IT'S TIME TO WORK YOUR BUTT!

WANT TO RUN FASTER, STRONGER, AND HEALTHIER?

- Kiera Carter

STRONG GLUTES ARE THE KEY TO STRONG 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 for vanity. The glutes keep us standing upright, separating us humans from our hunched over primate ancestors, and they power the body forward and uphill, says Greg Grosicki, PhD, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Georgia Southern University. In short, these muscles can help you run, and super fast.

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

The glutes are also crucial to injury prevention. “Any weakness in the glutes will propagate further down the kinetic chain and manifest itself as runner’s knee or Achilles tendinitis,” Grosicki says. 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, Grosicki says, meaning you’ll land either too far forward or too far back. Do this hundred of times over the course of a run, and congratulations, you’ve got yourself an injury.

Now, 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.