Why Your Glute Exercises Aren’t Improving Your Walking or Running

What's going on everyone? Welcome back to my channel. In today's video, we're going to look at three exercises for strengthening your gluteus medius and minimus muscles, especially when related to walking and running. So, we see lots of exercises out there for strengthening these muscles that are more isolated, or maybe you're lying on your back, or lying on your side, and those can be really helpful, but they often don't transfer well to walking and running. So, if you notice that you're having pain on the side of your hip, maybe you have gluteal tendinopathy, and it's aggravated with walking and running, then the exercises I'm going to show today will help with those symptoms, and they will help transfer your glute strength and ability to activate your glutes in walking and running. If you're new to my channel, my name's Dr. Tom Walters, and I'm an orthopedic physical therapist. So, again today we're looking at strengthening our glute muscles, but in more functional positions, especially for people who have pain or functional impairments when walking or running. Now, I do have another gluteus medius and minimus strengthening video that's a good place to start, exercises that are on the ground, and uh are better if you have more acute symptoms. I'll put a link for that video down in the description box below the video. Today's video is going to look at exercises that really are applicable to the positions we find ourselves in when walking and running. We have a lot of research out there showing that sometimes our isolation exercises we do in physical therapy, while they can help with pain and mobility and strength, they don't always transfer to function. So, we need exercises that are a little more similar to our functional tasks. When we think about gluteus medius and minimus, which are out here on the side of the pelvis, and their tendons attach right here on this bone on the side of the pelvis, uh on the side of the femur, greater trochanter, people will often have pain there when they have gluteal tendinopathy. And what happens is when we're walking and we're when we're running, when we walk, there's a period of time when we step on our leg, and our other leg is coming forward to take the next step, that we're standing on one leg. During this position, this phase of the gait cycle, which is called single limb stance, our gluteal muscles have to contract to help keep our pelvis level. So, if they are weak, our pelvis will kind of drop. You see people like this and as they're walking, their pelvis kind of juts out side to side. And that's often a sign of gluteal weakness. Maybe the nerve going to those muscles is compromised, but what we want to do is incorporate exercises that teach those muscles how to contract and activate so that we can maintain the position of our pelvis when walking. And the same is true in running. When running, we're always on one leg at a time. We're hopping basically from one leg to the other while we take each step. And the same thing, when we land on our leg, our glutes have to contract to help keep our pelvis level. So, we're really going to look at three exercises today that mimic that activity and help improve function with both walking and running. So, let's jump into the first one. All right, our first exercise is a single limb stance

exercise. It's going to be very similar to taking a step in your actual walking cycle, so it's much more functional. What you're going to do here is if my symptoms, if my issue's on my right side, I'm going to show everything from my right side, so just reverse it if it's on your left. What you're going to do here is think about taking a step out with your right leg. You're going to put your weight, your weight's going to transfer to that leg, and the whole time I'm thinking about keeping my pelvis level. I don't want the opposite side of my pelvis to drop down like that. That's what my glutes do, they keep the pelvis level. So, you can feel the top of your pelvis here, iliac crest, and make sure it stays level. So, what you're going to do is put your weight down, and then you're going to bring your other knee up and your opposite arm forward. So, you've got the opposite arm swing just like when we're walking. Then you're going to put it back down, kind of step back, step onto that leg again, control it, and bring the knee up and the other arm up. So, you're kind of going back and forth like that and doing reps. And this isn't really a strengthening exercise. It's really more of a neuromuscular control and activation exercise. If you have pain, if you have gluteal tendinopathy right now, you may feel a little bit of that pain out here on the side where those glute tendons attach. If that happens, that's okay as long as it's kind of in that mild to moderate region. You're going to hold there for a second, come back down, kind of lift up the lead leg, put your weight there, and then take a step. Think about doing 10 reps of this. And in the beginning of rehab, I want you to try to do three to five sets of this each day. You can spread them throughout the day, but we're essentially teaching the neuromuscular system how to activate gluteus medius and minimus so that they can control the femur, our thigh bone, and our pelvis. So, we're learning to control both those. Step forward, opposite leg comes up, and opposite arm comes forward. It's just going to go back and forth like that, kind of mimicking our natural walking cycle. Okay, so that is our first exercise. Give that one a try. All right, our next exercise is a single leg

