Side Stepping Progressions: Gluteus Medius Reactive Activation

Side stepping progressions: Gluteus Medius Reactive Activation is a beneficial training technique designed to target and strengthen the gluteus medius muscles. This strengthening exercise is often used to improve hip and thigh stability, reduce the likelihood of injury, and enhance sports performance. The progression utilizes lateral and crossover movements to engage the gluteus medius muscles and stimulate them to react in order to protect and stabilize the hip joint during dynamic movement. Implementing this method of training can help

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness,
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and we're talking about gluteus medius
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reactive integration. In this video we're going to do progressions from the
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sidestepping we did in the last video. At this point I'm going to assume that we've
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already mastered all of those little form things that we talked about that
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take out are overactive synergist, being our quadratus lumborum, TFL, and
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piriformis. I'm going to have my fellow DPT student come out, Steph and help me
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demonstrate this exercise. She's using a fit loop here, she's going to go
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ahead and place that fit loop above her knees, once again you could use a
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resistance band. We're going to assume that Steph has already mastered our side
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stepping from the previous video, and now we need to take it up a notch. So we're
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going to add a little multiplanar dimension to what we're already doing.
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Now, obviously, the gluteus medius is primary and frontal plane muscle, so we're
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going to keep a lot of side-to-side movement in these next couple of
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progressions, but we're going to go ahead and add sagittal in the first two
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progressions, and then transverse plane in the last one. I'm going to have Steph
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go ahead and turn and face me. So this time, rather than just straight
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sidestepping, what I'm going to have Steph try to do, is stay up nice and tall,
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and you're going to reach back with one leg, land on the ball of your foot, and
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then come back. Good. Reach back, land on the ball of your foot, and come back. A
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little bit more side-to-side. One more step, good. Despite going forward and back,
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we don't want to make this mostly forward and back. When it becomes
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mostly forward back, now we've got gluteus maximus as the prime mover, and not
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glute med. The next progression is to actually come forward. This tends to be a
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little harder progression for people to master, because it involves, once again,
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pushing from that back leg, and trying to not reach, which is what so many people
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try to do. So Steph, once again, we're going to go at an angle
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sideways. A little bit more side, but that was pretty good.
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You can see Steph has got that pretty good. You can increase the
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tempo as somebody gets better at it. The last progression that we're going to do,
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I'm going to have Steph go ahead and take a little step forward, we're going to imagine that
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there is a point about 45 degrees behind her, a good distance away. I'm going to
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have Steph start facing the camera this way, and then end facing the other wall.
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Good! You don't have to take quite such a big step Steph, let's go ahead and try it one
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more time. I want you to take a step that you can get to without hopping.
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Good, and back, good. So, once again, that's sidestepping with a little bit of
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backward motion, we had sidestepping with a little bit of forward motion and push,
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and then we had our quarter turn, adding transverse plane. Now you can do
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sidestepping one week, sidestepping and back the next week, side stepping forward
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the following week, and then quarter turns the following week as a progression. Or
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you can use these progressions in succession, building on one another. Have
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your client do ten sideways, ten back. Ten waltzes backwards, ten waltzes forward,
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and then ten quarter turns this way, and ten quarter turns that way. Your gluteus
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medius is one of those muscles that has a propensity towards weakness, and
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propensity towards under activity, and even in individuals I've had for a
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long time, I find that the gluteus medius still has a tendency to get under active,
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and this is a great exercise to use as a warm-up. We'll put a whole bunch of them
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in succession just to try to increase that activity, increase the alignment of
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the femur, gluteus medius neuromuscular efficiency, and it has a huge effect on
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their performance, as well as keeping any knee pain, lumbo-pelvic hip complex pain