Did you know that some muscles are more important than others? It's true! Trust me – there's a lot of research supporting this idea, and it's essential to target certain muscle groups to stay healthy, injury-free, and full of energy. Your strength programming needs to reflect the muscles in your body that need development. And over my decades of strength training women, I know the one muscle group matters most – your glutes! 

In this episode, I explain why the glutes are the powerhouse of your body that affects everything from your spine to your pelvis to your knees. I share how prioritizing glute strength can improve overall mobility, boost metabolism, and optimize hormonal balance. Plus, I walk you through my top 3 glute-targeting exercises that you can add to your routine today!

Head over to hollyperkins.com/review where you can upload a screenshot of your review and gain immediate access to my four-week strength training plan, Strength Without Stress.

Topics Covered:

• The muscle balance equation 
• Why some muscles are more important to train than others
• The importance of your glutes and pelvic alignment 
• How to train glute strength and function 
• Ways the glutes affect metabolism and influence your hormones 
• 3 exercises that target glutes 

Resources Mentioned:

• Check out Lift to Get Lean HERE
• Find The Glutes Project HERE
• See the research on isokinetic hamstrings HERE
• See the research on hamstring to quadriceps strength ratio HERE
• See the research on the eccentric:concentric strength ratio of human skeletal muscle in vivo HERE
• See the research on muscle size vs. strength and how to train both HERE 
• See the research on anatomy, bony pelvis and lower limb, gluteus maximus muscle HERE
• See the research on the muscles of the buttocks HERE

Follow Me: 

Find me on Instagram: @hollyperkins

Learn more on my website: hollyperkins.com

Connect with me on Facebook: facebook.com/HollyPerkinsFitness/

Disclaimer: Content and information as part of The Holly Perkins Health Podcast is for general interest, education, and entertainment purposes only. The use of information on this podcast or materials or products linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.

If you're busy and time strapped and want the 411 now on your top priority when it comes to strength workouts, this muscle group matters the most. If you want to reduce aches and pains, bulletproof your hips and knees and build lean muscle that actually impacts your metabolic health, you need to understand this muscle. So keep listening. Hello, and welcome. I'm Holly Perkins. And I help you learn how to strength train to improve body composition, so that you're more muscle and less fat. And that my friend is the foundation to real metabolic health. I'm flipping the conversation so that you'll stop worrying about your body fat, and instead take action to become at least 70% lean muscle. If you know building muscle through strength training is something you want to focus on, but you feel a bit confused or unsure how to structure your workouts or which exercises you should be doing. Especially if you're over 45, this episode will help.

In this episode, you'll learn a big mistake that many women are making and how to avoid it, the muscle group that matters the most, and three of my go to exercises to improve this muscle group. When I started in the fitness industry 30 years ago, I knew that my ethos, and M O if you will, was to actually help you educate yourself so that over time you begin to be your own coach, back then I had no idea that it would become more important than ever to become proactive about your health. And these days, there is so much conflicting information. And so it's super important for you to actually learn a thing or two, so that you can become the boss of your own body, of your own fitness and your health in general. And today's episode will help. I have always been a detail oriented person who likes precision, accuracy and efficiency. It's just who I am, I tend to be more of a baking person than a cooking person. I like to know exactly what the numbers are. I think the structure is good for me. It doesn't cause me to feel overly neurotic or obsessive compulsive, it tells me what I should do and shouldn't do, right. So early in my fitness career, I figured out quickly that most fitness environments lack real precision or strategy. And by this I mean that, for example, fitness classes are designed to be fun. And many workout programs that are out there are kind of arbitrary. And there's an old school thinking that like just exercise, just be active. These days, that's not the case. Then social media came around and holy moly, things got real haphazard, then I remember back in 2014, when I was writing my first book lift to get lean, if you don't have it, you need to grab it. And I was doing a ton of research, I was also just doing a lot of observations in the industry. At the time, I was training celebrities out of a really high end, like in a crowded gym in Los Angeles. It's where every ageless celebrity came to train. And this place, therefore was populated by all of LA's best trainers, and many of them were my buddies or my colleagues. So I created my methodologies that I largely now teach today by learning and observing what my colleagues were doing. And then teaching people the opposite. Listen, I'm not putting down other trainers. This is just what my process was. I noticed that nine out of 10 of the big name trainers were selecting their exercises based on what looked cool or seemed cool or was interesting or was sophisticated, rather than a real systematic approach to strengthening the muscles based on mathematics, or biomechanics or physics and muscle balance. And I think it's understandable right because back then before the influence of social media, there wasn't a lot of science to what we were doing. It wasn't really like it is today. So it was then that I got real serious about bringing strategy to my clients is programming so that the exercises were selected with a specific ethic, purpose and reason. And one of the biggest compliments I got from a fellow trainer was that I trained every single one of my clients very, very differently. And it was obvious.

