Strong Glutes: Knees Out and Creating Torque

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The following is a special guest post by Dr. Nick Askey, Airrosti Provider.


It’s time to bring your glutes back from their vacation. The glutes are just as important in creating torque and stabilizing the hip in external rotation as they are in creating forceful hip extension in athletic movements like Olympic lifts and sprinting.  When the glutes aren’t used for a long period of time, they can cause serious knee injuries, lower back and hip pain.

When CrossFit Isn’t Enough

You may ask yourself: “Why are my glutes weak? I CrossFit five times a week?” Even though you are CrossFitting five hours a week, you are most likely sitting at work for 8 hours a day. During that time you are laminating your glutes together at 100 degrees against your chair and allowing your hip flexors to tighten up.  If your hip flexors tighten up, your brain will not allow the glutes to contract. Instead, you walk around with a wicked anterior pelvic tilt to keep the tension off your hip flexor and your glutes shut off.  Your body will shut the glutes down to conserve energy as well as protect the weaker tighter hip flexor. If you aren’t using your glutes with full hip mobility, they will not work as hard so that they conserve energy and avoid injury.

Keeping Your Glutes Engaged

If you ever find yourself struggling in the bottom of a clean or a squat, chances are you are losing control of one or both of your hips on the way down into the bottom of the movement.  When I talk about losing control, I mean that the hip falls into internal rotation causing the knee to deviate medially toward the other knee.  If one knee looks like it wants to party with the other knee, it means one of two things: you are losing control of your hip due to poor motor patterns and hip stability, or your arch is collapsing into pronation, also known as flat foot. 
Both of these can be prevented by creating torque through the heels by externally rotating the hips and engaging the glutes to maintain a stable anchor with the ground.  You cannot physically have a flat foot if you create external rotation torque through the foot with the hips.  Try to point your toes straight forward with the hips at neutral and then externally rotate the hips and notice how the arch of your foot looks much more defined and lifted.
Pavel calls the torque from the hips and posterior chain the “rear wheel drive” of the human body.  When you’re doing lifts in the gym make sure you’re using the rear wheel drive.  Happy hip burning!


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