Jen Curtis
Dec 11, 2018
There are a million different ways to put together an effective glute circuit.
Here's a nice little banded glute activation warm-up for leg day.
Pregnancy and postpartum friendly.
(Many of my trainees will recognize these).
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I did the following with a "extra heavy" band (from Ali Express)
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🍑 Airsquat X 12
🍑Monster Walk, backwards and forwards
🍑 Hip Thrust x 12 with a 10 second hold at the end
A few great things about this kind of circuit:
✔ Requires very little equipment
✔ Low impact
✔ Will get your hear trate up if you do them back to back (so can be useful as both a warm-up and a conditioning circuit at the end).
✔ Involves different TYPES of movements, activating different muscle fibres in different ways.
For those gym geeks I'm going to get a little technical. (Skip this paragraph if that's not for you). Both the squat and hip thrust involve hip extension, but the squat involves a contraction of the glutes when the fibres are stretched out (passive insufficiency) and the hip thrust involves a peak contraction when the fibres are at their shortest (active insufficiency). The monster walk involves a different movement altogether, abduction.
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It could also be a great circuit for AFTER your strength work, again, heart rate goes up and glutes get extra work, but won't make you sore.
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If this seems like a lot, if you haven't done strength training before, want to train at home or in a gym, it could be your strength circuit in itself.
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Or if you are pregnant or just getting back into things after having a baby, you might start with exercises like this. You might only start with a half squat before increasing the range of motion.
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A lot of women ask how they can train their core during pregnancy and after birth, and almost invariably (unless they need to heal a diastasis) I tell them to leave it alone and do more glute work.
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Pregnancy poses a new problem of how to maintain as much muscle mass as possible without the heavy, heavy weights. According to research done by Bret Contreras, glutes respond well to a variety of different movements and rep ranges. So these body weight movements can help build and maintain muscle.
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#legday