 First question is from Lorinda 6753. What is the best plan of action for gluteal amnesia? That sounds so official right so this is not an actual thing if you go to the doctor because your butt won't grow They're not going to diagnose you with gluteal amnesia the term The term that we use is sleepy butt syndrome. It's not really a syndrome But what we're referring to is people who are trying to build their their glute muscles They're very quad dominant. Yeah, and they're doing all the right exercises They're doing the squats and the stiff legged deadlifts and the lunges and For whatever reason their butt doesn't seem to want to respond now There's a few reasons why this may be happening But one of the main ones in in I'll speak personally from my experience is that that person just doesn't really use a lot of glutes When they do those exercises, it's usually a lot of quad and so the plan of action Step one is to learn how to feel the glutes. This is a this is more of a Subjective perceptive type thing. You're not necessarily connecting to the glutes more Unless you're actually paralyzed. You're connected to the glutes It's just learning how to feel them so you could change your form a little bit to activate them more And the best way to do that one of the best ways to do that is to do Glute isolation movements at the beginning of your workout movements where you squeeze and feel the glutes Activating then when you go do your squats, you know what to look for when you're doing the movement or feel for right? Right. I think this is also why Breck contraris just like exploded with the hip thrust I think that you wouldn't we didn't have anything that you could really heavy load that was like an isolation exercise For the glute before that like everything think about it all the other isolation exercises for glutes They're all like they're pretty weak. Yeah kickbacks dog peas fucking weak ass movements that you can't really load You can load a hip thrust really really heavy and it's you know almost an ice It's not quite an isolation actually nothing's really an isolation exercise, but but the glutes are really the prime move Yeah, it's it's hard to do a Hip thrust and not use your glutes It really is like you could have pretty poor mechanics on a squat and Easily do a squat that looks to the average eye as good form, but be very quad dominant like I've seen You know clients squat and to the average eye you go Hey, that's a good-looking squat You have that and they have these massive quads and a flat butt and it's just their their body is driving more of The quads because it is still a very quad dominant exercise anyway, so it's hard to like see that mechanically the hip thrust It's directly Right opposing the glutes when you when you lift up from the barbell on your hips And so I think that's a great movement. So I think priming like you're saying Sal like I would love to start something like we did a good YouTube video on Floorbridge and I broke down like the importance of flattening the back before you lift up So it's a really good video on that on our YouTube channel I think priming with a movement like that or some of the things like glute kicks or something Just to get the feeling the butt a little bit of a burn in it So you wake it up, you know and the term sleepy butt or wake the butt up. It's not sleep. It's not asleep It's not not being worked like that's it's just a term that we use to explain to people that you're not Working it as well as you could be in the movements that you should be taking over more. There's less recruitment happening Yeah, exactly. So Doing something that connects to it well and then like Sal was saying now when you go into your squat You're thinking about your butt as you do it But I mean this is where hit barbell hip thrusts have a ton of value and this is this is something that of all strength athletes Bodybuilders are the best at so if you want to learn How to develop a specific muscle? Aesthetically speaking what I mean by that is actually visually develop it look to bodybuilders bodybuilders are Experts at this they rarely focus on the movement They usually focus on the muscle that they're trying to work now every other strength athlete every other athlete that uses weights Every other category does not care what muscle they feel and what muscle to try and develop What they're trying to do is is lift the weight in the most efficient safest most effective way possible Whether it's your power lifter or an Olympic lifter or a kettlebell athlete or or a football player who lifts weights You're not going in there to make your glutes look nicer. You're going there to get stronger at the movement It's totally totally different. So if you lift weights like somebody who is movement focused You're gonna have to move your focus from the movement and just focus on the muscle So one of the best ways to do that is what we're talking about if it's the glutes You have a hard time feeling do an exercise before you do your squats or your deadlifts that you can actually feel the glutes This may be Tube walking it may be like Adam said dog pee or donkey kickback It may be a hip thrust at bridge and hit bridge and you might you might have to go light on hip thrust By the way, I've actually worked with people where if we go too heavy on