And at the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn or tuning it too loudly, I feel like this is one of my superpowers. My strength programming, the way I program is bomb.com. It's a plus, plus plus, to the best of my ability to create programming that's really customized for people. Now, obviously, that's harder when I'm dealing with 1000s of people publicly like this on a podcast, or even hundreds of people in one of my group coaching programs. But I've really come to understand women's bodies very well. So this story highlights one of the biggest mistakes I see people making when they are self managing their strength programming. And that is choosing your strength exercises without a real strategy. Or maybe because you see something cool on social media, or you hear that you should be doing this exercise. And listen, a lot of the big voices and influential experts out there are really compelling in terms of you need to be doing this exercise, it's very influential, I find myself getting sucked into it. I truly believe that any exercise is better than none. So do not let my message or this episode, toggle on any perfectionism that you might have. But do spend a minute thinking through why you're doing the exercises you're doing. Every workout should have a purpose. And the exercises in the workout, every workout should have an intention. And there is an equation of sorts when it comes to muscle balance. For example, there is a long standing agreement that your quads should be stronger than your hamstrings. And I probably shouldn't even say agreement, there's tons of science to support this. As always, I've included a ton of research links on the show notes of this episode. So the idea is that your quads should be stronger than your hamstrings to a certain ratio. And therefore your quads are usually larger than your hamstrings. If you're still learning your quads, or the muscle group on the front of your thighs, your hamstrings, or the muscle group on the back of your thighs. In the same sense, your deltoids should be stronger than your biceps or your triceps and therefore, your deltoids should be larger than your biceps or triceps. We also know this with a pushing and pulling ratio, you should be pulling more than you're pushing in your upper body in order to protect your shoulders. There's a lot of these equations and ratios and numbers that we know apply. That will keep you healthy, that will keep you injury free. And when we do that you also feel better, you have better energy because there's no muscle lag and drag, if you will. When you look at the human body through this lens, you realize that your strength programming needs to reflect the muscles in your body that need development and no two bodies are the same. And yes, some muscles actually are more important than others, in the sense that some muscles contribute more to the movements that you make all day long. Some muscles are by nature bigger than others. You've got some big huge mack daddy muscles like your lats, and then you've got itty bitty teeny baby muscles in your hips and your shoulders. Now, all muscles are important, every single one of them, but some muscles need to be stronger than others so that you avoid injury through appropriate muscle balance. And when a muscle is stronger, often it's larger.

So if we look at the human body through this filter, it's clear that one muscle rules them all. There is one muscle group that by design should be larger and stronger than the others. And when your top focus is on improving the strength and usually the size of this muscle group, you'll move better. You'll protect your back hips and knees and you'll get more bang for your metabolic buck. Because this muscle group has the capacity The to contribute more to the overall picture of your health. If you know me, you might already know what muscle I'm talking about. And in a moment, I will reveal why this muscle matters the most, and how you can improve it. But first,

