Why Your Glute Training Sucks!

Some may wonder, “why don’t we just make things easy?!” 

Honestly, I don’t know what they think is difficult in what DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training is all about. The REAL conversation is the fact that many fitness pros will tell you to just deadlift, squat, and push-up, that’s it. 

While that doesn’t sound like bad advice (it isn’t for a starting point), it doesn’t help people in the big picture of achieving their fitness goals. It is like a band-aid for those that really have no idea where to begin and that is a good thing. 

What happens though? What happens after the first few workouts and people get bored. You really haven’t taught them about their bodies, how to progress, or where fitness goes. 

A great example is the deadlift. Yea, I know, we have a long history of beating on the deadlift. The reality is I have no problem with the deadlift, in fact, I tell people to start with it when they learn to hip hinge. However, it is the weird overvalued feeling people have towards the deadlift that confuses me. 

That is because we don’t look at the deadlift as the end goal, it is the hip hinge pattern that is most important. It is an important distinguishing concept because a hip hinge has qualities that can be and NEEDS to be stressed by multiple mediums. 

The hip hinge is really made up of how our feet interact with the ground, hinging at the hips, a plank in our trunk, and activation of our lats that will help our connection with our lower body. A deadlift has these components, but as people get heavier and heavier they tend to lose some of these ideas. 

In fact, DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training is trying to expound on the idea of what renown physical therapist, Gray Cook, offers as “self-limiting exercise.” Self what?! Gray describes self-limiting exercises as the following…

“Self-limiting exercises make us think, and even make us feel more connected to exercise and to movement. They demand greater engagement and produce greater physical awareness. Self-limiting exercises do not offer the easy confidence or quick mastery provided by a fitness machine.

Self-limiting exercises make us think, and even make us feel more connected to exercise and to movement. They demand greater engagement and produce greater physical awareness. Self-limiting exercises do not offer the easy confidence or quick mastery provided by a fitness machine.

Examples of other natural, self-limiting categories are governed by breathing, grip strength, balance, correct posture and coordination. Some exercises combine two or more self-limiting activities, and each has natural selective and developmental benefits. These exercises produce form and function while positioning the entire movement matrix for multiple benefits. As we train movement, anatomical structures model themselves around natural stresses.

Self-limiting activities should become the cornerstone of your training programs, not as preventive maintenance and risk management, but as movement authentication—to keep it real. The limitations these exercises impose keep us honest and allow our weakest links to hold us back, as they should.”

Why we have the progressions of our hip hinging in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training is to match this idea of self-limiting exercise. You may wonder? Is it needed though? Isn’t lifting tons enough to show you are strong?

I’ve seen way to many “strong” individuals that can’t perform relatively simple tasks like the one below. Strength Coach, Vince McConnell, has been helping pro athletes identify and improve their weaknesses so they can perform better and be more injury resilient. You think if good for them, you may want to take a peek? BTW, this video isn’t to embarrass this gentleman, in fact, I always get excited when I see things like this because it tells me we can help the individual in a big way!

Okay, so that Front Loaded Single Leg Good Morning is beyond you, but that is because you need to know how we progress movements in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training. When you see how we work through these progressions and how we teach the body (in this case the glutes) to work as the body is designed to move you too start to see how easy it is to achieve the great results we keep talking about in DVRT. 

Try this series and see how connecting the lats, core, and ground to your gluten is the BEST way to create real world strength!

Love these ideas? Don’t miss our upcoming DVRT Restoration program at the renown Results Fitness HERE