I think most people suffer from three types of amnesia:
- Gluteal
- Abdominal
- Right Brain
I say “amnesia” because in each of these cases, we are born with the ability to use each: as children we are able to squat deeply, breath correctly, brace our core and are naturally creative. Slowly but surely, our 21st Century lifestyle strips us of each of these … and this makes me very sad.
But never fear … this post is all about waking up your glutes while standing, sitting and squatting by performing the following three cues any time during the day:
- simply work on consciously squeezing your glutes “on command” – when you stand up from your chair after reading this post, push “through your heels” to use your hips instead of your knee muscles – the more we are putting our weight on our toes and balls of our feet, the more we are potentially stressing our knees
- imagine your feet are on dinner plates and while keeping your feet two feet apart and toes pointed straight ahead, drive your feet into the floor and imagine rotating those plates away from one another. Your feet won’t actually move, but you are engaging the rotational function of your glutes (see video below)
- drive your knees out to the sides as you stand up to engage the side leg lifting function of your glute and hip muscles.
The result will be more power coming from your core and hips, which means less stress on your knees and lower back. Finally, speaking of our 21st century lives, if you cannot get this feeling in your shoes, do these stand ups as often as you can bare footed. Our shoes these days, especially heeled shoes, are ruining our feet, knees and lower backs. I have had many clients take their heels off (even 1-2″ heels) to squat in socks and immediately feel all knee pain vanish.
And that is awesome!
Whether your goal is to dunk a basketball, drive a golf ball further or stand up from your toilet unassisted for another 5-45 years, these cues are crazy important for you to master:
Thank you to Barb for doing this exercise with me, as after practicing it a few times, I pulled my phone out and ran through it one last time.
OK, I thought I would throw one more picture into this post to illustrate what can happen if you use your glutes, hips and core correctly during a squat. By engaging my hips and core, I am able to lower myself doing a “genie squat” to either a lower chair or to pick something up safely without bending over at all. Look how flat and upright my spine is. That allows me to squat deeply without hurting my knees or back. Begin this movement to a bench or chair and continue working on going deeper and deeper, always avoiding any sort of pain.
We will cover flexibility in the hips and ankles in future posts as they are just as important to get to this squatting position.
If you are interested in getting my Weekly Recap Email and Workout Starter Kit with all of these exercises, click on the REDDY Health Weekly link above to join our community.
Thanks and as always, please let me know what you think here or on Facebook.