Okay, so I imagine you're dying to know which muscle is the most important. And of course, my answer won't disappoint. But it's important that you know that this muscle group is hands down, the most important in terms of its ability to stabilize your entire body, from tip to top from toe to head, and serve as the foundation to nearly every single movement, you may contribute to your metabolism and overall hormonal profile. The muscle that matters the most is your glutes. Now, your glutes are actually three muscles. So it's really a muscle group. It's not a group, but to you, it looks and feels like one muscle, right? It's your booty, it's your butt, it's your behind. Technically, from the 30,000 foot perspective, it's three muscles. The glutes are intended by mother nature to be the largest, most powerful muscle group in your entire body. And I would argue they're way more important than the often I think over emphasized core, which is also a group of muscles. By the way, it's not one. That's another common misconception. And collectively, your three glutes are gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, my favorite and gluteus minimus. Each of these serves a different function, and articulation, if you will, in hip extension, and rotation as well as hip AB duction. That's your legs moving away from each other. As always, I've included some research links, and one that provides a really interesting, just like great visual on the three glute muscles and how they interrelate. The reason why your glutes matter most when it comes to musculature is because it's the powerhouse of your pelvis and serves to stabilize both your spine and your lower body. It's the foundation to your upper body and your lower body. You'll often hear that your core muscles are the most important when you're working to improve or remedy back issues and stability. But what you may not know is that the base of your spine sits on the top of your sacrum, which is the triangular bone at the base of your spine, where your spine connects to the ilium, which is one of the bony structures of your pelvis and there's two sides to your pelvis. And your pelvis is held in place by many, many, many muscles, tendons and ligaments. It's the largest and most powerful of those are your glutes, your glutes, determine the position of your pelvis. And the position of your pelvis determines the position and more specifically, the curvature of your spine. And the natural curves of your spine have clearly defined angles that determine if you're in pain or not. The curvature of your spine really should be at very specific angles. And if you are in pain or have dysfunction that is chronic, not from the result of an acute trauma, like a car accident, then usually when we look at the back, we know it's the spine is not in place. Well, why is the spine not where it needs to be? The muscles, the muscles that hold your spine in place, and what directs those muscles, the positioning of your pelvis and what directs the positioning of your pelvis, your glutes, it's all integrated.

Now listen, this is a very simplified explanation of spinal alignment. It's way more complicated than that. I know I am not a spine expert. But what I found to be true is that when I've got a client with back issues or hip issues, I focus first on pelvic alignment by ensuring the proper muscle balance of the glutes and muscle strength of the glutes. And then then, after the glutes are firing and strong and bounce against and positioning your pelvis where it should be, we then turn our attention to the core muscles. Because your core, all of the muscles of your core, even collectively are still smaller than your glutes. And this is just one example of how influential your glutes are. This is one small example. I know my listeners are smart. And so I'm going to assume that you can now also imagine how glute weakness could cause hip issues. I almost don't even think I need to explain it because I think the previous explanation does it. But again, in my experience, 99, maybe 100% of hip issues are because of weak imbalanced or dysfunctional glutes. Now I'm talking about chronic issues, not that you've had acute trauma. If you have hip issues, there is a very good chance that you have weak glutes or they are a symmetrical, which means that one side of your pelvis, one set of your glutes is different than the other so that one side of your pelvis is in a different position. And let's talk about that, in my experience, and most of my knowledgeable colleagues would agree that most women have weak or underdeveloped glute muscles. In truth, after 30 years in practice, I have never had a new client come to me who didn't have some degree of glute insufficiency, or glute dysfunction, or just weak glutes. If you're not working on your glute strength and function every week, you most likely have weak glutes, it's just the way it is. And, to make matters worse, there is often an imbalance between the two sides of your glutes. As I mentioned, this is an asymmetry where let's say your left side could be weak and then causing either the left side of your pelvis to overly rotate out of its ideal position. Or if that side is weak, let's say the left it can actually cause the right side, your right pelvis to fall into a sub optimal position. Your pelvis is not a locked off bone. Each side of your pelvis is connected at two different joints, the SI joint and the pubic symphysis and that's a mobile movable joint. Those two joints move. Any imbalance or weaknesses in your glutes then influence how your leg bone the femur attaches to the pelvis at the ask metabolome because all three glute muscles attached to the femur, the bone in your thigh. And the acetobutylicum is basically just like a little crater. It's a little nook where the femur attaches to your pelvis. And this is how and why you move everything is interrelated. The glute muscles power, all leg movement and alignment.

