Spending all day at your desk can take a toll on your health, and while hopping on your bike can help you meet physical activity guidelines and decrease your sedentary time—you’re still sitting in the saddle. That might mean you’re not giving your glutes the love they need. Plus, if you sit all day and never work your glutes—your gluteus medius can stop “firing,” and can’t properly initiate contraction, which ultimately helps power your workouts.
There is a solution to the problem, thankfully. Get your butt in gear and engage those glutes. You can jump straight into glute-intensive exercises like Bulgarian split squats and hip thrusts—but you’d be even better served if you preface those moves with a few activation drills.
Trainer Charlee Atkins, C.S.C.S. understands how important it is to get your glutes firing, especially after having spent the bulk of her fitness career with her butt planted on a bike seat as a spin class instructor. Now, she’s sharing the drills she uses to activate the body’s biggest muscle before she trains her lower body.
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[Looking to start cross training but don’t know where to start? The Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training will teach you all the fundamentals to get the most out of your weight session, priming you for stronger miles in the saddle.]
Before sharing the workout, Atkins poses a question. “Would you place these at the beginning or the end of your workout?” The answer, she continues, is that there is no one size fits all conclusion.
“Well, the good news is, you can do them either, and it will solely depend on what your training goals are. I, however, typically place them at the beginning of my workouts as glute activation drills.”
Perform each drill for 30 to 60 seconds on each side:
- Banded Clamshell
- Banded Deadbug
- Side Leg Lift Hold
- Curtsy Lunge to Knee Drive
You can pick out two or three of the exercises to do before your lower body workout to get your glutes firing, run through the whole series as a circuit to give your glutes some love as a quick standalone routine, or finish off a leg day with any of the moves as a standalone drill.
Brett Williams, a fitness editor at Men's Health, is a NASM-CPT certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter who splits his workout time between strength and conditioning training, martial arts, and running. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.
