Running is not just about having strong knees, ankles, calves, and thigh muscles. Many runners fail to acknowledge the powerhouse. Yes, I am talking about the glutes, our bum muscles, or buttocks. They don’t do glute strengthening drills and focus primarily on speed and mileage. Glute strength is essential for runners, be it for mid-distance, long-distance, tempo runs, interval runs, or sprints. Let’s see why you need strong glutes for running.
Glutes give strength and stability to the hips and legs while running. When you run with good form or posture, your glutes also relieve some amount of stress from knees and ankles, which is a vital practice to avoid running injuries. By understanding and actively working on glute strengthening, you can take control of your running performance and fitness.
The vital role of strong glutes for running
Glute muscles play an important role in running, as they are one of the biggest muscular groups in our body. They are made of 3 major muscles.
Your running will be more stable because of the combination of the following:
- Gluteus Maximus: This is one of the heaviest and biggest muscles in our body, which extends up to our hip joint and aids many lower body movements. It also helps to slow down the leg swings and prepares it for the subsequent stride.
- Gluteus Medius: While running, our knees and hips must remain stable to absorb the impact of the ground. The gluteus medius, another muscle present on our hip’s side, is meant to keep our pelvis stable.
- Gluteus Minimus: Of these three glute muscles, this is the smallest one, and it helps with internal rotation and hip abduction. It also helps in maintaining proper body alignment and balance while running.
By developing strong glutes for running, you can achieve a more powerful stride, avoid knee and lower back pain, and improve your posture and balance. This sense of achievement can be a great motivator for your running journey.
Benefits of strong glutes for running
Enhanced Speed and Power
The glutes propel you forward while running. A stronger gluteus maximus generates more force with each stride, improving speed, power, efficiency, and running economy. Running economy refers to the energy cost of running at a given pace, and strong glutes can help improve this. Whether sprinting or running long distances, strong glutes boost endurance and performance.
Improved Balance and Stability
The glutes facilitate effective energy transfer during running by stabilizing the hips and pelvis. However, our glutes often become weaker due to poor posture or muscle imbalances. As a result, we feel more strain in our knees, hips, and lower back, which affects our running.
Injury Prevention
When our glutes are weak, we compensate for the need for strength by overusing our other muscles extensively. You could get injured because of additional strain applied by your hamstring and knee. Strengthening the glutes improves muscular balance and running biomechanics, lowers the chance of injury, and improves overall performance. It helps avoid these problems.
How to Know if Your Glutes Are Really Weak?
It is not so straightforward to conclude if our glutes are weak or not. However, a few symptoms will tell its condition. Watch for the following few symptoms:
- Knee or Hip Pain: If you experience constant pain in your knees, hips, or lower back while running, then it can be due to a weak glute. It is not the same pain that goes away after running a few miles.
- Poor Posture: Another indicator of weak glutes is when you find difficulty in maintaining a proper posture while running or otherwise. This problem can only happen when your glutes are not working as expected.
- Abnormal Gait: Weak glutes may be the cause of your off-center or unstable jogging gait, like swaying to one side or getting muscle spasms. Unusual movement patterns are usually brought on by poor hip stability and weak glutes.
- Plantar Fasciitis: If your glute remains weak for a long time, your running will be affected every time your feet touch the ground. It can result in plantar fasciitis, which causes severe pain in your heels.
Essential Exercises to develop strong glutes for running
If you are a regular runner, then you must do a few exercises to strengthen your glute. The exercises can help you avoid injuries during running, and your performance can be better. Some of these exercises include bridges, single-leg hip thrusts, clamshells, sidestep toe touches, squats, lunges, and deadlifts.
Bridges
It is one of the basic exercises for your glute that can help strengthen your lower back, hamstrings, and also glutes. In this exercise, you may lie on your back, keeping your feet flat on the ground and knees bent. Then, squeeze your glutes while raising your hips above. You can try single-leg bridges by lifting one of the legs while in the bridge position to add difficulty level.
Single-Leg Hip Thrusts
This exercise can help to increase the stability of your hip, where your glutes will be isolated.
- Keep your knees bowed
- Place your feet on the ground by keeping it flat
- Place your upper back against a bench
- Take your seat on the ground.
- While rising, squeeze your glutes
- Push your hips upwards.
You can make this exercise more intense by using your one leg at a time.
Clamshells
We had discussed medius and minimus before, which have a big role in our pelvic stability and knee alignment. This exercise will try to target these.
- Lie on your side
- Keep your knees bent, making an angle of 90 degree
- Keep your feet together
- Open your top knee to make the legs look like a diamond shape
- Slowly bring it down.
You can make this exercise harder by using a resistance band around your thighs.
Sidestep Toe Touches (Monster Walks)
Step sideways with control while maintaining a modest bend in your knees while wearing a resistance band around your thighs. The abductors and adductors, which are crucial muscles for lateral stability and a strong running stride, are strengthened by this exercise.
Squats and Lunges
Compound exercises like lunges and squats improve general lower body power by strengthening the quadriceps and glutes. Reverse lunges and single-leg squats are particularly good for strengthening the glutes and enhancing balance.
Deadlifts help to develop strong glutes for running
One of the best workouts for building up the posterior chain, which includes the hamstrings and glutes, is the deadlift. You must do it with a proper form and prevent injury, so pay close attention to hip hinge mechanics.
Lifestyle Habits That Affect Glute Strength
Lifestyle choices largely maintain strong glutes in addition to planned workouts. One of the primary causes of gluteal weakness is prolonged sitting. Your glutes become inactive when you sit for long periods of time, and they may eventually get “detrained.” To prevent this issue, make sure you take a 10-15 minutes break to do movements like standing up and stretching after every 40-50 minutes. You could also walk to improve the blood flow.
Strong glutes for running – Conclusion
If you run regularly, then it is important to maintain a strong glute to avoid injuries. It also helps to maintain the right posture while doing other activities and also while sitting. You must do specific workouts with the proper form to activate and strengthen these muscles. You must also reduce prolonged and incorporate glute workouts into your fitness routine. It will help you enhance your performance, making way for a faster, more efficient, and healthier running future.