Glute Warm-Up For Stronger Calisthenics Leg Exercises

It's time to tackle one of the biggest lower body challenges in the world of calisthenics. This is the challenge of keeping your glutes and your hips engaged when in a deep squat or lunge position. 

A lot of your lower body potential, to build both strength and muscle while keeping your joints safe depends on how well you use these muscles and keep them engaged throughout an entire range of motion. This is especially the case when doing deep bodyweight leg exercises.  It's also not uncommon for people to tell me they feel their hips engage but they lose that engagement at the bottom of a squat. Everything just kind of shuts off and they don't feel like these muscles are doing their job. 

Many experts may claim the hips are still working, but always remember that your muscles do not behave and work as they should according to whatever exercise you're doing. They engage because your nervous system is driving tension into them through your focus and concentration. So you could be doing squats like crazy, and they're supposed to work your glutes but your muscles engage because of what your brain is telling them to do; not the exercise. If your mind is having trouble with that mind-muscle connection you could do a million squats it's never going to make any difference.

The first thing we've got to do is make sure you can engage those muscles to begin with; especially in a standing position. One of my favorite overcoming isometrics for doing this is to stand as you would on two feet one foot slightly in front of the other. You're going to drive the floor apart as if you’re sliding your rear foot backward using the glutes and my hamstrings.

I recommend practicing this on a daily basis. You're just standing there so you don't need to do any special exercise. Hold each isometric for about five to ten seconds. You’re just waking up the muscle and getting them to engage. 

It's also a good idea to practice habitual glute and hamstring activation in a seated position when you're in a chair or if you're driving your car. Most everyone habitually turns their muscles off in a seated position which is why we have trouble engaging it during a squat. in the first place.  Trying to engage those glutes on a regular basis helps to override that habitual response of making everything turn off when you get your hips lower in a squat position.

From there, challenge your glute activation unilaterally in a standard lunge position. Place more weight on the front leg and keep the shin angle and the torso angle the same. This position helps to keep the hips engaged and then drive up and forward into a standing position. 

Be sure to maintain that tension as you come down into the next lunge position. You don't want it to be a passive exercise because then you're just going to use your muscles how you habitually would, which may not be very much.

Using these exercises as an effective warm-up before your leg workout. If you don't feel your hips engaging, that’s okay. Just trying to get the muscle to engage will eventually teach it to contract at a stronger rate and then you can drive up and try to keep your glutes engaged. Creating effective muscle tension is a skill that can take some practice. All you need is a little patience while practicing these warm-ups and you’ll notice your hips become stronger and more stable in all of your leg exercises.