Strengthen Your Medius For Injury Prevention

by Steve Elton

One of the most neglected muscles in a runner or triathletes training program is the gluteus medius. This fan shaped muscle is located just behind the hip joint and just in front of it's bigger brother the gluteus maximus. Even though the main action of this muscle is to move the leg away from the midline, its primary functional role is to stabilize the pelvis while standing on one leg.

The hip joint tries to maintain constant forces from all the muscles that cross its borders. During repetitive stresses, such as running, the gluteus medius can fatigue and other muscles have to contract to maintain the proper forces about the hip joint. These compensations often are the main culprits of iliotibial band problems, piriformis syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries.

A simple way to strengthen the gluteus medius is through an exercise I call �kicks'. Stand sideways, an arms length away from a wall and place your hand on the wall to balance. Now lift the opposite leg parallel to the floor with the knee bent at 90 degrees. At a moderate pace, alternately bend and straighten the knee 10-15 times keeping the leg parallel to the ground. Repeat to the opposite side, and do 3 repeats to each side.

This can be a challenging exercise and can also be used as part of your dynamic warm-up prior to running. Alternately, you can do the �kicks' in between other exercises to really stress endurance strengthening of the gluteus medius. Doing this exercise, and incorporating lateral movements into your strength training regularly, will help to prevent some of the overuse injuries mentioned above.

Steve Elton is a physical therapist for Body Pros, strength and conditioning specialist, coach, and triathlete. He received his MS from the University of South Carolina and holds certifications through the NSCA, NASM. Steve is a former elite triathlete with racing experience from sprint to Ironman distance.