximus (no not Russel Crowe from Gladiator): The Glute Max is your biggest and most superficial muscle group of that posterior chain. The Glute Max is a powerful hip extensor (bringing leg behind you), but also assists in hip abduction (bringing leg to the side) and hip external rotation (rotating the hip out). This muscle also helps extend your trunk and keeps you upright.
- Gluteus Medius (the middle, but very important, child): The Glute Med is situated under the Glute Max as we start working our way from posterior to lateral. The Glute Med is a hip abductor and a weaker hip external rotator, but more importantly, when we are in single leg stance, it supports our pelvis, keeping it steady and not allowing our femur (big bone in thigh) to drop in or the knee to fall in.
- Gluteus Minimus (cute name!): The Glute Min is the smallest of your glutes and sits immediately beneath the Glute Med. The Glute Min, acts with the Glute Med to abduct the hip, but again helps stabilize the hip during single leg support.
Why are strong Glutes Important:
Weakness in the glute muscles have been linked to numerous running-related injuries (i.e., runner’s knee, ITB syndrome, Achilles Tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, etc.) The definition of running is basically forward motion going from one leg to the other, without ever having both feet on the ground. So basically we are hopping from one foot to the other. Every time we land, we have to control 3 times our body weight. That is a crap ton of load and stress for our body! A big function that our glutes help out with is when our leg is in single leg support, they prevent our pelvis from dropping, our thigh to fall in and rotate in, thus not allowing our knee to fall in. Down the kinetic chain, it prevents our lower shin from excessively rotating out and our foot from over pronation (arch falling in). So think about landing with 3 times our body weight that we have to control, if we had weakness in the glutes and all of that weight is applied and that will place stress and strain on the other structures in the back, pelvis, leg and foot. Also, the glutes help with our propulsion during gait, us pushing our body forward. If we are weak, we can compensate by overarching our back or over utilizing our hamstring.
Glute Activation vs Strength
So you may be thinking to yourself, “I have read and heard that glutes are important, but how do I know if I am getting them to work?” This is an important distinction between muscle activation and strength. Getting a muscle to activate is simply getting it to fire as the muscle was intended. This concept is basically happening on a neuromuscular level in connecting the brain pathways to the motor units of a muscle and getting it to fire and turn on. Thus, when we perform ‘glute activation’ exercises, we are creating a stronger mind-muscle connection. I would argue that this is an important initial step to building up strength in a muscle. Muscle strength is essentially the active force production a muscle can generate. Therefore, the stronger a muscle is, the more force it can produce and assist in movement or control of the body. Before building up strength of a muscle, I tend to get a patient to work on activation exercises to give them a feel of what it is like to contract (activate). Guess what? This is also the initial stages of strength training. A muscle has thousands of individual motor neurons that connect to individual muscle fibers of a muscle. When a muscle is weak, yes there can be atrophy of the muscle, but more often, only a percentage of these motor neurons are firing. With activation exercises, we are essentially waking more of these motor neurons to stimulate more of the muscle. With more of the muscle stimulated, we get more force production and more strength! This process usually happens with consistent exercises in the first 2-4 weeks of a program. After these motor units are firing at a more consistent basis, then the individual muscle fibers can start to hypertrophy (grow) and develop more force and more strength!!
Why we need Exercises for the Glutes
Ok, so there are thousands of exercises in this world! Different physical therapists, personal trainers, websites, strength and conditioning coaches may have their favorite exercises that they do. So do I, but I also don’t want you to think that there is the one all-be all-list, but I want to show you what I tend to gravitate towards with my runners. Once I determine a runner has weakness and/or poor activation in the gluts from a clinical examination and run analysis, I can move forward with a treatment progression of different exercises with the hope that runners will incorporate this into a cross training strength routine, not only for injury recovery, but for improved performance. I usually will start a program with glute activation exercises to get the runner to feel what contraction of the glutes feels like. Then I will progress to more functional strengthening. “You mean we have to strength train in addition to running? Doesn’t my running strengthen my legs?” NO! Well, to some extent you are getting some strengthening while running, but not to the extent we need for injury prevention and performance. Running is one of the most demanding things we do to our body. Every time we land, our body must control ~3x our body weight, as opposed to walking, where we only have to control about 90% of our body weight. Thus, we need to work on strengthening to build up these important muscles to complement our running. Remember this saying:
“We don’t run to get fit, we need to be fit to Run!”
See my resource page for a list of my favorite Glute Activation/Strengthening exercises and reasons why I choose these. And next time you listen to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”, you may now have a new appreciation and likeness for big butts and you cannot lie, so other runners can’t deny!
