5 Red Flags for Weak Glutes (FIX THIS!)

Weak glutes are one of the most common muscle weaknesses exhibited. The irony is, the muscles of the hips and glutes are designed to be the strongest in the entire body. Given their location around the pelvis and their influence on the center of mass and spine, they are designed to be incredibly s

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Kicking off a new series here today. We’re talking about Red Flags.

Today we’re covering five red flags that your glutes are pretty weak. As a matter of fact, damn weak, and you need to do something about it. To make sure that you don’t miss this or any other video in this series, you’ve got to get off your ass and make sure you hit subscribe and turn on the notifications as well, so you never miss a video from this channel. Guys, one by one I’m going to knock out five things that you should be able to do if you have adequate strength in your glutes. If you do not, then you need to do something about it.

First off, you might be asking yourself “Why should I even care? ” Besides the fact that most of us would probably like to look good from behind, I’m telling you that the glutes are designed to be the most powerful muscles in your entire body. Ironically, they tend to be the weakest because we don’t train them effectively. Squats, deadlifts; they’re not doing enough, guys. It’s a single plane motion working the sagittal plane and our glutes are three dimensional and work in all three planes.

We need to make sure we’re addressing them individually. If you don’t, you’re going to have bad posture. You could have anterior pelvic tilt. I made a whole video on this before. You could have a weakness in your big lifts.

You’re not lifting as much, nearly as much as you could on your deadlift and squat because of a weakness in your glutes. You’re not getting as much power, or speed if you’re athlete. Everything comes down to the powerhouse of your entire body, your center of mass, and it’s all centered right around your pelvis, and you need to focus on this. So, let’s get going. So, let’s look for that first red flag here.

It’s really simple to do. You get down on the floor, no equipment required. You come down to the ground, hands and knees. This is a two-part sequence here. You’re not out of the woods if you can do the first one.

What you want to do is get your leg back behind you, start with either one, and you want your knee straight. You don’t want to cheat it and roll the pelvis out. You want to try and keep that parallel to the floor. From here you’re going to squeeze your leg up toward the ceiling by activating the glute. Hopefully.

So that means you should be able to feel this intense contraction right here in this cheek. If you don’t, I’m already starting to get a little concerned because we need to know that you have that mind-muscle control over the glute. These small motions are what will reveal whether you do or not. But let’s say you do there. You’re not out of the woods.

What you need to do now is bend the knee and repeat the same procedures because by bending the knee here, we’re shortening the hamstring. We’re contracting the hamstring a little bit. Meaning, we’re taking its contribution out of the equation. The hamstring is capable of extending the hip as well as flexing the knee. So, when we have this here, now when we try to lift up toward the ceiling, can you still do that?

And can you still feel any contraction in the glute? A lot of us will find that we lose that ability. We don’t feel it squeezing anymore. We don’t feel that cramping in here. That means your hamstrings were doing more of the work and the glutes aren’t as strong as you think they are.

Which means they’re going to need work. You want to make sure you test this on both sides because there can always be discrepancies. As a matter of fact, it’s a common occurrence to have a discrepancy in your strength from right side to left. Our next red flag here just requires a couple of dumbbells and an exercise you’ve probably done a whole lot of reps on. That’s the lunge.

Now, take whatever you’d use on a 12 to 15 rep lunge. I just have 25lbs in each hand here. Remember, when you lunge out you’re not just trying to see whether you can get out here and then come back up to the top. You want to be able to do that with stability through your pelvis. Meaning, you don’t want a lot of shakiness, or wobbling through the pelvis because you want to know that your glutes are doing their job.

Remember, the muscles of the glutes are not single plane. I said that in the beginning. They actually control motion in all three planes. In this case, we’re looking for their ability to control the frontal plane. So, you take whatever that weight is – 25lbs in each hand – combine it for 50lbs, now take a 50lb dumbbell, and here’s the test.

You hold it on one side only. So, I have it on my left side. I’m going to step out with the opposite leg. As I step out here, the opposite leg down. What I’m looking for is that same stability.

I’ve got a lot of weight over here that’s probably going to make this hip kick out if the glutes are weak on this side. So, you want to make sure you can get out here with that double weight straight down, and straight back, nice and controlled, for about three to four reps. And back, nice and controlled. You’re not looking – you want to make sure you’re not doing that. Fall into that side and let that hip kick out on you.

Remember, test both sides here again. Number three is another one we can do down here on the ground, no equipment at all. Again, red flag. You’ve got make sure that we at least reveal these, so we know what we’re dealing with. I want you to get down on your ground, get on your back, and we’re going to form a bridge.

When you do the bridge with both feet on the ground and lift your hips up as high as you can. Now, a lot of people will shortchange the bridge. They stop here. That’s not full hip extension. To get the full hip extension you’ve got to lift until you’ve basically drawn a straight line between your quads and your torso.

If you’re going to roll something it will roll right down. It’s not going to get caught in the middle here. Some people, right there, are going to already start to feel cramping. It’s where you feel the cramping that’s one of the biggest problems. If you’re cramping in the hamstrings at all you’re in trouble.

It’s going to get worse because what I want you to do is to, in this position, test the right side. You’re going to get right there and lift the left leg off the ground. Two things you’re looking for. If I lift the left leg off the ground do I immediately start to drop here? Do I start to sag?

If you do it’s because you don’t have strong enough glutes on this side. We should all be able to perform a single leg bridge with our own bodyweight. But if you start to drop that’s sign number one. Number two: you’ll also start to rotate. Same deal.

Weakness in the glute. But more importantly, when you get in that position here and you lift, if you can even stay up but you start getting cramping in this hamstring, then you have assigned here that your glutes are weak. Why? Because your glutes are what should be driving hip extension. Not your hamstrings.

Although, they are capable of contributing to hip extension, that’s not their main focus. So, if they start cramping that means they’re trying to do as much of the work as possible because the glutes don’t want to do the work. That’s a great sign that says “Hey! Wake up, you lazy ass (literally) and start doing some of the work, and don’t make me – the hamstrings – do everything that you’re supposed to be doing. ” It’s a great sign, guys.

Remember, test both sides, right and left to find out where you stand. Number four, and this is one of the big, red flags that’s going to remind you every, single day that there’s something wrong. The thing is, you usually don’t understand that t