​So often our glutes are blamed for lower limb injuries. Tight hamstrings? Your glutes are probably weak. Knee pain? Ah your glutes aren’t firing. Flat feet? Your glutes could be causing that. How can one muscle be responsible for so many injuries? We all assume everyone is aware of what our glutes do but, in truth, very few know about the subtle differences in the different gluteal muscles.
So, what do our glutes actually do?
Our glutes are made up of 3 muscles; gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. Yes, they all sound like characters from Gladiator so to avoid this confusion we’ve shortened it simply to “glutes”. Beneath these again are more muscles often grouped under the term glutes; specifically, our piriformis, obturator internus and gemmilli (superior and inferior). Did you realise there were that many muscles knocking about underneath your glute max? When each of these muscles has a different function is grouping them together often wisest?

So we’re over a week in. You’ve given away the last box of Roses, locked the drinks cabinet and the new runners that were under the tree are well on their way to getting broken in. We’re all guilty of this, going full steam ahead when we set new goals and it’s not a bad thing. January is a time for a fresh start, to set those new goals, to revisit old ones and to generally put the possible over indulging or negativity of 2018 to bed. So of course we feel we need to take advantage of our new positive mindset.
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WARNING - this comes at a risk. At PhysioElite Physiotherapy and Sports injury clinic, we tend to see a spike in mid to late January of simple overuse injuries, unwanted and unnecessary muscular tension and avoidable compensatory patterns. Eager January beavers can take on the world, can train every day, and can ignore their training logs! In the inexperienced, new training goals literally take over, and we neglect to listen to our bodies crying out for a recovery session, some cross training or very simply, just a day off.

Anyone who is familiar with my work knows I am such a huge advocate of recovery. I believe it is an important as clocking miles, setting new PB’s and getting in those results guaranteed hill sessions. Recovery is an essential component to factor into every new training plan or new long term goal target. There are numerous methods of recovery and numerous benefits with too much science and research attached to them to ignore. Some of the most common methods include: