Today we continue our January mission to activate and strengthen our glutes.  As much as I love those clam shells, it’s important to mix up your training to keep those muscles guessing!

Tall Kneeling is one of the most underutilized training positions out there, but let me tell you, it is awesome and definitely deserves more credit.  When I first started adding in glute training from this position, I found it shocking how effective it was at getting right to the point.

Check out this compilation of my favorite variations and give the a try!

1.  Ball Squeezes:  Place something between your feet making sure the knee, hip and shoulder are all lined up.  Squeeze the ball and hold for 5 seconds focusing on feeling the glutes.  Repeat 10 times
2. Push Backs:  Place your hands on those glutes and push.  As you hinge from the hips focusing on pushing the hands backwards.  When you return to the starting position, make sure to squeeze the ball.
3. Isometric Hold:  Hinge from your hips maintaining the squeeze on the ball, reach your arms up making a Y.
4. Hand Slides:  Place your hands on the from top your legs and let them slide to the ground hinging from your hips.  Again, squeeze the ball every time you extend the hips back to the starting position.
5. KB Helper:  This is a great was to reinforce using the glutes to extend the hips.  As you return to the start, feel the weight dropping to the ground and helping you back to the start.
6. Hinged Curl Up:  By face the hardest of all of these, hinge the hips and squeeze the ball.  Maintain this position and then curl the spine towards the ground.  You want to feel like you are falling forward because that will make the glutes fire even more!

All of these are great options, just be prepared to have trouble sitting the next day!

-S