“If you don’t use it, you lose it!” A teacher at school would say that repeatedly to make us use our brains more in class. But his adage can quite easily be used for any part of your body. Too much sitting around and being a couch potato sure gives you an unused, flaccid and a flat backside and that too when the rear is everywhere in fitness today and for good reason too.

The glutes or butt muscles may be the most important muscle group in the body as they support the back and the core. With the knee extended, they abduct the thigh (out to the side away from the opposite leg). When running, they stabilise the leg during the single-support phase. With the hips flexed, they internally rotate the thigh. With the hips extended, they externally rotate the thigh. Since the glutes are big muscles, exercising them with weights can actually increase your metabolic rate so you are burning fat even in rest mode.

Many of the forms of exercise that we do don’t really train the glutes well. However, bridges are a great exercise that you can do every day to learn how to activate the glutes. Correctly done bridges teach core control, hip control, how to deactivate the hamstrings and most importantly fire up the glutes. It’s a chain exercise that engages your abs but offers even more benefits for your rear, hips and lower back.

Lie down face up on the floor with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Raise your hips so your body forms a straight line from your shoulders to your knees. Pause in the up position, and then lower your body back to the starting position. That is a bridge done.

Bridges are an easy exercise for a perfectly rounded rear and a pain-free back

Weak and under-active glutes can cause low back pain. Since we hardly use these muscles much in our sedentary, lazy lives, other muscles like spinal erectors and hamstrings take over the job that the glutes are meant for. Lazy rear muscles put a load on the back muscles instead, staying fatigued and causing back pain.

Knee pain associated with the position of your leg bone or femur improves as you exercise your butt because it will support the leg bone better which in turn will control the movement of how other knee bones sit together.

With strong glutes, your running abilities improve because of a stronger stride. Bridges in particular also help the pelvis to sit correctly aligned with the spine.

Once you gain strength doing bridges, you can get on to doing more and better squats and lunges for increased gluteal strength.

Ideally bridges should be done with just body weight but later you can do very effective bridges by loading up a barbell across the hips. Just make sure you keep some padding under the bar. With or without weights, smash up three sets of 12-15 and feel the difference.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 30th, 2015

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