Dormant Butt Syndrome: Work Out Your Buttocks for Back, Hip, and Knee Pain Relief

American Baptist minister the Reverend Doctor Esther Wilson was training for the Iron Woman Triathlon when she was sidelined by pain in her left knee.

“I continued to run,” Rev. Wilson said, “thinking that sooner or later it would just go away. But the pain in my knee became so intense and constant that I couldn’t run. In a couple of weeks, I couldn’t even walk. I just couldn’t understand what was going on.”

When Esther couldn’t even walk across the kitchen to turn off the heat under a pot of macaroni that was boiling over, she reluctantly decided to go the doctor, for the first time in many years. An MRI showed that she had a tear in the meniscus, the C-shaped section of cartilage that sits on top of the tibia at the lower end of the knee. The tear was so bad that she needed surgery. But when Dr. Wilson started doing physical therapy so she could participate in next year’s Iron Woman Triathlon, her therapist said the problem seemed to have started higher up.

How the Butt Butts Into Joint Problems

A torn meniscus usually results from twisting the knee or Flexing it to far or too often. The tear in the cartilage causes wobbly knees, popping knees, knee pain, which can be intense, and swelling. Doctors, trainers, and athletes often try to point to a specific episode that resulted in the torn cartilage. Esther, however, had actually been very careful to avoid knee trauma, since she knew that nothing else was more likely to take her out of competition.

Esther’s problem had to be something else. Her trainer, after seeing an interview with Ohio State University physical therapist Chris Kolba, realized that the problem might really originate in her gluteal muscles, her glutes, with a condition called dormant butt syndrome.

READ Tighten a Loose Butt and Change the Shape of Your Buttocks

Dormant butt syndrome isn’t unlike the feeling you have when you have sat too long in one place and your buttocks fall asleep, and then you have trouble getting up again, except it happens when your body is in motion. In this syndrome, when your gluteal muscles aren’t strong enough, the muscles and joints around them absorb strain. This causes damage to the muscles and joints and the tendons attaching them to each other.

Dormant Butt Syndrome Also Caused by Sitting Too Much

Kolba says that it isn’t just exercising too much with weak glutes that can cause this kind of joint and muscle damage. It can also result from sitting too much.

“It’s actually caused quite often by activity and the way we sleep,” Dr. Kolba said in an Ohio State University press release. “Sitting for extended periods throughout the day weakens the glute muscles and puts strain on other parts of our core, as does sleeping in the fetal position.”

How to Avoid a Flabby Tush

Dr. Kolba says that part of avoiding a flabby tush that fails to support the muscles and joints around it is simply to get up from your chair a number of times per day. For those of us who aren’t into athletic competitions, that single, simple modification to daily routine can make a huge difference in lowering the risk of injury when we hike, bike, or get serious about working out.

For the more athletically inclined, there are a number of glute-strengthening exercises, but one stands out for requiring a minimum of equipment and for helping you build up strength on both sides of your buttocks so you don’t have injuries. It’s called the Bulgarian squat. There is a link to a demonstration of the exercise posted after this article.

How do you do the Bulgarian squat?

1. Take a single dumbbell or kettle bell with your left hand. Never do this exercise with a barbell. Start with the smallest weight available until you can perform the routine with ease.

2. Position yourself in front of an ottoman or your sofa.

3. Place your left foot in front of your body, while resting your right foot on the cushion behind you. Your left foot will be flat on the floor, while the tips of your toes of your right foot will be planted in the sofa cushion. If all you can do is to achieve this position, that’s a useful start. Don’t injure yourself. This exercise can take a while to master.

4. Keeping your left foot flat on the floor, and holding the weight in your left hand, touch the floor with your right knee. Repeat 10 times or as many times as you are comfortable. If you can’t reach the floor, don’t force yourself. Bend as much as you can. Don’t use a heavier weight in future exercise sessions until you are flexible enough to touch the floor.

5. Repeat the exercise with your right foot on the floor, with the weight in your right hand.

What’s the advantage of this exercise over all the others? We all naturally tend to favor our stronger side. This exercise, if you do it with both sides of your body, ensures that both sides of your buttocks are equally strong. It doesn’t allow you to favor one side. That way you are less likely to suffer knee or hip injuries on the weak side of your body.

READ Get Smart, Stay Smart: Squat

What’s another way to make sure your buttocks don’t cause injuries elsewhere in your body? Exercise all of your core muscles, not just some of them. The core muscles are the hips, the lateral trunk, the lower back, and the abs. Many people work out as if their core muscles were the abs, the abs, the abs, and the abs. If you only work out to build up your abs, you will set yourself up for injury due to the weakness of your other muscles.

It also helps to train in an upright position for activities you perform in an upright position. That is, if your goal is like Esther’s to bike and run an Iron Woman Triathlon, sit ups aren’t enough to tone and strengthen the core muscles. In fact, endless variations of sit ups aren’t basically a good idea. If you do sit ups in your core routine, fine, but never let them dominate your routine.