I like big butts and I cannot lie.

A few years back having reached 40 years of age I started to realise that I had to incorporate a new fitness routine into my day. I was already doing quite a bit of walking but the aches and pains started creeping in and I realised after a bout of sciatica that that I needed to start stretching out my glutes.  

You see, the body is made up of many muscles, all in different shapes and sizes but it's not just the shape of a muscle that differentiates one from the other, it's also the function.  

Take the biceps muscle as an example. When you're not using your arm, your biceps is almost completely at rest.  The glutei muscles on the other hand (pun completely unintended) are known as "postural" muscles. Postural muscles are muscles that, as the word implies, maintain posture, so that whether you're standing, squatting, sitting or walking, the glutei muscles are working.  Just take a look at your butt (mirror not included). It's almost completely muscle (some of you may disagree on that one) and  it's one of the largest parts of your body.

The glutei are large in size as they have to maintain the stability of our hips in order for us to stand upright. Furthermore, they have to propel the body forward when walking or running.  They have to haul us up-stairs or up a hill.  They are such important muscles, used almost all the time in the bipedal human, that they tend to get quite tight.  Now this would not be a problem were the sciatic nerve (the amazon river of the peripheral nervous system), not perforate the piriformis muscle. However, it does and that's why some people start to get pain travelling down the back of the leg when their butt muscles get tighter and tighter and tighter.

That's right boys and girls, time to start incorporating some glutei stretches into your daily routine.... I've even got a good sound track I can recommend for you.