IT'S TIME ΤΟ WORK YOUR BUTT!

WANT TO RUN FASTER, STRONGER AND HEALTHIER?

- Kiera Carter

STRONG GLUTES ARE THE KEY TO POWERFUL, CONSISTENT RUNNING. That's because this muscle group - composed of the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus - is the biggest in the body, and it's not there just to look good in jeans. The glutes keep us standing upright, separating us humans from our hunched-over primate ancestors, and they power the body forward and uphill, says Dr Greg Grosicki, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Georgia Southern University in the US. In short, these muscles can help you run, and run fast.

Research shows that runners can go harder when their backsides are built up. In fact, a small Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise study found the glutes of pro sprinters were 45% larger than those of a sub-elite group.

The glutes are also vital for injury prevention. "Any weakness in the glutes will propagate further down the kinetic chain and manifest itself as runner's knee or achilles tendinitis," says Grosicki. The glutes keep the pelvis neutral - as in, not ahead of your torso and not popped out behind you. So, without strong gluteal muscles, you'll have improper pelvic positioning, which leads to improper foot placement, says Grosicki, meaning you'll land too far forward or too far back. Do this thousands of times over the course of a run and you can easily pick up an injury.

Here's the tricky part: sitting for hours on end tightens your hip flexors, which makes it harder to activate your glutes when you need them most - on a run and during your strength workouts. (Lower back pain during a run or squat is a sign the glutes aren't doing their job well.) This means a truly effective glutes-targeting strategy is a well-rounded one. Yes, it needs to strengthen your backside with relevant lower body exercises, but it should also make it easier to recruit those muscles in the first place.