0:00 This is me, glute dominant. And this is me, non-glute dominant just 3 months later. And the reason was one daily habit that most people don’t think enough about. But it made my previously dominant glutes stop firing properly, start losing strength, and begin to shrink. As a result, I started getting hamstring cramps and lower back pain. But in just two weeks, with three simple changes, I regained my glute dominance . EMG data confirmed that my glute activity went up by 159%. My hamstring cramps and lower back pain disappeared, and my glutes were growing again. In this video, I’ll show you the full protocol I used so that you can have the same glute transformation. Let’s get started. Now, before we get into the exact protocol I used for my transformation, you first need to assess just how underactive your glutes are.
0:49 We do this in two ways: The first is recognizing dysfunctional patterns in the body that strongly correlate to glute weakness. The second is testing the glutes directly to determine how much they are contributing to those dysfunctional patterns. Let’s start with pattern recognition: Your glutes are the primary engine for all hip-biased movements like running, lifting, swinging, and squatting. When they go quiet, the body still has to complete those movements. So it finds backup muscle activation patterns. For instance, the hamstrings take over hip extension, and the lower back takes over rotation and forward flexion. This is called synergistic dominance. The problem is, the hamstrings and lower back muscles are built to assist,
1:36 not lead. When they’re forced into the lead role, they get overworked. That's why studies often link hamstring cramps and lower back tenderness to glute dysfunction. This is exactly what I was experiencing: tight hamstrings that were wanting to cramp during longer workouts and a sore lower back. But the glutes don’t only drive hip movement. They also help stabilize the pelvis and lower limbs. So if your glutes are weak, you may struggle to control your knee position during movements like step-ups or squats, which can lead to knee pain after exercise. You may also struggle to stay stable on one leg, which can show up as overpronation when you walk or run. While I didn't experience these issues, they are some additional patterns to look out for when trying to identify if you have under-active glutes. So, when the hamstring and lower back signals
2:24 showed up for me, I already had a hunch — my glutes weren't pulling their weight anymore. And when I went into a university sports lab for an EMG test, the data confirmed it. My glute activity was way down and my hamstring activity was way up. Suspicion validated. Now, not everybody has a lab at their disposal to test their glute function. But we have a simple, science-backed test you can do at home that will still give you accurate feedback about your current glute activity. We call it the glute dominance test and it’s one of the 10 functional test we use in our Academy to assess the functional patterns of our members. Lie on your back with both knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Lift one leg and straighten it out in front of you. Using only the leg still on the ground, push through your foot
3:09 to lift your hips into a bridge position. Hold this position for at least a minute. Pay attention to which muscles are fatiguing first. Repeat on the other side. If you felt most of the activity in your glutes, they're dominating your hip extension. But if you felt most of the effort coming from your hamstrings, lower back, or quads, your glutes are weak and under active. You now have confirmation whether or not your glutes are dominant when you exercise. But testing is more than just confirming a dysfunction. It also gives you a baseline to retest against, so you can measure your progress over time. So pay attention to the exact second when your hamstrings start to dominate over the glutes. That way, when you retest after following the glute protocol, you can quantify how much your glutes have improved.
3:57 Okay, now that you know some of the dysfunctional patterns linked to glute weakness and how to test for glute weakness directly, lets move onto the protocol I used to get my glutes functioning again in 2 weeks. The first step to fixing my glutes was figuring out what caused them to regress in the first place. From my 14 years of experience in the field of sport science, I've learned that lifestyle factors are almost always to blame. My lifestyle habits had changed significantly. I had moved to a new co-working space with no standing desks. So for 3 months, my sitting time increased dramatically. My smart watch activity data actually showed a 50% drop in standing and activity time over this period. On top of that, because of my workload increasing, I was doing less mobility
4:42 work to offset the effects of sitting. Now, we all know that sitting is bad for you. But do you actually know what sitting is doing to your glutes? When you sit, your hip flexors are held in a shortened position. If you're sitting for long periods of time they begin to adapt to that length and will eventually become chronically tight. That's bad because tight hip flexors literally block glute function. Here's how it works: muscles work in pairs. When one muscle contracts, the opposite muscle is signaled to relax. We see this pair at the elbow, with the bicep and tricep. In elbow flexion movements, the bicep shortens, while the tricep lengthens. The hip flexors and glutes are another one of these pairs. As the glutes shorten to contract, the hip flexors have to lengthen to allow the hips
5:30 to extend. This relationship between muscle pairs is what we call reciprocal inhibition and its the natural way that muscles move the body. But, when the hip flexors are chronically tight, and are unable to lengthen, it blocks the glutes from contracting, causing secondary muscles like the hamstrings and lower back to pick up the slack. This is called altered reciprocal inhibition. A 2024 study tested this directly. They compared women with tight hip flexors to those with normal hip flexibility during squats. They found that those with tight hip flexors showed 60% less glute activation than the participants with mobile hips and 2.6 times more hamstring activity relative to their glutes.