RDL. This is another great one because we're standing on one leg, which simulates that single limb support phase that we find in walking and running, and it's going to really help strengthen our glutes because it's more hip focused. So, what you're going to do is stand on the leg that you're working, and what you're going to put your hands up on your pelvis to put that way you can kind of feel to make sure everything's staying level, and then you're going to kick your leg back keeping your spine in line with your thigh, and just kind of moving all as one piece, one element. So, this is really going to help to encourage glute and hamstring activity. I don't want you to go too deep with it. And if your balance is a problem, you can be near a wall, or you can kind of keep your toes near the ground and do a little bit smaller range of motion so that your toes are just kind of hovering over the ground, and you really think about feeling your glutes working. Those glutes are keeping your femur in a nice neutral position, and again, they're keeping your pelvis level. So, I don't want my leg wiggling all over the part all over the place, and I don't want my pelvis dropping all over. So, try to keep everything stable and just move with control. We're really looking to not only build strength, but also improve neuromuscular control in that hip and pelvic region, okay? So, go for three sets of 10 to 15 repetitions. And this is our second exercise, the single leg RDL. All right, here is our

last exercise. This is a lateral step up. This is going to again require us to land on one leg, control our position, and then move back to the starting point. This has more of a frontal plane side to side component to it, which is necessary when we're walking. Even though walking and running are mostly a forward and back sagittal plane movement, when we land, we do have to control our femur, our hip joint in this frontal plane. So, this is a nice exercise for bringing that in. So, what you're going to do, here's again thinking about keeping the pelvis level. I'm going to step up with the side in my leg in question, plant, kind of hold there, and then immediately come back down. So, I'm going to step Oop, there I kind of lost my balance. So, try to keep your balance. You're going to plant, really focus on keeping your pelvis level. This is the big thing. Don't let your pelvis drop on the up side and try not to let your knee cave in. So, those are the two big ones that happen to people. Usually in the beginning, it's good to kind of spot something out on the floor or in the room to kind of keep your control. You can also look in a mirror with these when you're starting out if you need that, but try to slowly shift away from you know, using a mirror, getting feedback like that. You really want to be able to feel what's happening in your body and feel those muscles working and the control of your hip and pelvis. So, for this one, like the last exercise, think about three to four sets of this in around 10 to 15 reps. Really try to go up there, stick the position, and then come back down, okay? So, that is our lateral step up exercise is the last exercise in this video. Thanks for checking out today's video. I

hope you find these exercises to be helpful. If you need a more comprehensive program for gluteal tendinopathy or another glute issue, I'd encourage you to check out this program in my book. So, if you go to the hip chapter, you'll find this hip joint pain program, and there's a section here on gluteal tendinopathy and trochanteric bursitis on page 333. All the programs in my book will take you through three phases and have pictures of me performing the exercises. They're much more comprehensive programs like you would get if you came to see me in physical therapy. The book has chapters for each body region and programs for all the common issues. So, it's a great DIY resource. I also have a rehab science app. So, it's available in the App Store. It has programs for all of the body regions and common conditions, but the exercises are in video format. So, if we go down to the hip section here and we scroll over, we will find this glute tendon pain one. So, this is even more specific to glute issues, and of course, it's all videos here. So, you can go in and watch me perform the exercise, see how to perform it. There's also a community feature where you can DM me or come into the feed, and then every other week I do office hours on Zoom. So, if you want to ask me your specific questions, you can register for one of one of my live Q& A's and come in and get direct help for me. I'll put links for both these resources down in the description if you want to check them out. Thanks again for watching today's video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.