New World of Glutes

This past weekend I had another wonderful opportunity to share our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts with great fitness professionals. For the past three years I have enjoyed presenting at the Fitness Revolution Summit. Some great professionals there and more importantly lots of passionate fit pros that want to bring back better solutions to their clients.

Well, I wanted to reinforce something that was really important to me that we have talked a lot about in our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts. That is giving people insights into the REAL world of glute training. I actually named my presentation “The Glute Truth” and one speaker asked me, “so, Josh, what IS the glute truth.” Of course I gave him my stereotypical Henkin humor by telling him, “you can’t handle the truth!” which he chuckled.
Yet, his question is really important. Whenever I present on our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts I have a plan in mind. I think about what are the major takeaways I want attendees to have and these are my top three!

Burning Your Glutes is Pointless

As I will share with you shortly in an upcoming blog post, I think bodybuilding has been very destructive in the way we have tried to help people be better. Without getting way off topic and debating that (you can do it later when that post comes out!), the point is that most people judge the effectiveness of the glute training by how much they “feel” their butts!

Now, that might not seem crazy, after all, if I “feel” the muscle it MUST be working! Well, sorta, kinda, not really? How do I mean? A great example and something that has great relevance to glute training is world renown spinal expert, Dr. Stuart McGill’s “Big 3 Core Stability” exercises. Dr. McGill is one of, if not THE authority, on low back health and rehab. He lists three exercises he feels are foundational to building true core stability. What are they? Hold your breathe!

-Curl-up (slightly different than a crunch)
-Side Plank
-Bird Dog

How many of you that have ever done side planks, or bird dogs finished them and said, “holy cow, my abs are REALLY on fire!!!” Even though Dr. McGill has performed extensive research on the effectiveness of these exercises they don’t “burn” like hundreds of crunches, leg lifts, v-ups, you name it. Aren’t THESE exercises more effective then because we can “feel” them so much more?

The reality is building a better and smarter body means teaching it how to work better, not to just make it as humanly sore as possible. While that might make you mentally feel good, it often doesn’t lead to the results you want. So, judging the effectiveness of your glute exercises on how sore you get or man, how much they are burn is not a great strategy.

Dead Man Anatomy

I shared some time ago as it was one of my favorite quotes from the Perform Better summits and it came from one of the best, Mike Boyle. During Coach Boyle’s presentation he said that most of us learn “dead person anatomy”. What does that mean?

Most of us are taught to look at how muscle are connected and then how they move a joint, mostly on cadavers. The major problem in doing so is you lose what the body does in real life. For example, people will say that the glutes adduct the leg (move it away from the body). Sure, they CAN do that and are part, but the reality is their role is much more in stabilizing the hip to prevent this lateral motion. After all, how many of you walk or run shooting your legs out side to side?

That is why in our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts we talk so much about frontal plane strength. Whether that is learning to RESIST the motion in many of our lunge progressions, half kneeling, our side plank variation, or moving through the frontal plane in our hip hinge, lunge, and even pressing progressions.

DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts look at what is known as “functional anatomy”. That is more about looking at how our muscles work together to perform real life movement. You might ask why doesn’t EVERYONE do this? Man, I can’t have ALL the answers! In all seriousness I do believe it is because many don’t know the difference and fall into “dead person anatomy” all the time.

How do you know? Next time you read an article and they are talking about origin and insertions and show pictures like this, run! Why? Because the body NEVER works in isolation in real life. We should be looking at how muscles work together!

Connect The Chain!

You MIGHT be tired of me talking about this, but sorry, gotta do it! Far too many people are still NOT doing this that I think it has to be discussed again and again! It goes hand in hand with what I just spoke about in dead person anatomy. That is that our muscles work in chains, not in isolation. So, what are these chains and how can DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts help you make them better?

First and foremost people need to realize everything comes from the ground up. That means if you are standing kneeling, etc. your feet are where you core and glutes begin. Simply by trying to “grab” the ground with your feet makes your glutes and your overall body work better. At this past weekend’s conference I helped a woman that when she squatted has about a 7 out of 10 pain in her hip to a 4 just by having her grab the ground with her feet when she squatted. Yea, that’s pretty significant!

Another important chain that will help you BIG time is the lat/core/glute combination. We talk a lot in our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts that our exercises and programs look at training these chains. In fact, using our Ultimate Sandbag is not just a form of external resistance, but how we hold and use it actually allows us to train these chains more effectively and help people learn how to become stronger and feel better almost INSTANTLY!

Change is never easy, in fact, it makes people EXTREMELY uncomfortable because I think people identify change with “being wrong.” Listen, if you have been in fitness for any period of time, you will find that we can always do things “better”. Don’t think of being right or wrong, think are you discovering better solutions to achieve you and your clients want to achieve. Not only better in the result, but in the speed and experience you can provide them. Now THAT’S cool!

Want to learn more about how to use innovative strategies in our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts to get extraordinary results? Then check out our Pelvic Control program HERE for 20% off and never see glute or core training the same way again!