6:15 When secondary muscles, like the hamstrings start doing the work of the glutes, it causes two issues: First, they become overworked and more at risk for injury. I experienced this through hamstring cramps and lower back tenderness. And, as a result of them overworking, they become overdeveloped relative to the glutes. Which is why despite me still doing a lot of training and playing sports over these few months, my glutes were getting noticeably smaller. Are you starting to see just how detrimental sitting can be, not only for the glutes, but the entire body? Now, if sitting and tight hip flexors are holding your glutes back, as they were for me, let me show you the three steps I used to overcome these issues and increase my glute activity by 159% in just 2 weeks. Once I knew that tight hip flexors
7:02 were blocking my glutes during exercise, the short term fix was obvious: do some mobility work to lengthen the hip flexors. My mobility exercise of choice was the kneeling hip extension drill, which I did once or twice a day. And we have multiple levels of this. You can start off with your shin flat on the ground and slowly progress by gradually raising the height of the back foot over time. You can then further progress by also raising up the front foot. And if you want to get really advanced, which is where I'm currently at, you can even do it laying down. It's actually something we program for all of our members in the Academy on a daily basis. It's part of their daily mobility maintenance protocol. Research shows that just by doing hip mobility drills like this, you can significantly improve glute dominance. But this is unfortunately where most people stop.
7:51 They don't actually address the habit that made them get into this position in the first place. I often tell our members: bad lifestyle habits dig a hole for you, and your training program tries to climb you out of it. If you don't fix the lifestyle, then you spend all your time in a perpetual cycle of climbing in and out of the same hole. Real progress only starts the moment your lifestyle and your training are pulling in the same direction. So, if I wanted to prevent my hip flexors from tightening up again and continuously block my glutes I had to attack the the thing causing my hip tightness — the sitting itself. But I had to do it in a sustainable way. Most people swing from one extreme to the other. They go from sitting 10 hours a day to trying to stand 10 hours a day,
8:37 and within a week they're back in the chair full-time. I didn't do that. The two lifestyle changes I made were chosen specifically because they had the lowest possible friction. First, to reduce my sitting time, I found a portable laptop stand that allowed me to seamlessly convert any table into a standing desk. This meant that I had the option to stand wherever I was. It might be the single most useful purchase I've made in a long time. And, I wasn't standing for the entire work day — I alternated between sitting and standing at regular intervals. My goal was to eventually get to a 1:1 ratio between sitting and standing. The point isn't to stand all day. The point is to frequently interrupt the sedentary behavior enough times throughout the
9:22 day to prevent your hip flexors from ever getting used to being in a shortened state. The second low-friction optimization I made was improving how I sat. And for me, the easiest way to do this was to switch my normal chair for a kneeling chair. A kneeling chair gives you three big advantages over a traditional chair: First, it allows your hips to rest at around 45 degrees instead of 90, so your hip flexors are in a much less shortened position throughout the day. Second, it gives you easy access to full hip extension. I'd often shift forward and rest entirely on my knees, which puts the hips into full extension. Doing that throughout the day was like sneaking in dozens of mini hip flexor stretches without leaving my desk. Third, it can be used as a platform for active
10:10 glute work. Every now and then I'd do a few kneeling squats from that position, which allowed me to get a proper glute contraction each time. So my chair stopped being a place where my glutes shut off and became a place where they actually got switched on. I've geeked out so much recently about how to optimize my office setup that I've actually created a products page with all the useful ergonomic tools I use, which I'll link down below in the description. But even if you're stuck with a traditional chair, try to frequently change your sitting position so your hips don't get locked into one shape for too long. One easy option is to tuck one foot under your glute, which puts your hip flexor into a light stretch while you work. Lastly, sitting on the floor when you're at
10:55 home is another great hack for hip mobility, since being on the ground forces more range of motion out of the hips. So by doing these 3 things: regularly performing hip mobility drills in conjunction with more standing time and more optimized seating choices, I was able to increase my glute activity by 159%. Now, why I was able to do that in just two weeks brings us to the caveat of this video and one of the most important lesson I learned about regaining glute dominance. The first reason I was able to bounce back this quickly is because tight hip flexors from too much sitting was the only dysfunctions that was limiting my glutes. But some people may be dealing with other issues like a weak core, anterior pelvic tilt, flat feet and a tight thoracic spine and shoulders – all of which
11:46 affect the glutes. So fixing one will definitely improve your glute function, but the others would need to be addressed to see similar results. Second, because I had previously worked hard to establish glute dominant patterns as my default, my glutes had the muscle memory in place to quickly return to that pattern once the mobility and lifestyle restrictions were removed. However, if you’ve spent years defaulting to using your hamstrings or lower back over your glutes, even once you've removed all your glute restrictions, those old movement patterns may still persist. This is where glute re-education comes in as the next step in achieving glute dominance. You have to train the body to make the glutes the default driver of hip motion again. Once you can consistently call on your glutes during movement, then every exercise you do becomes a “glute exercise”. And this
12:37 is when you start to see real glute gains. So if you want to make the same long-term investment in your glutes, by identifying and removing any possible restriction on them and building glute dominant muscle memory, then come join our Barefoot Strength Academy. This is exactly what we’ll help you achieve. Click the first link in the description, or head to bfs.fit. See you in there Cheers
