It's been a minute, I know. That's my fault, I let the stressors of life to keep me from delivering on my promise of providing more educational content for you guys and for that I am sorry. I will not let it happen again. With that being said, lets talk some mother effing glutes!
Last time, we covered how to attack the glute medius (A.K.A upper glute). Today, we are going to cover how to attack the side glute, or glute minimus.
This part of the glute is primarily responsible for hip stabilization and abduction (the outward motion of the hip joint). Therefore, this muscle is very important in being able to move in all directions while maintaining balance and stability. To properly target this muscle, we need to be able to challenge the body and our stability in the frontal plane.
There are even ways to hit this muscle indirectly such as loading an exercise like a lunge on one side to force more stabilization of the body. Another common exercise is the hip abduction machine which is primarily for the hip flexors, but also affective in hitting the glute minimus. Although, this may be a great exercise for the glute minimus, it is not the only one that can target this section of the glute.
Today, we are going to discuss 2 other exercises you can implement into your routine to strengthen this part of the glutes.
One of my favorite exercises for this muscle is the curtsy lunge. This movement requires tremendous balance especially once we load it with dumbbells. It requires a lot of stability and balance because it requires us to move laterally from the hip while maintaining alignment of the hip, knee, and ankle. This puts an ample amount of stress on the glute minimus.
If you notice in the picture, the woman has moved her back leg laterally while maintaining proper alignment of the knee and ankle to put the tension on the glute minimus rather than our tendons and ligaments in the knee. Make sure that the front knee does NOT flare outside of our ankle.
Another exercise that I enjoy programming to work the glute minimus is the side lunge. This exercise requires us to absorb the weight and thus allow for lenghtening of the muscle in order to produce force to brign us back up and thus shortening the muscle. All work must be done through the side we are trying to target and making sure we just use the other leg as a "kick stand".
Another important part of this movement to keep in mind in order to fully get glute activation is to make sure we sit the hips back as we descend in the movement. The straighter your shin can stay to the ground the better.
Finally, to finish off our mini lesson on how to work the glute minimus, we have the hip abduction machine. While this does work the hip flexors, it also allows for the glute minimus to be activated rather well. To make it even more glute medius, you can sit at the edge of the seat, pin your shoulders back to create an arch in the low back, and place your feet further away from your body.
While the glutes are made up of three parts, the glute medius is going to be primarily responsible for stability and hip abduction. It is important to work all three parts of the glute in order to create not just a balanced physique, but a properly functioning body as well.
Next week we will cover the grand daddy of them all, the glute max (the main component of the glutes and everyone's favorite).