Combating Sleeping Legs: The Glute Bridge

This week I want to talk about an important muscle group that tends to “fall asleep” or becomes inactive due to many people living a sedentary or non-active lifestyle.

The gluteus muscle group, better known as your “glutes or butt cheeks”, are a very large and powerful group, which play a huge role in our core, lower body strength, and pelvis stabilization. Unfortunately, the majority of people tend to have weak or “sleeping” glutes. This can lead to any number of issues relating to low back, tailbone, hip, leg and even knee pain.

The Glute Bridge is an excellent at-home exercise that will help you wake up and activate those glutes to help alleviate some pain and improve on any muscle imbalances around the low back and hip area.

How to perform the Glute Bridge

1. While laying on your back, keep your feet flat on the floor with your knees bent.

2. Once you are in this position, tilt your pelvis back so your low back is flat on the floor. Next, squeeze your “cheeks” so you know the glutes are being used.

3. You are then going to use your “cheeks” to drive your pelvis up to the ceiling while keeping your feet and shoulders on the floor. Raise the pelvis up until you can draw a straight line through your knees, hips, and shoulders. *An important note is to make sure your low back remains in a neutral position and you are not overextending it at the top of the bridge.

4. Hold this position for a couple seconds and then return slowly to the starting position.

You can perform 3 sets of up to 15-20 reps while keeping proper form to help get your glutes firing again. This exercise will help with some of the muscle imbalances, but it will not correct any pelvic imbalances due to altered joint biomechanics.

If you are still having some issues after performing these exercises, it is important for you to be evaluated by a professional. Please contact the office with any questions, concerns or stop by for an evaluation!

Dr. Nick Knaup