In my book, The Power of Alignment, I emphasize how important movement is to our body.  We are in fact designed to move.  When you look at the human frame and structure you might easily mistake your nice round tushy for a comfortable seat cushion, and that by sitting on another nice man-made cushion, oh how delightful and relaxing that might be.  Two cushions; a cushy tushy and a cushy couch or recliner, my what a rough life we lead.  Oh, but wait!  Guess what!  Our cushy tushy happens to contain somewhere in that cushy-ness a most delightfully powerful muscle.  Gluteus Maximus.  No not a former Roman emperor, that is in fact the righteous name of your bottom muscles.  Gluteus Maximus wasn’t made to be a cushy tushy, gluteus maximus was made to be a powerful locomotor!  In other words, it is designed to get you off your butt and moving forward!

Alright, so if we want to nudge our gluteus maximus back into a lively existence I recommend you watch the following video:

The problem is that the gluteus maximus will get sleepy if not used.  That’s right, if we don’t use it, we lose it.  Well kind of…  see, the nice thing is that it’s there ready to wake up.  If we don’t wake up gluteus maximus, then our hamstrings and our lower back gets SUPER tight because they are being overworked trying to do the job of sleepy gluteus maximus!  Can you bend down and touch those toes?  Do you suffer from low back tension/pain?

The absolute best thing you can do, is #1 begin waking up the gluteus maximus with the video demonstration above.  The next best thing you can do is simply,…drum roll please….WALK!  Yes, locomotion.  Move forward.  It’s the secret to a lot more health benefits than I have time to lay out here and you are probably getting antsy because you are ready to click onto or scroll onto something else more entertaining after all this long-winded reading… so stay tuned, the overwhelming health benefits for walking will be yours to read about soon!

For now, stop thinking of your tush as a cush and get moving forward!