Overview
Have you ever finished a leg day or a heavy squat session and felt nothing? Or worse, have you ever tried to target your glutes but only felt the burn in your quads or lower back? You are not alone. Many people go to the gym and move heavy weights from point A to point B. They leave wondering why their bodies are not changing. The missing link usually is not the workout program or the protein shake. It is the Mind-Muscle Connection . If you are just going through the motions, you might be missing out on more than half the benefits of your workout. Here is how you can stop wasting your reps, turn on inactive muscles, and finally get the results you are working so hard for. Table of Contents
Source: How to Increase Mind-Muscle Connection for Faster Glute Growth
FAQs
Why don’t I feel my glutes working when I squat? This occurs because of quad dominance or a lack of pelvic control. If you move too fast or use excessive weight, your body compensates by shifting the load to your quads and lower back. Booty Center recommends mastering the hip hinge by pushing your hips back to shift tension away from your spine and onto your glutes. How can I fix Gluteal Amnesia caused by sitting? Gluteal amnesia happens when your brain weakens its neural connection to your posterior chain due to inactivity. To wake up these dormant muscles, perform 5 minutes of low-intensity isolation movements like glute bridges or clamshells before heavy lifts. Booty Center experts suggest holding the squeeze at the top of each rep for 2 seconds. Does slowing down my reps actually help with muscle growth? Slowing down using a 3-second lowering phase removes momentum and forces the target muscle to sustain tension. This Time Under Tension is a primary driver for hypertrophy. If you cannot control a weight slowly, it is a sign that the weight is too heavy and your form is being compromised by secondary muscle groups. What is the difference between internal and external focus for lifting? External focus is thinking about the result like getting the bar up, while internal focus is a conscious effort to feel the muscle fibers contract. Research cited by Booty Center shows that internal focus significantly increases muscle activation. Visualizing the glute fibers shortening during a rep maximizes the quality of the contraction. Should I flex my glutes between sets during a wor
Source: How to Increase Mind-Muscle Connection for Faster Glute Growth
What the research and coaching notes say
Your glutes might be sleeping through your workouts, and your lower back is covering for them. Here is the simple core cue that flips them back on. EVER FINISH A GLUTE DAY AND ONLY FEEL YOUR BACK? If your lower back is sore after bridges and thrusts but your glutes feel like they barely showed up , you are not training harder, you are training the wrong muscle. There is a quick fix. It happens to almost everyone at some point. You run through your hip thrusts , your bridges, your kickbacks, and the next morning your glutes feel fine while your lower back is wrecked.
Key details
That is frustrating, and it is easy to blame yourself for not pushing hard enough. The real reason is usually different. When your pelvis tips forward and your lower back arches during these moves, the back muscles jump in and take over the job your glutes were supposed to do. 1 The good news is that the fix is small and you can learn it in a few minutes. Right before you lift, you gently pull your lower belly inward. Physical therapists call this the abdominal drawing-in maneuver , or ADIM for short.
Practical takeaways
That tiny action steadies your pelvis so your glutes can finally take the lead. Below you will find what it is, what the research shows, how to do it correctly, and exactly where to use it. Author’s note: This guide was researched, gathered, and written by Navid Moravej, pulling together peer-reviewed studies into a simple, practical how-to that anyone can follow, whether you are brand new or coaching others. References are listed at the end. So what is ADIM? It is a gentle inward pull of your lower belly.
What to watch for
Picture softly drawing your belly button toward your spine and away from your waistband, without holding your breath and without crunching. That quiet action switches on your deepest core muscle , the transverse abdominis , which wraps around your middle like a built-in support belt for your spine and pelvis. THE RESEARCH: ONE CUE NEARLY DOUBLED GLUTE ACTIVITY The clearest study on this is hard to ignore. Researchers asked people to do a face-down hip extension, which simply means lying on your stomach and lifting one leg, both with and without the draw-in.
Further detail
They measured how hard each muscle worked using EMG. 1 Pulling the belly in changed everything about which muscles did the job. Figure 1. With the belly drawn in, glute activity climbed from 24% to 52% while lower-back activity fell from 49% to 17%. Data from Oh and colleagues (2007). Put simply, drawing the belly in told the glutes to get to work and told the lower back to ease off. The pelvis stopped tipping forward, so the right muscle led the way. 1 Later studies found the cue also improves the timing of it all, so the glutes switch on sooner and more reliably instead of firing late after the back has already taken charge.
Context from the library
2,3 HOW TO DO THE DRAW-IN Learn it lying down first, then bring it into your lifts. It should feel light, around 30 percent effort, not a hard squeeze. The photo below shows exactly what to look for. Figure 2. The draw-in on a real torso. Gently pull the lower belly inward and slightly up, keep the spine in its natural position, and keep breathing the whole time. STEP WHAT TO DO WHAT IT SHOULD FEEL LIKE 1 Lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat. Let your spine rest in its natural position.
Overview
Should You Keep a Vertical Shin for Glutes? The Science of Glute Bias You have probably heard it in a gym or a reel: keep your shins straight up and down, push your knees back, and your glutes will grow. It sounds smart, and there is real science under it. But the popular version of this cue is half right and half wrong. The wrong half can quietly load your lower back while doing less for your glutes than you think. Let us break down what your shins really change, and how to actually send the work to your glutes. THE MYTH “Keep your shins vertical and your glutes will grow.” START HERE
Source: Shins back, more glutes?
