Glutes, min, med and max. Which one is one is working?

Glutes, you have three glute muscles on each side of your body, which make up your bottom. The glute minimus, glute medius and the glute maximum. They do different jobs, so they need to be exercises in different ways.

Closest to the skin is the glute maximus. If you press into the soft tissue of your bottom, you are pressing into your glute maximus. This huge muscles covers up most of the other two glute muscles. The glute maximus is the most powerful hip extensor muscles. This muscle is responsible for taking the thigh behind your body line. (Hip flexion the thigh raises towards your tummy, hip extension the thigh is behind the body line, this happens when the back foot pushes off the ground when we walk). The glute maximus also helps the body with the movement of hip adduction (stand on one leg and raise the other leg out the the side of your body up towards your hand/arm. Adduction is the movement of this leg back in towards the body). Finally the glute maximus is responsible for hip lateral rotation (closing the legs together as if you are trying to rotate your knees together as much as possible). The glute maximus is a very busy muscle.

Under the glute maximus you have the glute medius. This muscles is very important. it is responsible for abduction (lifting you leg away from the body, out to you side towards your arm). More importantly, it is responsible for stabilising your pelvis when you lift you leg and foot off the floor to take a step. A weak glute medius will impact your ability to walk and increase the wiggle or drop of your hip at each step. The Glute medius is responsible for medial rotation through the hip (rotating and opening the thighs/knees away from each other).

Finally the glute minimus which is under the glute medius and the glute maximus helps the glute medius with medial rotation (rotating and opening the thight/knees away from each other) and abduction (lifting you leg away from the body, out to you side towards your arm).

Simply the Glute maximus has very different jobs in the body to the glute medius and glute minimus. This is why it is important to differentiate between the muscles and make sure the harder to reach deeper muscles are working along with the glute max.

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