“Dead butt syndrome”, or “Dormant bottom syndrome”, although both sound like something your parents made up to scare you out of sitting all day, is a real phenomenon that personal trainers, physiotherapists, and kinesiologists are working to combat in patients every day. Gluteal Anemia, the more scientific name for dead butt syndrome (DBS – lol… do bits society? Any Love Island fans here? No? Just me?), happens when the gluteus medius stops firing correctly. The gluteus medius is responsible for stabilizing the pelvis, so when “turned off” it can lead to lower back and hip pain, along with knee and ankle issues seeing as your body will be trying to compensate for the imbalances.
Andrew Bang, a Chiropractor at Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute explains that “Dead butt syndrome has to do with reciprocal inhibition—the process that describes the give-and-take relationship between muscles on either side of a joint. In general, when one muscle contracts, a nerve signal is sent to its opposing muscle to relax. When you spend hours on end in a seated position, your hip flexors are contracting while your glutes rest. Over time, we’re basically training our glutes to be weak” (health.com).
How do you even know if your glutes are firing or not though? Aren’t the massive number of squats you do every week enough to combat DBS?
One of the easiest ways to figure out what in the heck your glutes are doing is to lay on the ground belly down. Contract your glute – do your quads also tense up as well? If they do, this likely means that you have weak/inactive glutes, you should be able to flex your glutes independently from your other main leg muscles.
So now you’ve figured out that you have lazy glutes, how can you go about fixing this? There are actually a number of ways that you can combat a dead butt; the first, and easiest way to do this is to make an effort to move throughout the day. Get up out of your chair and walk around at least every hour to allow your muscles to get some blood to them and allow your hip flexors to be stretched out, too.
The second, and probably most effective way, is to focus on exercises that specifically target the glutes. Ya, that’s right, glute exercises can do more for you than just give you a perky behind, they also help with your functionality as well. See, maybe there’s a reason women are so into booty exercises…
Remember that little test we talked about above? Flexing your glute and not the rest of your leg? Make that a starting point and don’t move onto other exercises before you’ve mastered the isolated glute flex. Once you’ve hit that point, here are some other movements you can incorporate into your leg/glute day routine to really get those glutes firing and strong.
Pre-Workout Glute Activation
You’ve probably seen this term thrown around a little bit in the fitness social media world lately – and it’s with good intent! Warming up before your workouts and prepping the muscles that you’re going to be using is a good thing!
By activating your glutes prior to your workout, this means that they’re already “turned on” and ready to go, meaning that you’ll get more out of the workout to follow.
Generally I like to use mini-bands to activate my glutes. I have previously talked about my favourite mini-band movements for the glutes, and a handful of those movements is usually what I will perform prior to a workout!
Glute Focused Exercises
I previously wrote a very informative post on how to train and grow your glutes, I think that post will be very helpful for your continued journey to a peachy, working booty. However, here is a list of some of my current fave, tried and tested glute exercises that you should be including in your workouts. Now, some of these exercises may not entirely isolate the glutes but the glutes play a big part in all of these exercises:
- Glute bridges/hip thrusts – try with a band around the knees to target the glute medius as well as the maximus! Keep your chin tucked and in full extension (of your hips), your shins should be about perpendicular with the ground.
- Walking lunges – take a slightly longer step and keep your torso on a slight forward leaning angle to really get the most to of your glutes!
- Step ups – the aim of this is to not push off the ground with the leg that isn’t doing the step up as this will make it easier on the working leg which = less effective. To initiate this movement, lean into the leg that you’re stepping up with, this will stretch the glute out and give it a chance to work harder!
- Cable kick backs – the most insta fits move out there but it works. Make sure that your torso is almost parallel with the ground, and when you kick back you’re really focusing on contracting your glutes. Turn your toes out slightly to really engage all the gluteal muscles!