The glutes include 4 major muscles around the back of the hips: gluteus maximus, the outer muscle, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. The glute max is more involved in powerful movements like climbing and running, and the gluteus medius and minimus are more involved with pelvic control and stability.

There are different ways to strengthen your glutes that work to provide different important benefits. Here are are my top 4 favourite exercises to strengthen your glutes, and keep them balanced:

Build a Bridge:

Bridging is an all round winner for working into the glute muscles that extend the hips, including the upper hamstrings, which help to offer stability and support around the back of the hips. The bridge press works into glute max strength as well as what we call the Posterior Oblique Sling, which strengthens into lower back muscles and hamstrings.

Keep Calm and Clam it out

Clams are an exercise that focuses more on the gluteus medius muscle, as they involve outward rotation of the hip. Again, a super important area to work to build stability around the hip – this rotational control exercise helps to support any single leg movements, like running.

Lift, Lower & Repeat

Lift and lowers work into our lateral sling and glute medius. All around amazing for improving hip control, stability and balance.

Keep Swimming Nemo

Swimmer is amazing for getting the glute muscles firing into hip extension, and also works to focus on the timing of activation between the glutes and hamstrings.

There are so many different variations of these exercises, to increase the challenge! So next time you are you doing any of your favourite exercises that strengthen that booty, I hope that this has given you a bit more of an insight into how some of your exercises might be helping to support your body by making it stronger – because our KIC training goes way beyond just working towards looking good – it is more importantly about helping us feel stronger, and more balanced so we can get the most out of life both on and off the mat!