Milo Bryant is a performance coach as well as an experienced journalist. He’s also in his 50s—and his book Unstoppable After 40 gives you the roadmap to do more than merely remain active as you “mature.” Milo trains hard and recovers even better so he can do what he wants, when he wants. Get ready to use his methods to become unstoppable. This isn’t your dad’s middle age.
QUICK—NAME the second most important muscle in the body. Are you thinking chest? Biceps? Any of the big ones that wind up the focus of your workouts, but might not take the number one spot?
The answer I’m looking for is not one muscle, but rather a trio: the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus, known collectively as the glutes. This group is the largest in your body, and second only to the heart in what it does for you, especially for men over 40.
The heart circulates life-giving oxygenated blood to all parts of your body. You can see how that’s important. But the glutes are instrumental in making sure the body moves properly. The glutes are the kings of the body’s mobility and stability. Standing, walking, running, jumping, squatting, bending, kicking—just about every type of movement—are all easier with active and strong glutes.
As you age, your propensity for injury increases as well. It’s not always the big injuries that keep holding back your movement efforts; it’s the little nagging aches and pains that will first frustrate you and then shut you down. Golf great Tiger Woods even withdrew from the Farmers Insurance Open in 2015 because of a nagging lower back pain that was the result of, “my glutes are shutting off,” he said. “Then they don’t activate and then, hence, it goes into my lower back.”
Your goal, then, should be to keep your glutes active. Warm up exercises such as the walking glute stretch can help to activate and prepare the glutes to receive higher levels of intense muscular engagement from deadlifts and goblet squats to rear foot-elevated split squats and single-leg hip thrusts.
Do this warmup exercise before every workout, and definitely don’t skip it on leg day.
How to Do the Walking Glute Stretch
- Stand with your hands at your sides, then lift your right leg in front of your body.
- Raise your right leg by grasping just above your right ankle with your left hand. With your right hand, grab the shin a few inches above your left hand.
- Pull your shin toward your chest.
- Return to the starting position, then take three steps forward and shake out the leg.
- Repeat on the other side.
- Do 5 reps per leg.
Best Coaching Cues for the Walk Glute Stretch
● Own the stability of the single-leg stance before raising the leg.
● Grab the lower part of the shin and the ankle and pull from there. Do not grab and pull the bottom of the shoe or the foot.
● Keep the torso tall. Do not hyperextend the torso when pulling the shin vertically.
Helpful Tip for the Walking Glute Stretch
If you keep the shin parallel with the ground while pulling it vertically, you simultaneously will work the mobility of the glute and the mobility of the hip.
Milo Bryant, CSCS, is a California-based trainer and an award-winning journalist.
