5 ways to stretch the gluteals (gluts/glutes)
In this video physiotherapist Jacob Taylor outlines 5 ways to stretch the gluteals.
Transcript
Good day guys, Jacob here from Pogo Physio. Today I have got a quick little video blog for you on a couple of really key ways to stretch out your gluteals. Your gluteals muscles are the muscles around your back obviously. If they are really stiff and tight it will be the fastest way to get lower back pain and tight hips. So I really want to show you how to stretch out those muscles to help prevent lower back pain and help minimise the strain on your back when you are at work on sitting activities and over the day. A couple of quick ways, don’t worry about which way you are stretching them out just that you do.
The first one to start with is lie down on your back; we will grab our knee and pull it up towards our shoulder. If you have knee pain just be careful pulling your knee across. You should feel a stretch… in through the muscle through there.
That is number one and usually if you have back pain this is the place to start.
Number 2 a little variation of that crossing this foot up, bringing the other leg up, hands through the hole and hold onto the knee, and pull it up. It just gives a slightly different stretch for your gluts. You can do that on both sides as well.
Number 3 is called a slim stretch. From a four points kneeling, you are going to put your back foot underneath and the other one out the back straight and sliding down, once again a stretch through your hips at the back there. The further down towards the ground that you go the more stretch you are going to feel. Just be careful again with you knee with this one as you don’t want any knee pain.
Now for those of you who are in the office environment a really great way to do it is popping your foot up on a bed or a chair or you could did it on your bench as well. Put your foot up in front of you, then leaning forwards will give you a good stretch for the gluts as well.
And last but not least for those of you who cannot get away from your desk even though we all should be getting up from our desk during the day…. You can also in between your day put your foot across you and leaning forward from the hips and that will give you a little bit of a glut stretch and you can do the other side as well.
So there you go a few different ways to stretch those gluts. Every day stretch your gluts and it will help keep that back pain away.
Jacob Taylor (APAM)
Physiotherapist
