Lower back pain? Tight hip flexors or hamstrings? Unstable knees?

Lower back pain? Tight hip flexors or hamstrings? Unstable knees?

Our bodies are amazing in making sure we can carry on even when something doesn’t function properly. Often, the place where we feel pain does not have to be necessary the cause of it.

If you suffer from lower back pain despite working on your core a lot, from tight hip flexors or hamstrings despite stretching all the time, the culprit may be your underactive glutes.

Hip bridge lift. Pushing through heels and squeezing glutes on top of the movement.

 If you find yourself searching for an answer to any of those issues, it may be worth to include few glutes activation exercises in your warm up.

What are those? Isolated moves that will force your glutes to fire first before any other muscles. We need to “deactivate” the overactive muscles and recruit the underactive ones to create balance. Try variations of hip bridges, donkey kicks, fire hydrants instead of more compound moves such as squats and lunges.

Squats and lunges are great to build up overall strength and definition in legs and glutes however, if you have stronger quads / hamstrings than your glutes, your legs will tend to always take over in any kind of more compound moves. 

Donkey kicks. Keep balance in the middle, do not sink into one hip) and suck your belly button towards your spine. Do not over arch your lower back, squeeze your glute on top of the movement.

 That’s why going back to basics to learn and strengthen the body-mind connection can help us to break that chain. Next time you hit the gym (or at home), try to warm up with glutes isolated moves before you hit any heavy lifting. In the simplest terms, any hip dominant moves are glutes focused, any knee dominant moves are legs focused. But no matter what, remember to care and celebrate your body. Happy Humpdays!

Fire hydrant leg lifts. Support yourself on your forearms, tuck your bely button in and raise your leg sideways. Focus on leading the movement from firing your glutes.