Why do you need to work your glutes, AKA your butt? Hint…It’s not just for bikini season!
The gluteal muscles are very popular to exercise but it’s often a purely aesthetic endeavor. The reality is that those muscles are vital for both good posture and good movement.
When we sit too much, as most of us do, those muscles tend to get very tight. A tight muscle is not a strong muscle, quite the opposite. And sitting also makes the hip flexors tight. So our legs pretty much want to stay in that chair shape even when we stand up. The glutes extend the hips, therefore strong glutes help you have more flexible hips that can extend out of that 90 degree angle they spend so much time in. This allows you to stand taller, walk with a longer, healthier stride and do things like squatting down and standing up or climbing up a steep incline with more ease and power.
Part of what’s so great about Pilates is that we work the body in a balanced way, targeting those under-used muscles to create more uniformity of muscles. The exercises are designed to get groups of muscles working together in harmony, the way they were designed to. It’s one thing to do some tiny, never used in real life exercise to “feel the burn” but in Pilates you get to find a full range of motion and feel how many different muscles working together create more power, stability and mobility. This allows the results to infiltrate your actual life.
If glute work leaves your lower back feeling tight or painful, you might want to rethink what your doing. The glutes need to work together with the hamstrings and lower abdominals so the lower back doesn’t get compressed too much in the process. If you’ve got hip tightness that never improves no matter how many Barre classes you do, again, perhaps you need to try something different. Pilates will work your whole body, of course you can target areas of weakness and tightness but our body works as a synergistic system and movements that allow that tend to yield the best results.
And why do you want to “burn” your butt anyway? And if that’s what you’re after laying by the pool in your bikini is a much more pleasant way to do it! But I’d recommend sunscreen and skipping the burn altogether.
Solara Pilates 