It’s all about the glutes…

I was hiking Stowe Pinnacle with some friends this morning and we started talking about glute strength (a really exciting topic, I know). One friend had a low back injury a couple years back and he said that he notices his glutes are the first to fatigue on a long bike ride or skin. I jokingly responded that you can virtually fix any lower extremity injury with glute strengthening. Although I was mostly kidding, there is some truth to that. The glutes (proximal) greatly control what happens at the knee and ankle (distal). I thought it would be worth discussing why the glutes are so important. 

Proximal Stability

"You can't fire a cannon from a canoe". If you haven't heard this saying, it basically means you can't use your strong legs (the cannon) if you have an unstable core and glutes (the canoe).  We are naturally so quad dominant, that we forget about how important the core and glutes are to stabilizing and generating power, because we can usually get away with it. Over time, that reliance on the quads is going to turn into knee pain, hip pain and other imbalances. Sometimes it takes taking a step back from your strengthening routine and going back to basics and teaching yourself to engage your glutes. This is something I work A LOT on with patients, and it makes a huge difference.

Hip drop

Sticking with the stability theme, the gluteus medius and minimus are two muscles on the outside of the hip that help stabilize the hip when walking, running, hiking, biking, etc. Basically, when you're single leg standing on your left leg, your right hip is hopefully staying level and not dropping down towards the ground, and that's because of your left hip abductors. Preventing hip drop is especially important in knee and ankle alignment, as well as low back positioning. Hip drop can be associated with knee valgus (caving inward), ankle pronation (flattening the arch) which can lead to a myriad of injuries.

Hopefully this helps explain why at Summit PT we're not just going to treat the location of your pain. We have to look up and down the chain during functional movements to see what other factors are possibly contributing. This means getting to the root cause, rather than just treating the symptoms.

If you have any questions, or want clarification on anything mentioned in this blog, please don't hesitate to reach out! Clearly I love talking about the glutes, even when on a hike.