The Truth About Glute Activation Warm Ups
Walk into a gym any day of the week and you will undoubtedly see a few women doing glute ‘activation’ exercises before leg day.
It’s the latest fashion in glute training and it’s everywhere….
Firstly let me be very clear; this article is discussing whether the typical Instagram/Tik Tok style activation warm up is actually any good, you know the one - Dozens of glute bridges, fire hydrants, side steps, kick backs and clams that takes up the first 15 minutes of your workout and gets your bum burning
But you may be surprised to learn that it may not be as useful as you think.
Let’s dip into the science behind glute activation warmups.
What is Glute Activation?
Glute activation exercises are low load (light weight) exercises typically performed before a leg/glute training session.
For example glute bridges, lateral band walks, fire hydrants, clamshells, monster walks, banded abductions etc
The principal behind doing them is to activate and ‘wake up’ the glute muscles before training so that you can improve the mind muscle connection and get better results.
We are often told that due to out more sedentary lifestyles that we have weak, inactive glutes (aka gluteal amnesia/dead butt) and thus we need to wake them up before training.
But it’s not that simple.
One study by Miokevic et al 2011 showed that even under extreme sedentary conditions the glutes can still grow with regular training as long as progressive overload is applied (getting stronger). So simply sitting down a lot doesn’t necessarily mean your glutes are weak or inactive and can’t grow.
So activation exercises give you a good pump, maybe they’ll burn a bit, but that doesn’t mean your glutes are suddenly more active and may in fact over doing them could hinder your performance.
The Argument FOR Glute Activation
There are at least five studies that have shown a positive correlation between glute activation and sports specific performance. But note these are studies focused on athletes and athletic performance and not your average gym girl doing a glute workout.
These studies also do not include many of the typical ‘influencer’ booty band exercises either.
Also to note many of these studies are performed on men, which is common and leads to a general lack of information on female trainees in research.
Without delving to deep into the science, these studies showed that activation may:
Increase mind muscle connection/ability to properly contract the glutes.
Improve power output for explosive movements like Hang Cleans.
Improve sprint performance.
Improve power output in the counter movement jump (CMJ) test and vertical jump tests.
Improved jump output (dependent on an eight minute rest period between sets).
But again, this is pretty different from your glute day workout and is not showing any direct relevant evidence to support low load glute activation as a useful tool for glute growth.
The Argument AGAINST Glute Activation
As is often the way in scientific research, some studies will show a positive outcome others a negative outcomes. Below are four studies that showed glute activation had no effect or even a negative effect on glute performance or growth.
Again these are typically based on athletic male populations in certain sports such as football, rugby and athletics (and again are not doing booty and influencer warm ups) .
Also, all but one of all the studies listed above focused on immediate performance only, not long term strength or hypertrophy of the glutes which is really your primary focus with this activity.
If you want to learn all about how to grow your glutes then I recommend starting with this article on growing your upper glute shelf
Stimulate Don’t Annihilate
Ok, so the research shows us both sides of the coin but we need to look at this away from studies and closer to what you do in the gym most days, studies alone can’t give us a 100% answer.
The problem I see most often with glute activation is that people do TO MUCH and they do it TO HARD.
Glute activation with bands has become a workout in itself (just google it, YouTube is full of activation workouts). People are spending 10-30+ minutes doing low load activation before they even start lifting and the effect of this is that their glutes are actually fatigued which will hinder performance.
Your glutes shouldn’t be burning before you start, they shouldn’t be pumped up either, these are all signs that your warm up is too intense and you are working your glutes too hard, remember it’s a WARM UP not a workout.
Stimulate the muscle, don’t annihilate the muscle.
How To Properly Warm Up Your Glutes
At this point I think it’s fair to say you can largely ditch the booty band activation warm ups you see all over social media, they are too long, too intense and don’t activate the glutes in any meaningful way for heavy lifting.
A well constructed warm up follows a basic principle we strength and conditioning coaches call R.A.M.P
Raise - Increase muscle temperature, core temperature, blood flow, muscle elasticity and neural activation.
Activate - Engage the muscles, prepare them for the upcoming session,
Mobilise - Focus on movement patterns which will be used during the workout
Potentiate - This is the rehearsal. Gradually increasing the stress on the body in preparation for the upcoming workout.
Potentiation is more important than activation.
It is potentiation that actually improves a muscles ability to work properly during a session.
So how can we potentiate our glutes?
Simple!
It is better to warm up and mimic the specific exercises/skills your workout includes by performing those exercises using a lighter weight and steadily increasing the weight up to your working sets.
These are called warm up sets.
