Exercises for Glute and Core Strength

And Why They’re Important for Reducing Knee Pain

Do you have enough glute and core strength to squat properly? If not, you’ll likely develop knee pain.

Today we’ll talk about why glute and core strength is important for reducing knee pain while you squatt and how to strengthen your glute and core muscles with proper exercises.

The Anatomy

When you squat, a lot happens. Your knees, hips, and ankles all bend. Those are all pretty obvious. But what you may not see is your hips rotating, your core muscles creating stiffness around your spine, and your knees moving in or out in relationship to your hips. While correct squatting form is important, you won’t be able to maintain correct form without glute and core strength.

Your glute and core muscles help control the rotation of your hips, the stiffness of your spine, and your knee position. These muscles include the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, internal and external obliques, transverse abdominis, and erector spinae muscles.

Two Types of muscles

Whenever you do a squat you have “prime mover” muscles and supporting muscles that are working. We tend to focus on the prime mover muscles like the hamstrings and quads. But your supporting muscles, the glutes and core, are equally important.

When you squat, you are strengthening both the prime mover muscles and the supporting muscles. But you need to have a certain amount of strength in the supporting muscles before you squat to make sure the prime mover muscles have the help they need to take your body through the squatting motion.

The research

Without proper strength in your glute and core muscles, you increase your risk of knee pain while squatting.

The research study here measured glute and core strength and compared it to performance on a single leg step down test. They found that more glute and core strength correlated to better performance on the test.

Glute and core strength is important for increasing performance with squatting and avoiding knee pain.

How to improve glute and core strength

Exercises for Glute Strength

Now that you know why glute and core strength is so important for squatting, let’s look at exercises to build glute and core strength. Firing up the glute and core muscles should be a part of your warm up before squatting. But progressive strengthening of the glute and core muscles is important as you continue to progress your squatting.

Some of my favorite glute exercises include: side planks, bridges, and side stepping with a band on your feet.

Side planks strengthen the glute muscles on the side of your hips which help control hip rotation and knee positioning. Prep for a side plank can be done with a sidelying leg lift (one of my favorite exercises to train glute firing in the clinic). Then it can be progressed to a modified side plank with a clam. And then a full side plank.

The bridge strengthens your glute muscles in the back of your hips (gluteus maximus). You need strong gluteus maximus muscles to control the rotation of your hips and also to give you power when you come out of the squat and straighten your hips all the way. (See my post on squat form here.) A bridge can be performed easily with no weight or you can progress the exercise by holding a weight on the front of your hips, by holding the bridge at the top, or by moving to a single leg bridge.

Side steps target the glute muscles on the side of your hips. I love doing these with a band on my feet because it really isolates the glutes. Try it and feel the burn!

For a demonstration of these and other glute exercises, follow me on Instagram!

Exercises for Core Strength

Don’t let the infamous sit up drag you in. While you can build core strength with a sit up, you’ll want to focus on strengthening more than just the “6 pack abs” in order to increase core strength needed for squatting without knee pain.

My favorite way to start teaching patients how to fire up the deep core muscles is through diaphragm breathing. This exercise increases activation of the transverse abdominis creating stiffness around your spine providing a solid base to move your hips on.

Once you learn to breath in using the diaphragm and breath out using the transverse abdominis to “brace,” you can progress to maintaining the abdominal brace as you tap your toes to the floor while laying on your back.

To learn more about breathing patterns and core muscle firing, read Dr. Keller’s post here.

From there I love both front and side planks to build core strength in the font, side, and back core muscles. If you hate planks, follow me on Instagram so I can show you ways to mix them up and make them fun.

Give Glute and core strength the time it needs

If you’re someone who likes to lift heavy or if you want to “fast track” your way to strength, you may be tempted to rush through exercises for glute and core strength or skip them altogether. DON’T! If you don’t take the time to strengthen your glute and core muscles you will likely have knee pain with squatting or develop another injury (like back pain).

If you want to keep squatting for a long time without injury, make glute and core strength a priority.

Want more exercises?

For a demonstration of these and other glute and core exercises, follow me on Instagram! Better yet, subscribe for weekly exercise, healthy eating, and injury prevention strategies.

Stay tuned for my next post in this series on reducing knee pain while squatting. This one is for you if you’ve done “all the things” and can’t seem to get rid of your knee pain while squatting.

Want to read this series on reducing knee pain while squatting from the beginning? Start here!