Extreme Gluteal Amnesia and Quad Dominance

Hi,

My friend a very extreme case of gluteal amnesia, she just cannot connect her mind to her glutes. In every exercise she will find a way for her quads, and sometimes her hamstrings to take over. She doesn't have anterior pelvic tilt, in fact I would say she has has slight case of posterior tilt. We decided to take all non hip dominant exercises out of her routine, and we have been trying all kinds of glute activation exercises, cook hip lifts, band walks, quadruped hip extension, clams but to no avail. It's frustrating her to the point of tears now, her glutes are complete passengers. She claims she cannot tense them without tensing her quads, she couldn't engage them at all during a plank, it was as if they were paralysed.

She does a thorough stretching regime first, her hip flexors do not appear to be tight in anyway.

Any advice would be massively appreciated, I am all out of solutions.

Thanks
Martin

Hi,
You may want to find a practitioner of MAT, Muscle Activiation Technique. This views muscle tightness as secondary to muscle weakness, and explores positional weakness in muscles, and can correct muscle imbalances Don't know if ther are any practitioners in your area, but you can check out the website, muscle activation.com

Hi Martin,

Try a single leg kick. This is from DMA clinical Pilates (I'm sure Craig won't mind). This exercise takes the quads out of the picture. Your only battle is with the hammies.
Lay prone. Have the patient bend the target legs knee to at least 90deg, if not slightly more. This is to inhibt the hammies in hip extension.
The next movement is hip extension. Get the patient to lift the leg towards the ceiling, but only enough so that the knee/distal thigh comes off the floor/mat. While the knee is elevated, extend the knee/ straighten the leg, then come back down.

Too much hip extension will tend to bring in the lumbar spine.

Repeat 15 times.

You should be able to get some gluts activity with this. If not, try some lateral flexion of the spine towards the side you are training and repeat the exercise slightly "bent".

Another one to try is squeezing them in sitting with prompting/poking.


Let me know how you get on.