People like to speak of "muscle activation". Physiotherapists make entire careers from diagnosing people with particular "sleepy" muscles and coming up with exercises to wake them up. Personal trainers with aspirations to internet fame will sometimes pick a particularly neglected muscle and attach themselves to it. Go to most physiotherapists or some pretentious PT and you'll be diagnosed with a lack of activation of vastus medialis, rhomboids, transverse abdominus, gluteus maximus or piriformis, if you're lucky all five.
Generally speaking, muscle activation is bollocks. There is some value in that it teaches people to be aware of what their bodies are doing. Anyone who's ever tried to coach someone else to squat or the like will know that most people have poor bodily awareness, at the start they can't consciously contract their lower back muscles, etc. Anything that can help with this is good.
But you don't really need it. You just need to be coached properly in your movements in the gym. Train movements, and the muscles will follow. The best way to activate your muscles is to use heavy weights over a full range of motion in the basic movements of squat, push, pull, hip hinge and loaded carry.
If you're squatting, don't worry about squeezing your glutes, just squat deep with your knees out and chest up, and then stand up, your glutes will be used whether you want them to be used or not. Squat deep. This means below parallel, having the crease of your hips between your leg and pelvis drop below your kneecap. On every rep, yes even the heavy ones. Don't overthink it, your body knows what to do, you just have to let it.
If you do this, you will use your glutes during the lift, just as doing bicep curls all the way from your elbow being straight out while keeping your trunk steady will ensure you use your biceps. Whether you "feel" it or not is irrelevant. When your hips are flexed, you simply have to use your hip extensor muscles to extend your hip, ie your glutes and hamstrings.
If you go deep in a squat it is physically impossible to rise from the bottom of the squat without using your glutes and hamstrings. You may not feel it to begin with, but it will happen. Squat deep, and your glutes will be activated. Of course, watching someone squat properly is not as exciting for a straight male trainer as having a bunch of models in his condo thrusting their hips in the air. (I've searched across the internet, but have yet to find a female trainer giving barbell hip thrusts to her clients, or anyone giving them to ugly old guys, it's all young male trainers giving them to attractive young women, funny that.)
But it's all about what the trainer is trying to achieve, effective training for their clients and athletes, or internet fame. For effective training, train movements and the muscles will follow.
Edit 2013-04-07: The guy with models thrusting their hips in his condo writes against squats and deadlifts for the purpose of glute activation, "If you train a lot of people, you realize that they’re not all squatting and deadlifting the way they should be."
If the people you're training aren't lifting properly, whose fault is that? As trainers, our job is to teach correct movement. It's up to us to learn how to do this properly, and no amount of electrodes on people's muscles, naming neglected muscles or electrodes on people's bums excuse us from that.
Edit 2013.06.08: the same guy mentioned above had previously said he'd measured people squatting with very low muscle activation, now from his client's form check videos posted I can see why; if you squat shallow and let your knees cave in, you'll minimise the use of glutes in the squat. You could (a) get them to squat properly, or (2) get them to bridge and thrust their hips in the air. The second option will get you more pageviews, I suppose.
Edit 2013-04-07: The guy with models thrusting their hips in his condo writes against squats and deadlifts for the purpose of glute activation, "If you train a lot of people, you realize that they’re not all squatting and deadlifting the way they should be."
If the people you're training aren't lifting properly, whose fault is that? As trainers, our job is to teach correct movement. It's up to us to learn how to do this properly, and no amount of electrodes on people's muscles, naming neglected muscles or electrodes on people's bums excuse us from that.
Edit 2013.06.08: the same guy mentioned above had previously said he'd measured people squatting with very low muscle activation, now from his client's form check videos posted I can see why; if you squat shallow and let your knees cave in, you'll minimise the use of glutes in the squat. You could (a) get them to squat properly, or (2) get them to bridge and thrust their hips in the air. The second option will get you more pageviews, I suppose.
I'm going to contradict you a little now.
ReplyDeleteIt's impossible to get out of the hole in a squat in any way that resembles normal movement without using your glutes and hamstrings, sure, but in my experience it's very easy to squat without using those muscles effectively, and can take a lot of activation work to learn to DRIVE with them (as oppose to having them involved in a half-arsed mildly supportive manner). For me personally, the same has been true for my lower traps: middle and upper traps never took much figuring out, but lower traps took a lot of work to get them doing their job, and the result in training is the difference between night and day. And, in that particular instance, training the movement wasn't helping. All my upper body movements appeared fine, but what was going on to make the movements occur was not fine. Specific work was needed. Also, most female trainers that I've met teach and practice glute bridges and hip thrusts.
Now, I agree with the premise that the emphasis should generally be on teaching correct movement, but people do have all sorts of issues preventing them from achieving correct movement and correct technique (form and technique, while related, aren't exactly the same thing, like how signs and symptoms are related but not the same). Some of these issues can be fixed with simple cuing. Some cannot.
If some muscle involved in a movement is not contracting as fully as possible and useful, then when we add weight to the bar, it will either contract more fully, or the person will have to drop the bar. The body is funny that way.
ReplyDelete"Hip drive" or "knees out" are useful cues. "Squeeze your glutes" or "engage your tensor fascae latae to externally rotate your hip" are not. Train movements and the muscles will follow.
I've explained the process before.
1. teach correct movement
2. over a full range of motion
3. add load
4. when range of motion or load are increased, form will degrade, return to #1.
This process engages all muscles eventually.
You may have met female trainers who prescribed barbell hip thrusts, I have met male trainers who prescribe bosu balls. But generally speaking, each gender will have their own preferred useless exercises, and certain male trainers will be in favour of exercises which let them have a good leer and which if filmed will get them a lot of pageviews.
Glute Bridges useless?
ReplyDeleteLargely, yes.
ReplyDelete"Generally speaking, muscle activation is bollocks. There is some value in that it teaches people to be aware of what their bodies are doing."