Use Your Butt

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Use Your Butt

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uploaded by kerren

Last evening I was out for a jog with my running partner. As we went
single file along the road, I fell in behind him. Being a soft-tissue
therapist, I am always noticing muscles and how well they are or are
not working. I could spend hours at an outdoor cafe watching people go
by and figuring out what kind of muscle problems they have or are going
to have, based on posture and movement. (I am a really cheap date.)

Okay, back to the butt shot. As we were running along, I noticed
that his butt wasn't moving. No, seriously. It looked as if he was
running from the knees down. When I watched his hips, they were almost
motionless. There was no movement coming from the pelvis. As you may
have guessed, that's not a good thing. His leg muscles were working
hard, but the hip muscles were not contributing. Not only is this an
inefficient way to run, but it is also an injury waiting to happen.

Most of us have very strong hip flexors. These are the muscles in
the front of the hips and they are contracted every time we sit at our
computer, on our couch, in our car, etc. Over time, if these muscles
are not stretched they can cause your pelvis to rotate forward causing
pain in the lower back as well as the groin and hip areas. To make the
problem worse, if you are not actively strengthening your posterior
muscles (the glutes and hamstrings), they become weaker and weaker as
they lose the battle against the increasingly stronger flexors. When
muscles are weak, they have less circulation of blood, oxygen and
nutrients. They fatigue easily and they are prone to injury. Now I am
not saying that if you ignore your glutes, you will experience butt
pain. What I am saying is that, you will not move the way you are
designed to move and you may develop pain in your back, hips, pelvis or
legs.

So, there I am thinking all of these things and trying to find a
gentle way to tell my running partner to "use your ass!". This is how I
handled it, I asked him to do an experiment and for the next few
minutes, try to run "like a gazelle", using big movements and strides.
"Really reach forward with your legs and squeeze your butt to bring the
legs back." After some rather uncomplimentary comments under his
breath, he agreed to try it. Besides "feeling like a fool" he did feel
the movements in his hips. I explained that his hips looked very tense
and that his stretching & strengthening routines should focus on
some specific areas. I
also suggested a little neurological trick that is used with athletes
and bodybuilders. Right before you do your activity, whatever it is,
take your fingers and tap on the muscles you want to use. The tapping
is a stimulus to the muscle fibers and it sends a message to your brain
telling it to pay attention to these muscles.