There are some things you know you shouldn’t do, like investigate a strange sound coming from the dark basement after you’ve watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or eating a bowl of chocolate-chunk ice cream after stepping on the scale and realizing you’ve gained three pounds. Nevertheless, you do them anyway.

I read an informative blog post by Ashley Rollins. Ashley and I have a couple of things in common:

  1.  We both run.
  2. Becky Stanford. (Becky is my lovely niece and Ashley’s best friend.)

So, when Ashley, who is a personal trainer, running coach and owner of her own fitness company, Swift Running & Fitness in Austin, Texas, started writing her fitness blog, I began reading it. In a recent blog she mentioned that runners have weak glutes. Knock me over with a feather! I’ve run 18 half-marathons and 9 full-marathons and I log-in almost 20 miles a week and I most certainly do not have weak glutes, or do I?

So I did the unthinkable, I turned on every light in the bathroom and took a long, hard look at my butt in the mirror. Yep; there it was, right below the panty line, a sag. Talk about life not being fair!

What I learned from Ashley’s blog is that when running runners typically use their quads and hamstrings (my look very nice, thank you) and not so much their glutes. By strengthening the butt muscles, runners become more efficient and more powerful.

I checked out all the equipment at the gym and found two machines that focus on glutes. I plan to use them, a lot, and hopefully this time next year, my race pace will have improved and my saggy butt will be gone.

http://www.swiftfit.net/blog/2016/8/30/why-crossfit-isnt-a-big-scary-beast