A Little, Often: Hips Back

A ready stance

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Can you feel your glutes? 

I don’t mean reaching back there for a squeeze. When you’re standing, do you feel any action in your butt? Are the muscles engaged?

I’m writing about this because it’s been coming up almost daily in my classes and in my own practice the last few weeks, and so in this month’s A Little, Often, I offer a functional (practical) perspective. I know from being a bodyworker for 20 years that glute dysfunction aka lazy booty is super common — so frequent that I devoted a whole chapter of my book Hit Reset to it.

This is also timely because we’re in peak springtime and, with it, you might be feeling the collective urgency to move forward. Guess what muscles initiate your push off, drive you onward, and create momentum? Yep, your butt.

Fact is, glute max — the largest of your gluteal muscles — is designed to power forward movement. It’s essentially the boss of your push off. Due to a variety of reasons, we often default to relying on other muscles to extend our hip and move our leg back — helpers like hamstrings and some of the smaller, more intrinsic muscles of your hips so easily end up overdoing it, while the boss, well, hangs out. This can lead to imbalances ranging from back pain to knee strain, and an overall feeling of lethargy or stuckness.