I look at the screen, trying to write a joke. This implies a muscle called gluteus maximus, Roman centurions and perhaps a reference to Biggus someone in the life of Monty Python de Brian.
I have been sitting here for more than an hour, so long that when I finally get up, I have to whip and wobble a few steps before I can recover my stride.
This is because my glutei Maximi are a bit like a joke. I spent a large part of my life in the place literally on this muscle with Roman consonance, looking at the screens, trying to think about the first lines of killers of stories which, at the average age, this vocal underlying workhorse its disappointment to my life choices.
Everyone seems to speak of glutes at the moment and it is not only a fashion caused by the internet breeze of Kim Kardashian. Fitness instructors tell us to “make these glutes ignited”, or to warn us to have “lazy” glutes or a “dead end syndrome”; Suddenly, this is bass. And it's for a good reason.
Fustinime muscles are essential to get up and us, but the increasingly sedentary lifestyle and work of humanity lead to the negligence of our gluteal health, with potentially serious consequences for our overall health.
Let us meet the triumvirate of the Tash muscles: gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and minimus gluteus. Maximus is, as its name suggests, the large one which constitutes what could be familiarly known as the butt cheek and which attaches to the back of the basin and on the side of the thigh bone.
“The Max buttocks are largely responsible for the extent of your hips, so pushing your leg behind you,” said Associate Professor Angie Fearon, physiotherapist at Canberra University. “If you get up and you've grown on the back, it would be this muscle … It pushes you forward when you walk, or run or jump or jump.” Gluteus medius and Minimus take the leg to the side and manage the rotation movement.
These three muscles are essential to maintain the stable pelvis during walking, lift the leg and feed us forward. They are also a link of the muscles of the heart of the stomach and the lower back to the leg muscles.
Weak gluteal muscles can lead to what Dr. Charlotte Ganderton describes as a theater style approach, where people tilt their upper body on the other on their hip while they walk. “They actually throw all their chest on their hip to be able to clean their foot, and this obviously has important consequences on the rest of your body and the joints which are more distant from the hip, so the spine,” explains Ganderton, Physiotherapist at Rmit and Alphington Sports Medicine in Melbourne.
The real problem with the neglected gluteal muscles is what they can lead to. “If you don't have good functional gluteal muscles, the real hip joint is the one that takes these strengths,” said Ganderton. “People who have hip pathology – so hip arthritis, lateral hip pain, that people call gluteal tendinopathy – we know that these individuals have bad hip strength, and they often have very bad hip control when we assess them at the clinic.”
The two most common hip conditions that affect people in particular the elderly are osteoarthritis of the hip and glued tendinopathy, which is sometimes also called trochanteric pain syndrome or bursitis. “What we see in people with these conditions is that they are often lower in this area than asymptomatic control group,” explains Fearon. With spanking tendinopathy, pain develops because the lower gluteal muscles lead people to overuse other muscles, which then causes irritation and inflammation of tendons and muscles in the external hip region.
And for many, our sedentary lifestyle is to blame – it is really to “use it or lose it”. Even two weeks to sit on our backs with little or no activity may be sufficient to start the deconditioning and the decrease in our muscles. Further on, “the muscle does not remain muscle tissue, for the most part – it is actually filled with fat and what we call fatty infiltrate,” says Ganderton. And once it happens, it can be very difficult to reverse and rebuild the muscle.
However, the exercises to strengthen the gluteal muscles are actually quite basic. The simplest is called a “glueal bridge” and simply involves lengthening it on the back, planting the soles of your feet on the floor or bed and lifting your pelvis on this surface. Or while you are lying down, roll on your side and lift the upper leg upwards towards the width of your shoulders.
Ganderton's own research on menopausal women with powerful tendinopathy has revealed that a simple standing exercise could also help.
“Standing on a leg where you have both straight knees and you simply lift the opposite leg about a centimeter of the soil, so the simple weight through uses a lot of muscle activity in the leg on the ground,” she said.
For the most active and the most stable among us, Fearon also recommends squats and walking slots, carrying weights if you are up to par.
Even these simple exercises can make a big difference, says Fearon. “Let's say that you had 100 people with spanking tendinopathy, in a large percentage of them, if you were doing a specific reinforcement work for hip abductors, and you gave them an appropriate education, they would probably improve or a large percentage of them would do so.”
But at the most basic level, we just need to move more. “There are very good proofs that show that if you get up and move every 20 to 30 minutes-get up, do a few squats, get a glass of water, go to the photocopier, get up and move-it actually triggers a lot of enzymes in your muscles, which is good,” she said. “Your brain takes a break and overall, you do better.”
