When we hear the word glutes mentioned, we instantly think of our backside. But do you know how important the glutes are and their involvement in our everyday movement? Now that you’re thinking about your glutes, lets learn about the role they play in low back pain, hamstring, calf and ankle problems.
We have three pairs of glute muscles that help with various and different movements of the hips, which will be covered in our video. Although we can view the glutes as the foundation of our lower half, strong and active glutes help stabilise our pelvis. Our glutes are one of the main muscles that move our hips, yet if we don’t have the ability to continual support this movement it means that other muscles have to step up to help and if this is the case, over time it may cause problems.
The main problems we see due to underactive glutes is low back pain and knee problems, this is due to the muscles of these areas having to compensate. If our glutes are not strong enough to support our back, our erector spinae muscle take an increase in supporting our spinal movement and structure.
Likewise, from our hip and knees perspective the glutes are not providing the support from our knee our hamstrings and calves have to work harder which also compromises our ankles.
The best thing we can do to help this is to get you moving! Simple things like walking and breaking up those long periods spent sitting, taking the steps over elevators and escalators and specific glute exercises to activate and get these stronger.