I cannot stress enough the importance of strong glutes in flexibility training. Glutes protect your low back and pelvis. These muscles support your upper body. The top of the glutes also reach up into the low back and create a cushion for your joints; keeping that low back healthy as you push deeper in your contortion training. By having strong glutes, you can squeeze them to push the front of the hip flexors into their end-range of motion, therefore using your hips to assist your low back and alleviate some of the pressure. Strong glutes help you lift your chest up in an arched back positions and are one of the main muscles that lift you into a chinstand.
If you are feeling low back pain and like your low back is “crunching” when you stretch, chances are its related to weak glutes. Most of the time when people begin their flexibility journey, the low back takes the brunt of the work. This can lead to fear of stretching, pain, and injury. The reason the low back works so much is typically because it naturally has a larger range of motion then other areas of the body.
Doing specific glute-focused conditioning is really important in training your back and hip flexibility. Furthermore, after training your back flexibility you should feel soreness in your glutes, not your low-back. If you are feeling it in your low-back, your glutes were not activated enough and your low-back had to compensate for it.
Some of my favorite bodyweight exercises for strong glutes includes: Fire Hydrants, Flutter Kicks, Glute Bridges, Curtsy Lunges, Single-leg Balances, Pistol Squats and climbing up stairs. Some of my favorite glute-focused weight lifting exercises are: Romanian Deadlifts, Bulgarian Split Squats, Step-ups, and Cable Kickbacks.
Making sure your glutes are strong will make your backbend more flexible and make your butt look better! Its a win-win (:
Stronger GLUTES= Less BACK PAIN
