Glute Activation: Is it needed?

Glute Activation is almost certainly being done in some way shape or form within sporting organisations and by athletes worldwide as part of their prehabilitation, rehabilitation, and within their main training programme. But this looks into whether are they needed. We have all witnessed it, miniband exercises performed at a low intensity during or before the warm-up. But it begs the question, What are we pre-activating? Do these workouts accomplish anything? Do they even take any action at all?

Glute activation or muscle activation as its clinically referred to as refers to a variety of electrochemical events that occur before actual muscle contraction. Using an EMG amplitude, this represents the number of muscle fibre action potentials captured by the electrodes and displays them usually used to measure muscle activity (Ayotte et al., 2007; Lehecka et al., 2017). The primary purpose of the neuromuscular system within athletic performance if muscle activation, the activation of muscles is integral for all athletic movements such as jumping, running, sprinting, walking, agility, balance, and change of direction. If it were not possible for you to activate all your muscles and use them accordingly, you would have a clinical ailment.

However, they are engaged if they can produce force or stress.

When a trainer often refers to “activating their athlete’s muscles” they suggest that they believe the player’s performance of a certain exercise, i.e. the activation exercise earlier in the warm-up would benefit and improve what is to come following later in the warm-up and training/game. If this is the case, many trainers may have been confusing activation with two very distinct processes known as post-activation potentiation (PAP), or post-activation performance enhancement (PAPE). There seems to be an ever-present growing disconnect by the strength and conditioning coaching personnel between the outcome they want to get out of the activation activity and the actual exercises that they recommend and implement. Social media has a lot to do with this. Scrolling through any social media platform such as Twitter and Instagram many highly regarded coaches with big followings put their athletes through their low-level intensity activation circuit and mini-band work before they go out onto the field or play, or before lifting weights in the gym. The exercises often appear to be sports-specific and enforce Henneman’s original size principle of motor unit recruitment where smaller weaker muscles are recruited first followed by the backup bigger and stronger muscles which store larger motor units to carry out a task. Athletes nowadays need to produce an ever greater amount of force and do such at a rapidly increasing period, for this to be carried out the rapid activation and production of higher levels of force or speed from the musculature are needed more and more. This contributes in theory to carrying out pre-activation mini-band work, the activation of the smaller muscles earlier in the session will hopefully positively contribute to a better performance and greater contribution from the musculature as a whole within the main body of the session. This is not always the case.

The body’s strongest muscle (Ito et al., 2003) the gluteus maximus accounts for a total of 16% of the total cross-sectional area (Winter, 2009), the glutes are responsible for stabilisation as well as high force production in many athletic movements. They carry out several different important functions in how we move, While the superior fibres act to provide hip abduction torque and the inferior fibres act to produce hip adduction torque, the global mobilizer (GM) generates significant quantities of force and power to support hip extension and external rotation of the femur (Buckthorpe et al., 2019). When it comes to activation, they are no different from any other muscle in the body. The glutes are the main area in the human body that strength and conditioning practitioners focus on for pre-activation for the reasons mentioned above. Weakness of the glutes has been linked to various common injuries such as anterior cruciate ligament injuries (Khayambashi et al., 2016), hamstring strains (Schuermans et al., 2017), ankle sprains (Bullock-Saxton et al., 1994; Webster & Gribble, 2013), anterior knee pain (Lee et al., 1994), low back pain (Kankaanpää et al., 1998), and femoral acetabular impingement syndrome (Lewis et al., 2007). The biggest question asked is “Does doing a typical, thorough, well-structured warm-up plus executing glute activation exercises stimulate or prepare the glutes beyond what’s needed in the main session?”, the answer is no. The glutes will be perfectly activated through joint warm-up exercises whilst steadily increasing the intensity of running, jumping, skipping, and changing direction. These exercises are even more likely to do so since they recruit muscles in a task-specific manner which directly replicates the task at hand. All of these exercises will duplicate and surpass the goals of any other pre-activation exercises.

Understandably, the glutes get an increasing amount of attention with activation than any other muscle because of their importance in the fluid locomotion of an athlete. But in some literature, the focused activation of the glutes does not automatically lead to an increase in performance (Hunt et al., 2021; Parr et al., 2017). In the aforementioned references, the prioritisation of gluteal activation before training leads to the same and somewhat less EMG Glute activation throughout the bilateral squat and the high hang pull. This shows us the concept of your glutes are always switched on, or else we would not even be able to stand and that prioritising them during warm-ups may not be needed.

In the majority of cases, the actual need for Glute Activation is slim, and merely not needed in the vast majority of scenarios. But what if it is needed? Some players or athletes may come to you with a Glute dysfunction, what to do then? But before explaining what to do it is vitally important to understand why. Knowing why the glutes may become dysfunctional puts context and a base to work off when trying to restore a normal order and reduce an athlete’s injury risk going forward. Firstly your activity status and posture, and long periods of sitting down are thought to diminish glute activation, which then leads to these muscles atrophying and weakening over time (Jenkins, 2008; Marzke et al., 1988). Being sedentary and not undertaking various forms of activity can lead to sleepy glutes meaning independent activation is needed to carry out specific tasks. There can be many ways of preventing this from happening and ensuring appropriate and adequate preventative measures are done. One method of prevention is trying to aid and improve lumbopelvic control, this is done by addressing and working on improving an anterior pelvic tilt that is caused by the weakness of the glue, hamstrings, and abdominal muscles (Mills et al., 2015). This can be caused by inactivity, but also over-activity can also result in inhibition of the Glutes meaning these muscles need to be relaxed, released and lengthened through various forms of manual and flexibility techniques frequently. Doing this ensures increased joint ranges, and increasing range of motions through various planes of motion to increase the athlete’s performance in other required tasks both in training and within their chosen sport (Added et al., 2018; Conneely et al., 2006; Monteiro et al., 2018). Alongside this work, abdominal strengthening and stabilising are vital to ensure the global stabilisers function appropriately and carry out their required role. If this can be done and carried out appropriately all other muscles benefit and help the re-activation or prevention of inactivated glute muscles when needed during sporting actions for example (Comerford & Mottram, 2001; Samson et al., 2020).

Weak Glute muscles cannot function how they are designed and would like, weakness in that area results in lower force production and less functionality to carry out required tasks. Developing the strength and endurance capabilities of the glutes, in turn, would train and develop them to be able to carry out their required function at a more optimal standard both within and outside of sport. The glutes are required in various amount of exercises (Boren et al., 2011; Ekstrom et al., 2007; Lehecka et al., 2017; Webster & Gribble, 2013). Upon researching various papers, one thing is clear. The glute is activated at different levels within each exercise but also needs to be trained and activated constantly to provide an all-around neuromuscular and functional benefit to the athlete in question.

In summary, if you include jogging, sprinting, single- and double-legged jumping, multiplanar changes of direction, accelerations/decelerations, and gradually increase the intensity while maintaining quality movement patterns in your team sport warm-up, you’ve covered everything the neuromuscular system needs to get ready for competition. These exercises can be done on their own or, ideally, combined with activities that are specialized to a particular activity, like small-sided games, shooting, tackling, attacking focus and defending-focused drills. These exercises will also improve heart rate, muscle temperature, movement-specific muscle coordination, and energy system readiness—all essential components of an effective warm-up. If such is the justification, coaches can ultimately remove the activities that are praised for activation or pre-activation. However, it makes sense to keep them if their purpose is to increase mobility and helps the player from a psychological point of view to ensure that he/she is “ready” for the activity that proceeds.

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