 Hello, everyone. I am Lance Goyke. Welcome to my living room where we're going to talk about activating the glutes in the deadlift. So we're going to start with just a little introduction in this video and then I'm going to run right into the first exercise. We're going to do eight in total. So stay tuned. Now basically, when someone comes in to a physical therapist, oftentimes the prescription that they're given, whether it is knee pain that they're dealing with, whether they have ankle problems, sometimes even shoulder problems, definitely low back problems, the prescription or the diagnosis is that the glutes are not firing. Now, I think that simplification is something that a person can really latch on to and understand. I also think it is just that it's a simplification. So sometimes it's not really telling the full picture. Oftentimes the glutes are not activating. Yes, but there is a reason for that. Generally they're out of position and unable to unable, unable, I don't know, to act, to turn on. So what we're going to do in this exercise series is we're going to talk about a lack of glute activation. Generally when someone finishes their deadlift without reframing the camera here, when they finish their deadlift, sometimes they'll finish like this and you can see I arch my back to finish that movement instead of finishing like this with my back straight and my glutes turning on. So we're going to go through an exercise that I like to start everyone with called the full rock back with abs. This one's nice because it just sets you up for success down the road. Oftentimes if your glutes are not activating, it's because your hip flexors are over activating. So what we can do here is we can turn the abs on, allow the hip flexors to shut off and that will just make everything else we do down the road easier. So first I'm going to take my glasses off because they slide off. But before I do that, make sure I'm in the frame. Good. So full rock back with abs. You're going to start hands and knees. You got to rock. Well, let's not rock back yet. First thing after hands and knees is I need you to round your back out. Okay, that includes upper back and lower back. If you do it this way, then you got to fix your head. Okay, I don't want you to do it with your shoulders. I don't want you to let your neck fall down like that. So again, subtle round just everywhere and my head stays kind of looking forward. Now from there, I'm going to hang on to that. Hopefully I feel my abs on the outer lower side of my abdomen here. It's not that this is important. It's not that I want these abs to crunch on like that. If I see someone do this, they're probably getting those abs in the front, but they don't feel the abs on the side. To feel the abs on the side, I need a little less crunch and a little bit more hip tuck. Okay, now I feel my outer lower abs and if I don't yet, all I have to do is blow all the air out and now they really turn on. This feels great. Okay, good. So I have it. Now, from there, once you have those abs, you're going to rock your butt back toward your heels and hang on to them. And then you're just going to try to breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. If you lost your abs on your inhale, which is very, very common, what you need to try to do is keep an active reach through your hands, active reach of your knees through the ground while you breathe in. As a coach, what I'm looking for is for the back to expand on the inhale. So I can do that even if I'm coaching myself. I can film this video and I can look at it afterwards and I can say on my inhale, did my back expand. Now, I've been doing this for a while so I can feel it does it a little bit. Oftentimes, what I will end up doing is crunching a little bit too much like this. And so I'm really trying to force the air in my back, but I'm not getting it everywhere. My little cue for that, for someone, if they're doing that, I say, when you breathe in, don't crunch so much. Keep this up high. And basically I'm just tapping where I want the air to go. I want that part to stay up toward the ceiling a little bit more. So if you do crunch, you're often not getting air in the upper, upper back. So I'll tap here and say I want you to lift that towards the ceiling and take an easier inhale because oftentimes people are doing this and this exercise doesn't loosen you up if you tone yourself up and if you tense yourself up. I need very focal tension here and maybe in my armpit you might feel, but I don't need everything to bear down. It's not like a heavy deadlift, right? I can't just crunch everything and hope that it all works out. So that's the full rock back with abs with a little bit of a queuing for you.