Why Do We Keep Getting Glute Workouts SO Wrong?

Social media is always really good at providing constant topics for us to discuss. Especially when it comes to how people interact with the information we provide. One that has been especially interesting to me is how we still have such false perception and understanding about popular ideas like glute workouts.

Instead of getting into all the detailed science, let me use this post to discuss some of these popular misconceptions about glute workouts.

Myth: Well, Everything Is Good

When I hear coaches try to justify that every exercise, training method, and tool is good it is REALLY hard for me. There are two HUGE reasons why. The first is easy, we don’t have infinite time when training and even if we did, we also don’t have endless energy. That means we can train all day, even with something like our glute workouts, and do EVERYTHING that has ever been touted to be effective.

There is a famous saying, “when you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else.” For our purpose of our glute workouts, we have to consider when we say yes to doing a certain exercise, we are saying no to doing another one. Prioritizing and knowing what is most effective makes this decision very easy because the TRUTH is, you really don’t have to do everything, you have to do the right things. You only really know what that is when you understand how our body functions.

The second may surprise many, that is all training ideas, exercises, and so forth don’t actually work together. Yes! Ideas in training have to be cohesive and fit together as well as create a synergistic effect. What people often fall into a trap of in wanting to do everything is that methods, exercises, and so forth is that they use these strategies that don’t work together AT ALL!!! For example, people think if their glute workouts involve an exercise that trains the glutes as they are designed to work and then get focus on an isolated glute exercise that they feel just builds better looking glutes, they have glute workouts that cover both ends of the spectrum.

What they do NOT consider is the following. In such a case, going from using the glutes functionally where we work on teaching them how to integrate with the chains of the body correctly and then go into isolation, this actually can undo what we were just teaching the body. That is because ALL information just doesn’t go into our muscles, but our nervous system too. The nervous system in taking in this information and therefore gets very contradictory messages. So, if you just taught the body how to use the glutes correctly and then teach them something totally different, you send the nervous system information that can reinforce the compensation strategies it was using in the first place because you just fed it incorrect material about how to use the body.

Myth: Well, One Is Good For Function, The Other Is Good For Looking Better

This myth doesn’t just exist for glute workouts (well none of these really do), but it really boggles my mind. I honestly don’t understand, plus I never get a good response explaining it to me, why if we train the body how it is designed to function we don’t get a better looking body? That seems completely counterintuitive that the answer to looking better is NOT training the body how it works. Is it just me?

Honestly, I do know (even if it isn’t expressed well) that people see the lighter weight of our Ultimate Sandbag exercises and don’t believe they can serve as good of glute workouts as a really heavy barbell. However, we just shared last week a major literature review (looking at many studies) and the researchers found step-ups (a whole variety of them) were more effective in training the glutes than barbell hip thrusts. Doesn’t this fly in the face of the idea that training functionally doesn’t build our muscles up better?

Most people would be floored to see step-ups beat both trap bar deadlifts & barbell hip thrusts right?!

This doesn’t just happen with hip thrusts, many research papers have shown that step-ups and lunges outperform squats and deadlifts in the impact of glute training. People want to say this is impossible, but this is research study after research study. Just because it goes against one’s favorite fitness meme about lifting heavy doesn’t make it any less true.

That’s why we are so adamant about training the body as it is designed to work. Even if it seems like it shouldn’t make sense, the more we examine how the body uses different muscles and integrates them int our movement THEN these ideas start to make WAY more sense! In fact, you start to wonder why people would want to ignore training our body naturally and actually actively promote to train it in the manner it was never designed to do! Check out some of the smarter ways to integrate function into your glute workouts and get a better performing, resilient, and yes, looking body.

This week save 20% on our Ultimate Sandbags/Water Bags, Online Certifications, Courses, and Workout Programs with code “save20” HERE

 

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