For example if your workout contains Hip Thrusts you would and you need to perform 3 sets of 5 reps at 100kg you may warm up like this:
10 barbell only Hip Thrusts (15-20kg)
1 set of 5 at 40kg
1 set of 5 at 60kg
1 set of 5 at 80kg
First set of Hip Thrusts at 100kg
The act of progressively overloading the glutes in the warm up sets will active the muscles to a much higher degree than light band exercises ever could and truly get the body ready to work.
Glute activation drills to instantly ‘switch on’ under active muscles look sexy as fuck on social media, but unfortunately there’s no magic going on.
Despite what you feel is going on your glutes will not instantly wake up, and muscle performance will likely not be increased.
But this isn’t to say they’re useless.
Are Banded Exercises Totally Useless?
There’s nothing wrong with a glute activation routine at the start of a workout as part of your R.A.M.P warm up, it just doesn't need to be 10+ minutes of pure bands and glutes, as all that really does is fatigue the glutes without any real performance benefits.
Instead try this example R.A.M.P warm up on your next glute/leg day.
Raise - 2-5 minutes of moving e.g. cardio machine, jogging, star jumps, sports drills etc.
Activate - 2 mins foam rolling the glutes, quads, hamstrings and lower back, then 20x glute bridges, 10x fire hydrants, 20x banded side steps.
Mobilise - 10x body weight squats, 20x lunges, 10x banded hip hinges.
Potentiate - ‘warm up sets’ on your main exercises.
It is a far more effective system than the social media activation drills you see every day and prepared the entire body to function at it's best.
I would typically recommend picking 2-3 exercises and performing one set of each, 10 reps per leg and focusing on squeezing your glutes as hard as possible NOT going for the burn or pump.
But the majority of your warm up should focus on large, dynamic exercises that mimic your workout such as low load/body weight squats, lunges and bridges leading into progressively heavier warm ups sets.
In Conclusion
The evidence for glute activation is pretty mixed and the studies don’t really focus on glute hypertrophy (which is what most of us want) and instead focus more on short term sports performance improvements in strength and power.
There is no harm in doing them but also no real benefit to the high rep, burn inducing warm ups so many women do in the gym
As a Strength and Conditioning coach though I don’t recommend it mainly because it’s a waste of precious time in the gym when a regular R.A.M.P warmup incorporating the specific movements your workout includes is a much better way to go.
A R.A.M.P warm up is simply superior in every way for not just glute activation but preparing your entire body to train.
The you can make real progress on growing your glutes with lifting big and eating big.
Check out my calorie calculator to see how much food you need to grow your glutes.
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Hi, I’m Aaron Schiavone, owner of Mind Muscle Personal Training. Over the past 7+ years I have helped women increase their self confidence, improve their relationship with food, improve their health, become stronger, fitter and happier..
References:
Cochrane, D.J., Harnett, M.C., & Pinfold, S.C. (2017). Does short-term gluteal activation enhance muscle performance. Research in sports medicine (Print), 25(2), 156-65.
Comyns, T., Kenny, I., & Scales, G. (2015). Effects of a Low-Load Gluteal Warm-Up on Explosive Jump Performance. Journal of human kinetics, 46, 177-87.
Crow, J.F., Buttifant, D., Kearny, S.G., & Hrysomallis, C. (2012). Low load exercises targeting the gluteal muscle group acutely enhance explosive power output in elite athletes. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 26(2), 438-42.
Healy, R., & Harrison, A.J. (2014). The effects of a unilateral gluteal activation protocol on single leg drop jump performance. Sports biomechanics, 13(1), 33-46.
Parr, M., Price, P.D., & Cleather, D.J. (2017). Effect of a gluteal activation warm-up on explosive exercise performance. BMJ open sport & exercise medicine, 3(1), e000245.
Pinfold, S.C., Harnett, M.C., & Cochrane, D.J. (2018). The acute effect of lower-limb warm-up on muscle performance. Research in sports medicine (Print), 26(4), 490-9.
Beth E Fisher 1, Anna C Southam, Yi-Ling Kuo, Ya-Yun Lee, Christopher M Powers. (2016) Evidence of altered corticomotor excitability following targeted activation of gluteus maximus training in healthy individuals. Neuroreport 27(6):415-21.
Tomás Gallego-Izquierdo 1, Gerardo Vidal-Aragón 2, Pedro Calderón-Corrales 2, Álvaro Acuña 2, Alexander Achalandabaso-Ochoa 3, Agustín Aibar-Almazán 3, Antonio Martínez-Amat 3, Daniel Pecos-Martín. (2020). Effects of a Gluteal Muscles Specific Exercise Program on the Vertical Jump. International Journal of Environmental Research on Public Health 17(15):5383.
Andre Sander 1, Michael Keiner, Andreas Schlumberger, Klaus Wirth, Dietmar Schmidtbleicher. (2013) Effects of functional exercises in the warm-up on sprint performances. Journal of Strength Conditioning Research 27(4):995-1001.