
These causes also involve muscle imbalances and can occur from overworking certain muscles without balancing out their opposing muscles. While prolonged sitting in a static posture is the most common culprit, there are some other causes of gluteal amnesia. Not Enough Glute Exercises or Incorrect Form in a Workout Program In other words, too much contraction of the hip flexors through sitting “turns off” the glutes so that the muscles can’t fire when you stand up or exercise.Īdditionally, prolonged compression of your glutes in a chair causes them to lose their elasticity and ability to contract properly. Prolonged sitting causes over-activity of the hip flexors, off-setting the reciprocal relationship between the hip flexors and glutes. If you’re sitting in an office for 8 hours and then adding an hour or more of commute time on top of that, you may have a problem.Īccording to Katy Bowman, an organ damage scientist and bestselling author of “ Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement,” you can’t offset 10 hours of stillness with an hour of exercise. While experts have long recommended getting 30 to 60 minutes of exercise a day, they’re now saying that it’s not enough for people who spend 8 to 10 hours a day sitting in a chair. The body is designed for regular movement, and sitting too long in a chair can cause imbalances such as glute amnesia. Here are a couple of reasons why your glutes may become inactive over time. If you think you may have “dead butt syndrome,” you want to get to the bottom (pun intended) of what’s causing it so that you can make the changes needed to prevent it. Not only that but because your glutes have to contract to keep your torso upright when you stand, glute amnesia can cause poor posture.Īll is not lost though, thankfully “dead butt syndrome” can be corrected through exercises which we will look into later in the article.
#Gluteal amnesia full#
This may appear to be not that big of a deal, but considering that you can lose your full range of motion in your hips and cause your knees, back and shoulders to overcompensate, glute amnesia can become a pesky problem to have. Rather than activate, they’ll stay inactive and some other muscle will take over the brunt of the work.
#Gluteal amnesia how to#
What is Glute Amnesia?Īs already discussed, glute amnesia is an acute weakness in your glutes when your body “forgets” how to activate the glute muscles when you need them.


In this article, we’ll look at what glute amnesia is, how you can tell if you have it and what you can do about it. In other words, if you sit for long periods of time or if you have any of these conditions, you may want to consider that your glute muscles may have gone to sleep. Some injuries that have been linked to glute amnesia are disk herniation, patella-femoral (knee) syndrome, iliotibial band syndrome and piriformis syndrome.

In addition to lower back pain, it can cause strains and pains in your knees, hips and shoulders because other areas of the body become misaligned as well. You don’t want to ignore glute amnesia, because it strains your lower back by causing your pelvis to tilt forward. There are several health effects of sitting too much, but one lesser-known issue that arises from long hours in a seated position is glute amnesia.Īlso known as “dead butt syndrome,” gluteal amnesia is what happens when your glutes (butt muscles) forget to activate when you need them to.
