If you've been doing all the gluteest medius, all the gluteest maximus exercises that you've seen on social media and you still feel like your glutes are weak or maybe they're just not contracting as much as you would like. Maybe you don't even feel them when you're running. I'm gonna share with you three super simple ways you can have a stronger glute contraction when we're running, because let's face it, the gluteus maximus is the strongest muscle in the body. We need that muscle to work. We need the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus to stabilize the hip and pelvis for the gluteus maximus to have that strong contraction. So this is really important stuff. So let's get into it. Before we get started, though, I'm looking out the window and it's the entire street is covered in snow and ice. And let's face it, it's December. Winter running is not for the week. And maybe, you know, even surviving the holidays is not for the week. I during Thanksgiving definitely let's say we that I faked a nap to just have some peace and quiet. It was amazing. So if you're feeling like your motivation is a little bit lower, then listen to your body. Listen to your body during this time. Don't be upset with yourself, mad at yourself. It's just a time to kind of like end the year, try to end that year on a positive note, and then we'll start into a new year, and everything's gonna be fresh and new. The holidays can be really overwhelming. I remember looking at my husband the other day and saying, this is the most wonderful time of the year. Like this time of year feels insane, and it just feels chaotic. So I just want to add that in that it's it's okay if you're not sticking 100% to your routine. No one is during this time, and you just have to do what feels best to you. I've made so many glute podcast episodes where it's just me talking about how you can improve that glute contraction and all about the different types of glute muscles. And I feel like I talk about it a lot because one, I get asked a lot about the glutes, but also they're just so important. And I feel like when I'm working with an injured runner and it's like through my one-on-ones, they've been to a PT before, maybe they have pain, maybe they even have pain at the foot and ankle. And I feel like a lot of PTs, or so I've heard, this is like all what I hear, where they just look at someone, they see you're a runner, they're not, you know, specialized in treating runners, and they just say, Oh, you just need to strengthen your glutes. And that is just like the most vague answer I feel like you can give a runner. Because, first of all, there's three different glute muscles. Second of all, into what action? And third of all, how is that going to decrease my pain? Now I know that it can decrease your pain in certain circumstances, but I think we need to start digging a little bit more into this and asking why. Because if it's if it's one of those things where your glutes are weak, your glutes can be weak and you can be injured, and the weakness in your glutes could have nothing to do with addressing the source of the pain. Just because you have an area of weakness in your body, specifically like in your lower extremity as a runner, doesn't mean it's contributing to the source of the pain. I just feel like everyone blames the glutes. So I like to go into this in-depth conversation with you so you can start to understand the why and start to like really piece together maybe what you're going through or what you're experiencing. So that is my rant on why I love talking about the glutes. Recently, as you may know, I'm pregnant. I'm 26 weeks pregnant, and I've been having a lot of pelvic floor tension, and I've been taking this pregnancy and postpartum course that is taught by a physical therapist. I bought it like a year ago for continuing ed, and I'm just going through it again because why not? And I think what's super interesting about this is about the pelvic floor is one, the connection it has with the glutes. Two, how we kind of like overlook the pelvic floor and like the function of the pelvic floor, unless you are like pregnant or postpartum, and like males don't even think about the pelvic floor. And also, it's just interesting how like our breathing is connected with our hip, and our hip is connected with our pelvic floor, and like that's connected with our foot with our feet. So the first, so like a lot of these tips that I'm getting and like things that I'm learning, it's really cool because I'm piecing together how runners can use this even if you're not pregnant or postpartum. It's just like, you know, all runners have a pelvic floor, male or female. Um, so I find this stuff really interesting. So I'm starting to like connect the entire body, and pelvic floor is like something in PT school where it's like, this is your pelvic floor, and it moves when you breathe. And that's pretty much it. Um, so it's really interesting to start to see the connection between like the glute, piriformis, adductors, pelvic floor, your breathing, your tongue position, everything like that. So a lot of the stuff that I'm gonna go through today is what I actually learned in my pelvic floor pregnancy postpartum course, which I just think is really cool that we're able to connect the entire body because let's face it, like when we're walking and running, it is a full body movement. And the first way that you can improve your glute contraction is by releasing your TFL. So your TFL is a hip flexor, it's also a hip internal rotator, it sits on the front lateral side of the hip, connects into the gluteus medius, and the IT band. TFL stands for tensor fasciolate. It um it's one of those muscles that's really overlooked, in my opinion, but it can be extremely tender if you have like ITB syndrome, if you have any sort of hip pain, or if you have low back pain, you might, you know, some people just sum up like any muscle in the front of their hip is their hip flexor, which is fine. But if you go, like if you find your hit, your pelvic bone in the