A GOOD THING: Edition 6
Booty, booty, booty, rockin’ everywhere!
That’s right y’all we are doing butt stuff all week because strong glutes are a game changer.
As the largest muscle group in the body, working the glutes can boost your ability to feel stronger quite quickly and with so many benefits. We spend so much time seated on and squishing our glutes, that they can become very lazy and dormant. As forward facing creatures, the back side of the body can be hard to connect to but is essential to standing up straight and finding a healthy spine. As we focus on glutes this week, try to forgive us because it's going to get spicy!
Let's zoom in on the cheeks and talk about what's happening inside. The glutes are a group of muscles that can be divided into the three primary muscles — gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. Deep inside there are six supporting muscles that lie underneath the gluteus muscles, known as the “deep six”. The glutes help to stabilize your body when you stand, push off to walk or run, and balance when twisting your body. The size and position of the glutes mean that they play an integral role in many functional movements you do everyday.
Throughout class this week you will notice that the GTP team focuses on hitting your glutes from every angle, with different loads, and at different speeds. The glutes are made up of both fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers. Fast-twitch muscle fibers react and adapt better to heavier, intense load. Slow-twitch muscle fibres adapt best to volume and overload. By combining both types of exercise, you target all the muscle fibers within the glute muscles to maximize your results. When we combine this with changing the body's relationship to gravity, we are providing strength for every side of the glutes.
On top of strengthening the glutes, we must also stretch and release them. Tight glutes can cause pain in the low back, hips, and knees. As stuff burns in class this week, make sure you give just as much attention to stretching afterwards. Meet us on the mat this week as we take butt stuff to a whole new level.
