This article is sponsored by Practical Fitness.
Flo Rida sings about how “Shawty got low low low low…” While that’s a catchy tune, for many reasons it’s actually pretty important that you have strong glutes so that you can squat. It can mean picking up your grandchildren, gardening in the spring, or…it could dictate whether or not you can utilize the toilet!
Sounds silly? Take, for example, the traditional Chinese ‘squatty potty’. Basically, it’s a hole in the floor that to use will most certainly require strong glutes! Or, how about a porta potty at an outdoor event? (Are you actually going to sit on that?!?)
Throw in the aging process and it becomes a lot harder to squat – whether you’re utilizing the restroom, getting up and down out of a chair, or the bed.
Why You Can’t Get Low
The glutes (minimus, medius, and maximus) are one of the largest and most important muscles to exercise because they stabilize the rest of your body.
Let’s face it, most of us have sedentary jobs and typically sit for multiple hours a day. This basically causes the bum to go into hibernation, reduces blood flow to the area, and leaves the muscles unengaged for extended periods of time. Thus, our glutes are left dying for movement. Plus all that sitting gives you a flat and untoned booty!
Weak glutes wreak havoc on the body!
When your glutes are anemic it can create low back pain, weak and tight hip flexors, and poor posture. Weakness in the glutes also can cause your thighs to slant inward and rotate abnormally while walking and running, which puts added stress on knees and ankles. Overall, weak glutes create a downhill spiral on the body.
How can you get ‘low, low, low’, and have bootylicious tush?
1. First, you need to break-up with your chair and stop sitting for extended periods of time. If you have a desk job, mindfully get up every 60 minutes and move around.
2. Dedicate 1-2 times a week to performing multi-joint exercises such as squatting, deadlifts, and lunges. And squat like you mean it! Managing Partner and Trainer at Practical Fitness, Jeff Gotte, shared,
Squatting is a fundamental ability that some of us take for granted until it’s gone. Having strong glutes (read-end), Quads (thighs), and Spinae Erector muscles (muscle on either side of your spine) are some of the key muscles in allowing for a squat. Executing exercises that isolate these muscles, as well as compound exercises that combined the use of these muscles, is an effective approach to ensuring the strength of the ability. Taking time during your exercise session to progressively execute the actual function of squatting in an extremely slow manner allows for the muscles involved to execute 100% of the action of squatting thus developing the skill.
3. Hire a trainer who can help you properly strengthen the glutes, along with the entire body. Sometimes when we train on our own you might overtrain one area and cause an imbalance in another area. When in doubt reach out to a highly skilled trainer, like Jeff Gotte and his team at Practical Fitness, located at 8501 Wade Blvd, Ste 1340 in Frisco’s Chapel Creek offices.
One Hour per Week = Results
Give Practical Fitness trainers 1 hour a week and they’ll help transform your body in as little as four weeks. The private one-on-one sessions can be broken into 1 day a week for 60 minutes or 2 weekly sessions for 30 minutes each.
The beauty of utilizing a Practical Fitness trainer is they’ll accommodate each workout to your personalized goals versus a one size fits all strategy. If you’re training for a race, trying to lose weight, to tone up, gain strength, or improve body imbalances they’ll get you results via their Steady-Pace® methodology. The high-intensity exercises utilize various modes of resistance such as exercise machines, exercise bands, dumbbells, body weight, and medicine balls.
Each exercise movement is performed in a slow and controlled manner to tax the body and create exercise stimuli. As a runner, I’ve struggled with hip and knee issues my whole life until I personally trained with Jeff Gotte. I felt stronger and increased my running mileage in a very short period of time.
If you want to be able to get low, low, low, have a bootylicious tush and curb body imbalances contact Practical Fitness today. A simple one hour per week is very doable during the holiday season!
Ladies, just think, in four weeks you might be able to rock that sexy dress or slide into those beloved skinny jeans. And gentleman, you might be able to button that old favorite shirt or pair of pants!
Give your glutes the gift of a private training session!