front of your hip, you drop down a couple inches and then you move your fingers just a little bit to the outside of your hip, you are on your TFL. Not the biggest muscle ever, but an important stability muscle. And like I said, it works in a hip flexion, hip internal rotation, and it's often extremely tight and tender if you are not using your glutes appropriately. And if we can release the TFL, one, it's gonna be one of those, this hurts so good, but also it's gonna allow you to have a stronger glute contraction. When we can release a TFL, we can work into more hip internal rotation. We can also work into more hip extension, which is exactly what the glute max does. Hip external rotation and hip extension. Because if we can, I think I said that backwards, but the TFL works into hip internal rotation, so if we can release it, we can work into more external rotation. You get the point. We need that rotation in order to use our glutes. So we need to release it in order to, you know, sometimes it's the TFL super tight and it causes an inhibition in what the glute max can do. The best way to actually release a TFL, two ways. You can use a foam roller. I like to say the foam roller is like the nice way. A lacrosse ball is like the mean way. So if you're really like, Lisa, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I don't care how much it hurts. Use the lacrosse ball either on the ground or against the wall. As you can probably note, like a lacrosse ball is gonna be a little bit more dense and able to get into a more localized area compared to a foam roller. Both work. You don't have to kill yourself here to try to release your TFL. It's one of those things where I just recommend you are rolling that muscle for about 90 seconds before your next run. Now, to find it, all you're gonna do is you don't ever want to like roll over your bone, like your pelvic bone, but I do want you to find the front of your pelvis, and you're just gonna work your fingers down just a couple inches, and then you're gonna bring your fingers out to the side like an inch or two, and you're gonna be right on it. Again, you'll probably get like some gluteus, like anterior fibers of the gluteus medius. You could get some ITB. It's okay. You're just trying to find a tender spot, especially if you're like Lisa, my hips feel weak or my glute feels weak, or I have hip pain, release a TFL. 90 seconds, lay on the ground, use a foam roller, or use the foam roller into the wall. And it's one of those things I will say, like when I had ITB syndrome, I would release my TFL before every single run. And it made the biggest difference in my pain level when running. This is not a long-term fix, okay? This is like a massage, not a long-term fix. We're not addressing the 100% like source of the pain, but it will help us activate our glutes more. So make sure you are like still doing glute exercises and you're not just like, I'm gonna release my TFL only. You know, it's a lot of this like rehab stuff is in combination with. So this is just another top secret way that I'm revealing to you that you can have that stronger glute contraction. So it's really good to follow this up with some glute activation exercises, which brings us to tip number two, and that is to get the glutes to fire before your hamstrings. When we run or when we walk during gait, we want our glute to fire like literally microseconds. I don't even know if that's small enough, but like right before the hamstrings fire. The timing of when the glute fires and when the hamstring fires is extremely important. It's super, super important because if the hamstrings fire before the glutes, they're gonna take over into hip extension. I see this all the time with proximal hamstring tendinopathy, hamstring strain. I see it all the time with low back pain, even. So the glutes have to fire before the hamstring. Now, how do you know if this is happening? You're gonna lay on your stomach and you're going to put your hands on the front of your hip bone. All you're gonna do, like in the front of your hip, doesn't have to be anything crazy, just put your entire hand under your hip, the front of your hip. All you're gonna do from here is try to squeeze your left glute muscle, like isolate and squeeze your left glute muscle, and you're just gonna feel if your hip, you feel any sort of like movement into your hand. The hamstrings fire before the glutes. When the hamstrings fire before the glutes, you will feel your hip bone kind of like press into your hand because it's now going into this anterior movement of the femur. When the glutes fire before the hamstrings, you will not feel any movement in the front of your hip. So it's important that you do like a left glute contraction only, kind of like squeeze your glutes, but only in the left side. And then you compare it and you do a right glute contraction only. Again, all you're doing is feeling if you feel any movement in the front of your hip into your hand. If you're like, no, you know, it's just a yes-no. No, okay, then your glutes are firing before your hamstrings. If you say, I feel movement, and maybe it's only on one side, and maybe this is the side that you have a lot of like issues on, and you have a history of like ITB syndrome or like hip pain, low back pain, then that is something that you need to work on. That's something really important. Um, it could be because of tip number three I'm about to share, but it's something where you have to get the glutes to fire before the hamstrings, as the body goes into hip extension, and right as it's about to push off the ground. This is really just so the muscles can work into their roles that they're meant to work in. Like I said, the glute max, most powerful hip extensor, most powerful muscle in the body, really. And we want that to be our primary hip acor. The hamstring is kind of like obviously it's helping the glute. It's going into a glute uh hamstring co-contraction, but it's also has different roles where it's guiding the leg forward. So we just need to make sure that it's