So beyond moving well, the strength of your glutes directly influences the position of your femur and then determines the alignment of the knee. Imagine if your thigh bones your femurs are not in alignment or where they need to be or articulating and moving properly. That influences what happens below that bone starting at the knee. I could go off on a tangent here, I really could. And before I do that, just know that if you have knee issues, the problem is rarely at the knee. Again, unless you've had a traumatic injury. A good physical therapist will often first address glute weakness if you have knee issues. And in particular, they're going to address the glute medius, which is it's why it's my favorite. The glute medius is abbreviated in my field as G M glute medius. And therefore, I've always called it the general manager because glute medius largely is responsible for leg abduction. And that is what's positioning your femur it influences everything.

Okay, and lastly, if you've listened to my other episodes, you already know that muscle mass is a huge contributor to metabolism. And while it's not that simple, low muscle mass generally correlates to a slower metabolism, it also correlates to imbalanced hormones or is a contributor to imbalanced hormones, and more muscle mass contributes to a hotter burning engine. If your glutes which are designed to be the biggest and strongest muscle group in your entire body, if they're underdeveloped, that is a missing opportunity to fire up your metabolism and influence overall hormone optimization. If you can't tell I am a stressed with the glutes. It's my favorite muscle group. It is the thing that I am always targeting first. Because I feel like when you prioritize that the biggest muscle group in your body, it's like the perfect triage, why would I be focusing on a small muscle group, let's say like your triceps, just because you want them to look better. When if we put attention on this big mack daddy muscle group, it can actually influence the smaller muscles like your triceps. And I'm obsessed with the glutes largely because I was not blessed with a great but for most of my life, I was self conscious about my but I didn't like it. It didn't feel good. I had major hip issues, I had major knee issues. And so around the age of 40, I really turned all of my attention and focused all of my fitness programming, around prioritizing glute training. And wow, what a difference. I would love to do like a pictorial of what my glutes used to look like as compared to where they are now. And listen, I am not bragging my glutes are not my best asset, if you know what I mean. But they are but unintended. They are way better now in my 50s than they were in my 20s or 30s. They were pretty good in my 40s as well. But I'm still in my 40s and beyond way better than when I was in my 30s. And this is exactly why when I became obsessed with glutes, I created my still best selling program. And I don't talk about it a lot. But it's one of my best full body strength programs that I've ever created. And that's the glutes project, which you can buy on my website. And I'm not here to promote that I'm really here to really just profess my love of the glutes and inspire you to work on them. prioritize them focus on them every single week so they can become more functional, more balanced, stronger and just support you. So let me share some of the ways that you can start focusing on the muscle that matters the most, so that you can move better and improve your body composition.

One mistake I often see is thinking that any exercise will effectively target your glutes that exercise in general, let's say like running or walking or even climbing stairs will impact your glutes because you're being active and that's just not true. Case in point, many people think that squatting is the best for your glutes. And while if you squat correctly, it is great for building your glutes. Most women aren't squatting correctly because it's a complex movement. And therefore most women end up over developing their quads so that their glutes continue to be insufficient. So instead, I'm going to share the three exercises that come to mind today to help you improve this super, super important muscle group. I love these three exercises and I love them in this order in a workout. Now that's not to say these are the only three exercises but these are the three that are top of my list right now. Number one hip extension. There are a few ways that you can achieve hip extension but I love using an ankle weight and an exercise bench. You start on top of the exercise bench on your knees, hands on the bench and you extend one leg back with an ankle weight on so that the toe touches the floor. Then, mentally focus on your booty on your butt on that muscle. Activate your glute and lift the leg up and down keeping the knee angle the same. While this does use the hamstrings as a hip extender, I do love how it largely isolates the glutes in a way where you can really feel glute contraction. In my experience a lot of people don't even know what it feels like to activate their glutes. Lutz, and that mind muscle connection is important. This is one of my favorite exercises to really target the glutes as a hip extender.

