What do the most powerful athletes all have in common?

All world class athletes that express their athleticism and power to the world in different ways within their sport. The common denominator between these seemingly different athletes is their ability to generate power from the hips.

Nat Fyfe, Dustin Martin, LeBron James, Serena Williams, NFL Running Backs and Olympic Weightlifters are all some of the most powerful athletes on the planet. 

We hear commentators describe many athletes as being ‘strong through the hips’, usually referring to those who are difficult to tackle or bring down in the contest.

Why is this a trend? How do we develop a world class, powerful and resilient posterior chain? 

Let’s talk about glutes.

Role of the glutes

The majority of explosive lower body movements involve applying large amounts of force into the ground rapidly.

Applying force into the ground leads to an equal reaction in the opposite direction (Newton’s third law), meaning you jump higher, run faster, change direction quicker the more powerfully you apply that force.

To move forward we need to push backwards, to push backwards we need big and strong glutes.

Hip extension is essentially involved in all athletic movements. The ability to extend the hip powerfully is an absolute game changer for athletes and can be the difference between making the game breaking play and not. 

In order to develop a powerful hip extension, we need to target the muscles that play major roles in the movement. The gluteus maximus is the body’s primary hip extensor. It’s no surprise that the body’s single largest muscle is also its strongest.

Bigger the glutes = better the athlete

A muscle with a greater cross-sectional area has a greater potential of being a stronger muscle. 

A strong, powerful glute max is often what separates elite athletes from the amateur/semi-professional

A study I tend to come back to often compares elite, sub-elite and untrained sprinters lower body muscle morphology.

They found a 32% size difference in the hip extensor muscles between the elite and sub-elite. (Miller et al. 2020).

It was therefore concluded that increasing the size of the hip extensor musculature (particularly the gluteus maximus) would be expected to improve running speed and sprint performance. 

This shouldn’t come as any surprise. Just look at the Olympic 100m final compared to the local track meet on a Saturday afternoon.

Injury Prevention

Athletes with strong glutes tend to be more resilient to injury.

In order to keep an athlete injury free, we need to ensure the glutes are the primary muscle active during hip extension. 

A common issue people with weak glutes see is a greater contribution from secondary muscles in the hamstrings, groin and lower back, rather than a strong contraction from the desired gluteal muscles. The weakness in the glutes causes greater stress on the hamstrings and lower back, potentially leading to injury as these muscles are not intended to be the primary active muscles in hip extension.

The surrounding muscles are forced to do a job they’re not designed to do when the glutes are weak and not firing. When too much stress is placed on these muscles, tightness and injuries occur.

Often people label these issues as hamstring/groin/lower back issues, when in actual fact it is a glute issue with symptoms presenting themselves in these areas. Developing strong glutes will leave you resilient to these symptoms.

How to target the glutes

A great place to start when training your glutes is by introducing some low level activation exercises into your movement prep in order to understand what hip extension feels like when the glutes are contracting and driving that movement.

Not only does this provide context for when we stress hip extension under load throughout the session, but it also prepares the desired working muscles for the session ahead. 

Below are some low-level glute activation exercises you can throw into your movement prep that don’t require any equipment.

Once we understand what hip extension feels like and how to recruit the glutes at a lower level, we can then progressively load them.

The glutes are targeted through ‘hinging’ or ‘hip dominant’ movement patterns.

Hip dominant pattern = movements where the greatest amount of motion comes from the hip.

Hip dominant exercises/patterns allow us to load hip extension and isolate the glutes in the gym as they allow for greater levels of hip extension. 

Top 3 go-to hip dominant movements to develop powerful hip extension 

Trap Bar Deadlift

BB RDL

BB Glute Bridge

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