What a vertical shin actually does
Here is the part the cue gets right. When you pull your knees back and keep your shins vertical, you move load off your knees and onto your hips. Researchers tested this directly. They had lifters squat two ways: once letting the knees drift forward naturally, and once with a board blocking the knees so the shins stayed vertical. Then they measured the torque at each joint. With the shins held vertical, knee torque dropped by about 22 percent. But hip torque jumped from about 28 to 303, more than ten times higher. So yes, a vertical shin really does hand the job to your hips. A vertical shin puts your hips far behind the load (a long hip lever) and keeps your knees close to it (a short knee lever). Knees forward flips it. Fry et al. 2003. Holding the shins vertical cut knee torque by about 22% and multiplied hip torque roughly ten-fold. WHY IT HAPPENS · A LEVER Torque = force × distance from the joint. A vertical shin puts your hips far behind the bar, giving the hip a long lever. That long lever is where the big hip number comes from, not the shin by itself. PART 2
Source: Shins back, more glutes?
It’s the trunk, not just the shin
Now the part the cue gets wrong. Your shins are not the real switch. Your trunk is. A vertical shin only sends load to your hips because it usually comes with a forward lean. Lean the trunk and the hips take over. Stay upright and the knees take over. Shin angle just tags along. When scientists compared them head to head, trunk angle predicted the load on the knee far better than shin angle did. According to a comprehensive biomechanical review of the squat exercise , the rule they found is simple: if your trunk leans more than your shin, the hips lead. If your shin leans more than your trunk by about 8 degrees or more, the knees lead. Trunk versus shin decides it. Lean the trunk past the shin and the glutes take over (Straub 2021; Barrack 2021). Stop staring at your shins. Watch your torso. To feel your glutes, hinge your hips back and let your chest come down, then drive your hips forward to stand tall. If you ever feel your form breaking down into lower back pain instead of a glute pump, it’s a sign that your mechanics are slightly off knowing why you have lower back pain after hip thrusts or squats can help you troubleshoot your trunk position. PART 3
Source: Shins back, more glutes?
The catch, and the smarter way
So should you freeze your shins vertical on every squat? No. Here is the catch. In that same study, forcing the shins vertical did not only load the hips. It also forced the lifters to lean much further forward, dumping a big load on the lower back. Chasing glutes by locking your shins can quietly punish your spine, and it caps how deep you can go, which your glutes actually want. There is a smarter way to get the same hip bias: 1) Hinge and lean. In a lunge, leaning the trunk forward raised glute and hamstring activity, with no extra load on the quads. Same idea in a squat: let your chest come down over hips that sit back. 2) Go deep, and go wide. Deeper squats give the glutes a bigger share of the work, and choosing a wider stance secretly decides which glutes grow by letting you reach a hip bias with less forward lean, which is much easier on your back. 3) Use the Bulgarian split squat. This is the quiet winner. Because one leg does the work, your hips can produce about twice the force per leg of a back squat, at the same load on your lower back. A big glute stimulus without frying your spine. The Bulgarian split squat: about double the hip work per leg, at the same low-back cost (Arakawa et al. 2025). THE PROOF · FARROKHI 2008 In a lunge, a forward trunk lean raised glute and hamstring activity while the quads stayed the same. It is the lean, not the frozen shin, that feeds the glutes. THE VERDICT: HALF TRUEA vertical shin does move load onto your hips. But the shin is not the real lever, your trunk is. And forcing a bolt-upright shin in a squat mostly just loads your l
Source: Shins back, more glutes?
FAQ
Or worse, have you ever tried to target your glutes but only felt the burn in your quads or lower back?
You are not alone. Many people go to the gym and move heavy weights from point A to point B. They leave wondering why their bodies are not changing. The missing link usually is not the workout program or the protein shake. It is the Mind-Muscle Connection . If you are just going through the motions, you might be missing out on more than half the benefits of your workout.
Table of Contents What is Mind-Muscle Connection?
Put simply, the mind-muscle connection is the act of consciously and deliberately thinking about the specific muscle you are trying to move. In the fitness world, we talk about two types of focus: External Focus: Thinking about moving the weight. For example, thinking about getting the bar up. Internal Focus: Thinking about the muscle squeezing.
FAQs Why don’t I feel my glutes working when I squat?
This occurs because of quad dominance or a lack of pelvic control. If you move too fast or use excessive weight, your body compensates by shifting the load to your quads and lower back. Booty Center recommends mastering the hip hinge by pushing your hips back to shift tension away from your spine and onto your glutes.
How can I fix Gluteal Amnesia caused by sitting?
Gluteal amnesia happens when your brain weakens its neural connection to your posterior chain due to inactivity. To wake up these dormant muscles, perform 5 minutes of low-intensity isolation movements like glute bridges or clamshells before heavy lifts. Booty Center experts suggest holding the squeeze at the top of each rep for 2 seconds.
EVER FINISH A GLUTE DAY AND ONLY FEEL YOUR BACK?
If your lower back is sore after bridges and thrusts but your glutes feel like they barely showed up , you are not training harder, you are training the wrong muscle. There is a quick fix. It happens to almost everyone at some point. You run through your hip thrusts , your bridges, your kickbacks, and the next morning your glutes feel fine while your lower back is wrecked.
So what is ADIM?
It is a gentle inward pull of your lower belly. Picture softly drawing your belly button toward your spine and away from your waistband, without holding your breath and without crunching. That quiet action switches on your deepest core muscle , the transverse abdominis , which wraps around your middle like a built-in support belt for your spine and pelvis.