Anatomy of the Human Body - Gluteus maximus / large gluteal muscle

Often we see that an article mentions a muscle, but not every reader knows what muscle it is. Based on this, we have decided to create a series of articles in which we will discuss the basic anatomy of the human body and introduce the muscles in more detail. Among other things, we will also show you which exercises to use to exercise a given muscle part correctly and, conversely, which exercises to avoid. The first two parts we decided to devote to perhaps the most famous muscles of all - triceps and biceps. After that, we followed with the front sawtooth muscle, the large pectoral muscle, thedeltoid muscle, the trapezius muscle, the rectus abdominis and in this article we will focus on the large glute muscle!

The gluteus medius is the largest of the three gluteal muscles and also the smallest muscle in the human body, giving shape and prominence to the buttocks.

Where is it located? It starts broadly at the back of the pelvis from the hip bone, sacrum and the edge of the coccyx, runs obliquely downwards and attaches with the hamstring extensor to the ligamentous band running along the outside of the thigh and to the upper part of the body of the femur below the greater tibia

Its functionA: This muscle is also the main extensor of the hip joint, whose main function is to maintain the upright position of the trunk on the hip joint.

What to avoid when exercising the large gluteus maximus:

This is what we asked Robert Humpal from the Supertrener.cz project

Everyone would like a nice, firm, round butt, which is what our glutes maximus does. By its very nature, it's a big muscle and it needs to be properly stimulated by training. That means: heavy core exercises like deep squats, Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts and sumo squats. Of course, I wouldn't base it only on these exercises, but I would also add isolation exercises such as pulley planking, because a combination of both is the most effective for building a nice butt in my opinion.

Basic exercises to strengthen the gluteus maximus:

Pull-ups with pulley on the bench

Pánevní most / glute bridge

Romanian dead move

You can find more exercises for glute development in our section - Exercise Database.

Sources: image - Kenhub.com, Anatomy of the Body and Movement (Theodore Dimon)