✔The glutes are our largest muscle group, and virtually every movement carried out by the lower body requires their activation. Gluts are deceptively difficult to train. For starters, many women suffer from "gluteal amnesia," a condition in which the glute muscles act like... well, like lazy asses. Due to the hours we sit behind desks and in front of screens - and compounded by inadequate training - the glute muscles eventually sit back on their haunches and let the hamstrings and lower-back muscles take over their main job of extending the hips and rotating our femurs in their sockets. over time, this can lead to back, hip, or knee pain - as well as a severe case of pancake butt✔
. ❤Boosts Sex Appeal Research indicates that a smaller waist and larger hip circumference acts as a magnet to the opposite sex across most cultures and multiple generations. "Human aesthetics, what makes us look good, is less about body weight and more about your body's proportions and ratios," says Pilon. Strengthening and developing your glutes is one way to, ahem, pad that ratio.
🔥Powers Your Body The glutes are known in fitness circles as your body's engine, not only because they're the largest muscle group in the body, but also because they're involved in most athletic functions, says Bret Contreras, C.S.C.S., coauthor of The glutes are known in fitness circles as your body's engine, not only because they're the largest muscle group in the body, but also because they're involved in most athletic functions, says Bret Contreras, C.S.C.S., coauthor of . The glutes produce four distinct actions: extending the hips, swinging the leg outward, rotating the leg laterally, and tilting the pelvis backward. "Strong glutes increase your force and power during everything from sprinting, jumping, and squatting to climbing, swinging, and cutting from side to side."
👌Protects Joints A stronger butt can mean healthier knees, as well as a pain-free lower back and hips. "The glutes pull your femur [thighbone] rearward during hip extension, which keeps the bone centered in the middle of the hip socket rather than sliding forward and causing hip pain," says Contreras. "And strong glutes ensure that the femurs track properly over the toes when squatting, jumping, and landing. In other words, it prevents your knees from caving in toward each other, which is a major player in knee pain and injury."
👌Banishes Back Pain There's a strong body of evidence that shows high gluteus-maximus strength & endurance are correlated with a lessened risk of lower-back pain, says Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., director of the human performance lab at Lehman College. "Increasing glute strength with resistance training in a variety of rep ranges is the best way to prevent pain."
👌Regulates Your Flow Women with lower waist-to-hip ratios have fewer irregular menstrual cycles and ovulate more frequently, says Pilon. "This is a correlation and not a causation--meaning we don't know which caused which—but we do know they are related, so there's a possibility that changing your waist-to-hip ratio could impact some markers of your health." Since your hip measurement is taken at its biggest point (in other words, your butt factors into that), it stands to reason that improving the glutes via strength training could do more than make your booty pop—it may also garner you more good news at the doctor's office.