hip thrust They feel it and they still feel it in their hamstrings and believe it or not in their quads are so quad dominant that the quads still Yeah, are doing hip flexors a lot all that stuff So do a movement to where you you can actually feel the glutes working more than any other part of your body You can feel the squeeze you could feel the burn focus on the squeeze part of the movement That's typically when whenever I've worked with a client where they have a muscle that's underdeveloped It's they typically have a hardest time connecting to the muscle when it's in its shortened position So focus on the squeeze squeeze the muscle get it to burn So it's the point where you you ingrain in your mind at that moment I know what my glutes feel like when they're active then go do your squat and then forget the weight Take your weight off the bar Go with light. Don't worry about it. Whatever. It's just a means to an end Do your squat and rather than trying to squat well squat really good focusing on the movement Squat in a way to where you can feel your glutes working Typically, this means you have to go a lot lighter. You're gonna have to slow down the reps That's okay do this for a while what'll end up happening. You'll start to learn how to connect to your glutes It could take a second it could take you a couple months of training But then when you really start to feel the glutes and it becomes more like second nature Then you can start adding weight to the bar and start lifting more and more weight And then what you'll see is that the muscle starts to respond to react now The other thing I want to say is this sometimes you just might have genetics where a muscle is not gonna develop as well As other muscles it might not necessarily be a connection thing although it usually is so what I mean By that is you you'll see better results But don't expect all of a sudden your glutes to explode and react like every other part of your body You still may have a little bit of a tough time because you know We have different muscle shapes and and our genetics can dictate a lot of how well we respond I also can't I also can't see this person squatting right now either and there's there there could be potential cues that could really help I know that you know, I even taught squatting bad in early years of training because you know all of our Certifications would talk about you know not letting the knees go over the toes and so 90 and so you would teach a client I mean, I even remember Kneeling down why they squatted and would put my hands in front of their shins in front of their shins and as soon as I'd say As soon as you your knees hit my hands, you know Push your hips back and not allow their knees to travel forward and the problem with that like knowing now and really Understanding what I was doing is I I was not allowing their knees to travel over their toes Which then was causing them to forward lean more in order then you then you move the bar over the top of your quads You know what makes it even more difficult to fill the glutes so Looking at your squat and seeing if you're somebody that knows how to open up the hips let the knees travel forward So you can sit down So when you're at the bottom of a squat That barbell is directly over the butt and the butt is what's having to drive it up out of the hole Versus somebody who let doesn't let their knees come forward Slides the hips so far back only goes down to 90 the chest comes forward now The barbell is directly over almost over the knee and over the quad more than anything else And then it turns into a really it's really tough for you to feel that and then you're trying to feel it in your butt Really tough to do so the isolation exercises for the butt and then also Really looking at your your squat and how you are doing your squat because that can make a big difference too That's a good point. I'd totally remember like just that one inch of more depth Was like game-changer for a lot of my clients and that was like I had to then kind of break the rules a little bit and go a little past 90 sometimes and After that I was like man so much more engagement there so much more gates that I feel it finally so yeah It could be a mechanical thing. I also like So to teach somebody to because you know we were saying like hey after you do this You feel your butt then go into the squat and try and and think and feel your butt and some people are just I can't do it I can't do it. I used to love to teach a Single leg stand up from the seated position. It's a really good spot to like engage the butt first You'll feel when you and I'd sit him down on just like a regular bench And then try to get as vertical as have you stand up with one leg And when you stand up with and you know if you're you if you're not strong enough to do one leg at a Time then you could start with with both trying to get up off the bench, but this is why in maps anabolic there is the in the Preface you have the box squats is to get somebody to engage the glutes from the seated position like that That used to be kind of a trainer trick to help people feel it in their glutes to start them at the bottom Tell them to push off with the heel and the butt at to get off the bench That kind of helps you get kind of engaged with the glutes to drive out of that