Exercise of the Month:

Belt Glute Bridges

Of late, everybody seems to be talking about gluteal amnesia, apparently it's the new pink. What it refers to is a situation where the glutes are no longer firing effectively during movements like squats, deadlifts (and even walking), causing more stress to be thrown onto the hamstrings and low back. It can occur due to an injury but is often simply due to tight hip flexors, which exert an inhibitory effect on the glutes. This isn't helped by all the time we spend sitting down, which tends to tighten and shorten the hip flexors anyhow

I've seen a lot of rather complex exercises to try and fix this but I go for simplicity myself. Hence the belt glute bridges.

Step 1: Warmup. Just a basic low intensity style warmup.

Step 2: Stretch tight hip flexors: this should be basic static stretching. Take the muscle to the point of light tension and hold it until it relaxes, take it a bit further, hold. Do both sides. A good basic hip flexor stretch appears below. It can be intensified by pushing the front knee forwards while keeping the back flat.

Step 3: Do the glute bridge exercise. Picture appear below but the starting point is with feet roughly shoulder width apart and knees at a 90 degree angle or less. The belt comes in by attaching it around the legs just above the knees (you can see my belt buckle in the side views). This allows you to push out into the belt activating the gluteus medius and minimus and other hip external rotators. After you push out into the belt, you should set your abs and low back tight and then, pushing through your heels, bridge up. It's important to push through the heels, if you push from the toes, this becomes all quad. Hold at the top, lower and repeat. Weight can be added by placing a plate on top of the pelvis, or a partner can provide resistance. I have people do repetitions until they feel their glutes activate strongly (this may take 15-20 repetitions initially). After activating the glutes, I find it useful to do light sets of the exercises that are problematic (i.e. back squat, front squat, deadlift) to integrate the glutes back into the movement. If necessary, the glute bridge can be performed between sets and it usually needs to be done multiple times (prior to lower body workouts) before it becomes automatic

Side view starting position Side view ending position.

The exercise can be made more difficult in a number of ways. The arms (out to the sides for balance) can be brought in next to the body. It can be done one legged, it can be done with both or one feet on top of a swiss ball. Since I typically use this for motor reprogramming, I prefer the most stable version, so that the person can focus on the exercise, and not balance.

Questions and Answers

Q: How many times a week should I train a body part?

A: Although you can always manage to find someone who is an exception to the rule, I think an average bodypart frequency of twice/week or, at the least, once every 5 days is about right. In my experience, most people training with a frequency much below that tend not to grow very well or make optimal strength gains. Some people have found success with even higher frequencies, hypertrophy specific training (HST) and Glenn Pendlay's approach to training both hit everything three times/week.

Q: How important is a 50/50 mix of dex and malto PWO?

A: I don't think it's important at all. This idea has been floating around the internet and seemed to come from an authoritative looking article on another website. Unfortunately, the references cited in support of this combination actually said nothing of the sort: what the paper was looking at was water absorption for different mixes of sugars. And while it did find increased uptake of water with a glucose/fructose mixture, how this was translated as supporting a maltodextrin/dextrose mix is beyond me. The simple fact is that both maltodextrin and dextrose are the same thing, d-glucose, just in different length chains. Malto and dextrose can't use different transporters because they are the same compound. From a recovery or growth standpoint, I don't think a 50/50 mix of this will make an iota of difference in anything.

Q: Is there such a thing as 'strong enough'? My calves are fine & I'm at over twice my body weight on the standing calf raise. I feel like my spine is compressed afterwards and it leaves little 'hickies' on my shoulders. Should I switch to seated raises?

A: Absolutely. With the exception of powerlifters and Olympic lifters (where their competition results are determined by how much they lift), there is definitely a limit on how strong anybody needs to be in a given movement. What that point is depends on the circumstances. But clearly you're at a point where increasing calf strength is not only probably of no benefit, but potentially injurious because of the spinal loading from the standing calf raise. Switching to seated calf raises, or doing calf raises on a 45 degree leg press are both viable solutions. You might also consider cutting back the frequncy and volume of your calf training to maintenance loads, rather, than trying to keep pushing up the poundages. This is one of those places where you can train a bodypart once/week for a couple of heavy stes and maintain strength quite well.