Top 5 Exercises for Gluteus Medius & Minimus (New Research!)

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to my channel. Today in this video, we're gonna look at the top five best exercises for gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. These are muscles that if you haven't heard of them before, they're positioned on the outer quadrant of the buttock region, and they're extremely important in terms of controlling the hip joint, helping to control the knee joint and keep our knee in a neutral position, especially when we're standing on one leg. They play a vital role in just maintaining the alignment of the whole lower leg. Strengthening gluteus medius and gluteus minimus has been shown to help reduce the risk of injuries like ACL tears, IT band syndrome, patellofemoral pain, which is kneecap pain, hip impingement, low back pain. These are exercises that if you have any issues going on with your low back, your hip, your knee, things in those regions, these exercises are often helpful. And the research I'm citing, I'll put a citation down in the description, but basically, they did a systematic review and looked at all the studies out there where EMG was used on these muscles and ranked the exercises from best to worst, basically, in terms of how much they recruited these two muscles. So I'm gonna start at exercise number five and work towards the best options. But really, they're all good. So if you want to train these muscles, maybe just pick a couple, work through three sets of 10 to 15 repetitions, something like that, and you will be on the right path to helping increase strength and recruitment of gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. So, okay, so starting out with the ones that had a little bit lower activation but still really pretty good, moderate level activation, they're all gonna be standing exercises. So for the first one, you're gonna grab a step. You could do this on a stair or maybe have some other elevated surface or if you're at the gym, you could use one of the steps there. I've got a cinder block here, so I'm gonna use this. Basically, you're gonna do a lateral step up. So you're gonna stand to the side of your step and the leg that goes up is the one that we're really training, so the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus on that side. So obviously, you'd have to switch sides to get the other leg if you wanna do both legs. But basically, what I'm gonna do is step to the side and then step up on that elevated surface and then back down. So it looks pretty simple, but really, it makes those lateral gluteal muscles work really hard to step up and balance and lift up on one leg. So again, just a lateral step up. That is the first exercise we're gonna look at and from the studies, this had a moderate level of recruitment of those two muscles. So lateral step up. The next one here is, actually, we're gonna use this step again. This one is called a pelvic hitch. So what you're gonna do, again, I'm gonna target the leg that's up on, so my right leg here. So gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. I'm gonna start with my pelvis fairly level so you can feel the bones here at the top of your pelvis. And then, keeping my leg straight, I'm gonna lower the other leg. So I'm letting this side of my pelvis drop down my left side. Now, I'm gonna squeeze my glute muscles on the right side to pull my pelvis back up. So essentially, I let it down and then I lift it back up. And this is called a pelvic hitch or sometimes we call it a pelvic dip. So I'm just going up and down. I'm just using these butt muscles, these glute muscles, to slowly lower the other side of my pelvis and then to lift it back up. This one's probably the most complicated in terms of just learning the movement, but once you can get it, you can really feel the glutes on the leg that you're standing on firing. Okay, so that's the pelvic hitch. That's our second exercise. Those are the only two you need to step for. So we'll set that to the side. And then the next one is a standing hip abduction. Feel free to hold onto something if you need a little extra balance. On this one, the neat thing about this one is it's gonna work both legs. So again, do both sides, but when you're doing one side, you'll get both legs a little bit. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stand on my left leg and then my right leg is just gonna go out to the side. So this is just called standing hip abduction. My glutes over here have to work to keep me stable. And then the ones over here, your gluteus medius is primarily a hip abductor, so it brings your leg out to the side. So as I go out to the side nice and slow, I'm gonna really focus on squeezing those outer glute muscles. So just in and out slowly. Again, with all these exercises, think about three sets of 10 repetitions, moving slowly through each repetition. Okay, so that's our standing hip abduction. All three of the first exercises we've done had a moderate level of recruitment of gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. So the last two were the ones that had the highest recruitment. So the first one, I'm gonna do it up here on the table. You could do it on the ground, that's no problem. The first one is just a single leg bridge, and a lot of people are familiar with this exercise. I'm gonna be targeting the leg that's on the ground. So in this case, my left leg. I'm gonna lift my right leg, arms down at the side, and then just push into the ground and lift yourself up until your spine is straight, until you've got a straight line from your knee to your hip to your shoulder. So an exercise most people are familiar with, but the single leg bridge had a high level of recruitment for gluteus medius and gluteus minimus based on this recent 2020 systematic review. So it's up and down slowly. Really think about driving your heel into the ground as that will help fire your glutes, okay? And then the last exercise is another hip abduction exercise. This is the one we probably prescribe most often as physical therapists. For this one, you're gonna lay on your side. It's gonna work the leg on top. That leg is gonna have to work against gravity. So the key thing about this one is your setup. You really have to have the leg set up in the right position to target these outer gluteal muscles. So when you first lay down, your hip will be pointing up to the ceiling. What you wanna do is rotate forward slightly, and you're gonna lift that top leg, but you're gonna lift it up and kind of back to the corner. So kind of back behind you, not just straight up, but back to the corner a little bit. So that's the first part. You're gonna go up and back to the corner. That's one element. The other element is that we wanna turn the leg so that the foot points down. This is called hip internal rotation. So the combination, so what you wanna do is start like this. My toe, my right foot is touching the toes. It's not the whole foot touching. So I'm gonna start with it kind of in internal rotation and point it down. And then I'm gonna lift back into the corner. So my leg's not turned out or straight. It's turned down and it's going back. That combination of hip abduction and internal rotation has some of the highest activity for gluteus medius. Okay, perfect. So those are the five of the best exercises you can do for these two muscles, working from moderate activity in the first three to really high muscle activity in the last two. So again, if you've got low back issues, hip issues, knee issues, these are great ones to implement just to work on stability through the whole lower extremity. So I hope you find this helpful. If you do, please like this video and comment down below if you have any questions. All right, see you next time.