In an effort to help you look and feel better I wanted to address one of the biggest issues facing our country today . . . the ol’ flat butt syndrome. You know what I’m talking about. The type of physique where if I rolled a quarter down the back of this person’s neck, it would take a direct path to the ankles without any interference at the midway point.
Chances are this person is suffering from both pain in his posterior chain (low back, hamstrings) and a lack of confidence because he goes unnoticed by the ladies, since he can’t fill out a pair of jeans.
So, what’s the culprit causing the dreaded flat butt syndrome?
Well, it’s likely the result of sitting at a desk for 40 hours a week, coupled with an inadequate training program that results in a lack of glute activation. The seated posture places your hips in flexion and consequently shortens the hip flexor muscles pulling you into anterior pelvic tilt.
Anterior Pelvic Tilt
Tightness at one muscle will cause weakness at the muscle that performs the opposite activity. For example, if you have tight pecs from performing way too many bench presses, you’re going to have a weak upper back, because those muscles are always on stretch. Or, if you have tight quadriceps, you will have weak hamstrings because, like the upper back in the previous example, they will always be placed in a stetched position.
Back to the shortened, or tight, hip flexors. Since they are tight, it stands to reason that your hip extensors would be weak. And, what muscle group contributes most to hip extension? The glutes. Not only that, with your pelvis in anterior tilt, your hamstrings are also on stretch and weakened since they attach at the pelvis.
In reference to why it’s hard to build glute muscle with tight hip flexors, consider that the hips have a hard time extending through a full range of motion, which leaves the glutes relatively dormant and weak.
The explanation for why weak glutes lead to lower back and hamstring injuries is a matter of compensation patterns. When the hip tries to extend and the glutes cannot perform their job, the hamstrings try to pick up the slack and do the job for them. Since the hamstring is really only designed to play a supporting role in hip extension, it often cannot handle the extra work, which results in pulls and tears.
Think about all the hamstring tears you hear about with pitchers early in the baseball season. It tells me that they haven’t prepared their bodies properly and are trying to perform maximal effort movement patterns with underdeveloped glutes.
The lower back faces a similar issue. Once again, when the glutes aren’t working to extend the hips, the lower back tries to compensate and you get lumbar extension. From many of my other posts on core strength training, you know that we want the lumbar region to prevent movement instead of promoting it. So, like the hamstring, you’ll often end up with a lower back injury.
In my next post, I’ll provide some exercises to encourage glute activation and remedy the muscle dysfunction discussed above.
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