Your Glutes are a big powerful muscle group, and are essential for a great many training movements, including squats and deadlifts. For mountaineering they come into play stepping up and hiking up. Kicking steps, pushing up in ice climbing or rock climbing, and even trail running all utilize the glutes. For other sports, like skating and gymnastics, the jumping and sprinting sports too, strong glutes are important.
Many who participate in these sports have obvious glute development. The Glute Kick is one way to work your glutes, but since your motion is so large, and the weight is being moved from your ankle, way out with very little leverage advantage, you’ll be using pretty light weights. In this case I’m using a pair of Harbinger Leather 3-Inch Double Ring Ankle Cuff Attachment
I clip the quicklink to the Double-D rings, then to the fitness band, which is looped around the lat tower on my power rack. You could use just about anything, and some fitness bands come with little straps you slam in a door.
I like this ankle cuff a lot because it’s pretty sturdy, and has sheepskin lining for padding, and helps it slide without leaving chafing or blistering.
After fastening the velcro ankle band, clipping into the D-rings and the stretch band with the quicklinks, step back away from the support for your band (in this case the power rack lat tower) and stand steadily on the non-working foot. Trying to keep your legs kind of straight, and your back kind of straight as well, just kick back with as little rotation and as much height as your own mobility or flexibility will allow.
In the video I am braced against a bar set high in the rack, but you would get more core activation if you just stabilize on the standing foot. This is one of those exercises that I personally recommend as a warmup or finisher, either just before or just after Good Mornings, or some variation of Deadlift, Straight Leg Deadlifts being one of my favorites.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb6NPekbrpI
You could do anywhere from 10 to 25 reps with each leg if you’re doing a warmup, or if you’re doing it as a finisher, maybe 4 sets of 10 to 25 reps with each leg. As usual, don’t hurt yourself, do what feels right or natural, and beware of any feelings of pain or discomfort that might indicate a flexibility or mobility issue. YMMV of course…
Making it tougher: stand on your heel or toe, stand on a wobble disk or cushion, add a weighted ankle cuff, add bands, use the low pulley on a lat tower with weight, close your eyes.
* – I’m actually using a light-medium from another company in the video, but there’s no link to that I could handily display here.