Number two is Bulgarian split squat. If you know me, you know, I'm not going to overlook this one. I love it. Because the biggest reason is it's a unilateral exercise, which means you're focusing on one leg at a time, allowing you to put your mental focus and all of your energy onto that one leg. And because it's unilateral, you're better able to reduce any asymmetries between the two sides of your glutes if you're paying attention using your mirror and focusing. So when you focus on only one leg, you watch your alignment, you watch your mechanics, you look at what the knee is doing, you look at what your foot and ankle and toes are doing. And you're able to really perfect your technique of one leg at a time. It is important to get your technique right on this exercise. But this one is mostly simple in that you stand in front of a bench, and you then extend one foot back behind you so that it rests on the bench and you're focusing on that front leg, you put all your attention on the working leg, which is in the front, and you forget about the leg which is behind you, which is raised and resting on the bench. Personally, I like the top of the foot to be in contact with a bench so that your toe is pointed, but a few of my clients very, very few but some do prefer that the foot is tucked under in dorsiflexion so that it's the ball of your foot in contact with the bench.

And lastly, I do love a hip thrust, or a glute bridge, and I find that it is for sure. One of the best exercises that really targets the glutes from a position where you've got gravity on your side. So in a hip thrusts are a glute bridge you are facing upward and your feet are in contact. Usually with the floor. Let's keep it simple. And you've got a weight load on the top of your hips such that when you press upward, the glutes are having to reach maximal contraction when the muscle is in a shortened position. And this is very different than a Bulgarian split squat, where at the bottom of the move, your glutes are stretched. I love the hip thrusts because you get you're able to use a heavier weight load. And there's not a ton of loaded East centric phase, which often contributes to muscle soreness. So we do get more muscle soreness with a Bulgarian split squat or a lunge. But it's different with a hip thrust or a glute bridge. It's possible if you've been living under a rock, you don't know what exercise I'm talking about here because I feel like it's the most talked about exercise of the past three to five years. But just in case, in general, in general, a glute bridge is done from the floor where you are on your back, knees bent feet on the floor, you press into your heels and you lift your hips up into the air until your knees come to about a 90 degree angle. So your shoulder stay on the floor and you load it then by somehow placing a weight load across your hips. A hip thrust is where your shoulders are raised and you place your shoulder blades on an exercise bench that is in mobile, it's really best to have that bench locked off feeder on the floor and you can use a heavier weight load. A barbell works best here but you can definitely do it with dumbbells and you're pressing up and down. My preferred way is to pause at the top, tucking your pelvis under making sure you absolutely reach full hip extension at the top. That's absolutely critical. And you repeat your repetitions that way and I absolutely love this exercise. When I started employing this exercise the right way. That's really when my glute development took a big turn for the better. As I said, there are numerous exercises you can do to target your glutes these just happened to be the three that I'm loving right now in this order, largely because of three very different exercises. I suggest that you incorporate these three exercises into your weekly routine in general, and aim to strengthen your glutes at least two times each week depending on your familiarity, your strength training history and your fitness level.

You can find basic video tutorials for each of these exercises on my women's strength nation channel on YouTube. Check it out there. And there you have it exactly why the glutes are the muscles group that matters the most. I could continue on here forever. But I really try hard to keep these episodes to 30 minutes. This is a no a comprehensive, and your glutes are so important that I cringe knowing that I'm only dedicating 30 minutes today. But I hope that this illuminates some of the reasons why your glutes are so darn important. So train them, please, religiously, like your life depends on it because it literally does. I know that becoming more muscle and less fat could feel daunting and confusing at times. And improving your body composition does take time. This is a long game. And that long game is worth playing. It's a journey worth taking. No one ever said, you know, I really regret getting into better shape. And wanting to improve your body or your health in any way does not mean that you're anything less than fabulous. You're amazing, just as you are. So let's create the body that you need, so that we can keep you around here for as long as possible. And hey, if you have a question for me, I have a new way that you can reach out. From time to time I'll be answering your questions right here on the pod. If you want my response to a burning question, come over to Holly perkins.com forward slash ask Callie all one word and send me your cue and I will give you my A on an upcoming podcast episode. And stay tuned for a brand new episode on Tuesday of next week. Stay strong my friend