not like the hamstring's also now the primary hip extensor, and like the glute kind of has this like amnesia or like the contraction's not as strong because the timing's off. So just make sure like this is one where you can continue to work on it, lay on your stomach, hands in front of your hips. You continue to work on it after, you know, like high rep like 20, 30 times, left side isolation, right side isolation. You continue to work on it after you release your TFL. So this is one of those where, you know, really good to do right before run. Bringing us to tip number three. So you can have a stronger glute contraction when you're running. This has to do with hip mobility. I think that what I see on social media, and this is like my observation, not like from PTs, but more like from runners, is that runners are extremely fixed on finding the best glute um, like glute as a whole exercise. I get asked like literally daily, what is the best exercise for the glutes? And I just want to like scream from the rooftops, like, no offense to anyone who's asked me this, but I just want to scream like, there's three different glutes, and they have all different actions, and it's like six different actions of the hip. So there's never gonna be one great exercise that's gonna address every single thing in terms of strengthening a weak hip. There's it's just like a loaded question where it's like, you know, join me down this rabbit hole. Are we strengthening into hip external rotation, internal rotation, abduction, single leg stability, pelvic stability? Are we strengthening into hip extension? What are we doing here? Are we working on the co-contraction? You know, like what is happening here? But what I find is that, you know, even when I work one-on-one with injured runners who have seen a PT before, maybe their injury is like, quote, a little bit more complex and they need to work with a PT who's more specific in running, then what I see is, you know, their glute mead or their glute max, they could be doing all the different like glute exercises out there and still have a weak glute contraction during a running form analysis or during like a when I address when I'm addressing their movement pattern. The reason behind this is that their hip is can be very stiff, specifically into hip internal and external rotation. I think just to like back up a little bit, when our hip is into hip extension, that means our legs behind us, we're pushing off the ground. It's a coupled motion with hip external rotation. As our foot hits the ground, the hip is internally rotating, and we're going into mid-stance. Mid-stance, think about like this is like the common position where you see hip drop, the hip has to rotate into hip internal rotation in order to have this like really forceful external rotation. Because think about it, if the glute, or not the glute, if the hip is in a neutral position, then and then now all of a sudden, like think about it. If it's going to like from zero degrees to let's say 20 degrees of hip extension, the force is only going to be so strong because the range of motion is a little bit smaller. Versus if you are now going into let's say negative 15 degrees, or which is basically like internal rotation, and now you're rotating into let's say 20 degrees of external rotation, that range or that angle just opened up, which allows for a stronger contraction. It allows for more force to be developed. And this is really important. One for a stronger glute contraction, but also just to make sure everything is working correctly. We have to be able to internally rotate to keep the pelvis stable and prevent hip drop. We have to be able to internally rotate to have that strong hip extension position during push-off. We have to be able to internally rotate in order to use our gluteus medius and gluteus minimus appropriately. Now, I'm not talking about like, you know, instability or too much range of motion into these different rotations. You know, you want you we always want to avoid the extremes, but we don't want to ever just say, like, you know, it's it's a little naive to say, well, you only have to strengthen your glutes here, sidesteps, clamshells, and bridges. And it's like, well, that's not going to address my hip internal rotation mobility if it's really stiff. So I think that's really important to note is we, you know, and I'll say like, I just keep coming back to when I had ITB syndrome, but when I had ITB syndrome on the left side, I knew my hip was really tight into internal rotation. I would assess it and I would look and say, oh my gosh, this is so tight. So I'd work on it. And then I'd work also on my single leg stability exercises, my pelvic stability exercises. And it made strengthening into those exercises so much easier. One, they felt better. It didn't feel like my hip was like sticky or pinchy, but also it just made me able to progress with my rehab so much faster. So improving hip internal rotation is something that is extremely overlooked. If your hip is like pinchy, or if you're like, I it might actually be stiff into internal rotation. A good sign of this, you know, this is like a very general statement, but if you always cross one leg over the other and it's the side that maybe has the history of hip pain, history of low back pain, like for me, left ITB syndrome, history of left ITB syndrome, I always cross my left leg over my right. I always want to sit with my knee out to the side on the left because it just feels so much better. And it's because I don't have as much hip internal rotation on that side. Now it's obviously improved since I've had ITB syndrome. This was like two years ago, but it still is a little bit more limited on that side. So I'll put a YouTube video below that goes over how you can one see if you have stiffness in a hip internal rotation, but two, how you can also improve it. All right, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I hope you are having a great December so far, and I will see you and talk to you next week. Have a good one. Bye.