Glutes

legs3 muscles

The glutes are the three muscles of your backside, and their main job is driving your hips forward. They are the largest and most powerful muscle group in the body.

Glutes: its 3 muscles highlighted on an anatomical figure, from behind — Gluteus Maximus, Gluteus Medius and Gluteus Minimus.
Where the glutes sit, from behind.

Three muscles stack over the side and back of the pelvis. The gluteus maximus is the big superficial one that gives the backside its shape; the gluteus medius sits above and outside it; and the gluteus minimus lies underneath the medius, roughly a smaller copy of it.

They do two quite different jobs. The maximus extends the hip — driving the thigh backward, which is what standing up out of a squat, climbing a stair and sprinting all require. The medius and minimus abduct the hip, pulling the thigh out to the side, and more importantly they stop the pelvis dropping when you stand on one leg.

That second job is constant and invisible. Every step you take is a moment of standing on one leg, and the glute medius on the standing side is what keeps your hips level while the other foot swings through. It works thousands of times a day without anyone thinking about it.

The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the human body by mass, and the group as a whole produces more force than any other. It is also, in most people who sit for a living, among the least developed relative to what it could be — which is an unusual combination and the reason glute training gets so much attention.

Training notes

Hip extension against load is the core of it, and there are two families of movement. Squats, lunges and step-ups load the glutes deep in hip flexion, where they are long. Hip thrusts, kickbacks and back extensions load them near lockout, where they are short. Both are useful and they are not substitutes for each other.

Deadlifts and their variations sit in the middle and load the glutes alongside the hamstrings through most of the range. Romanian deadlifts in particular train the stretched end well.

The abductors — medius and minimus — need separate work, because nothing in a squat or a deadlift asks the leg to move sideways. Band walks, side-lying raises, cable abduction and single-leg work all cover it, and single-leg work covers it while training everything else too.

Depth matters more than load for the maximus. A squat cut short at parallel never reaches the range where the glutes contribute most; going deeper does more than adding weight to a shallow squat.

The common complaint of not feeling the glutes working during squats is usually a range and stance issue rather than an activation problem. A wider stance, more depth, and a more upright torso all increase the glutes' share.

Muscles in this group

Exercises

Antagonists

Synergists