A big bum, according to science, is the best bum

Today we are talking about bums and why bigger is better, according to science, especially if you are an athlete.

If you are reading this article in a coffee shop, give the person next you a little wink. They know you are thinking about the biggest and most powerful muscle in your body, the Gluteus Maximus.

The Gluteals – that is the entire bum region – is made up of the Gluteus Minimus, the lower region or crease of the jock trouser line, the Gluteus Medius, which is the outer side of the bum and the Maximus, which is the big central part.

The first thing to understand is that the bum does not work by itself. It is vitally important for it to be strong, but so too, are all their adjacent muscles which also need to be strong to support the  transference of power it produces.

If your supporting muscles are weaker, then you have a lot of power but nowhere to go and this will cause you injury,  overloading of weaker muscles and pulls and strains.

The answer as to why bigger bums are better lies in the research article published by experts at the Loughborough University, who found that sprinters who had larger bums could run up to 44% faster.

The team conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on elite sprinters, sub-elite and untrained athletes and the elite sprinters had more muscular bums than sub-athletes or untrained ones.

The important thing to note is that their muscles were developed in a particular way.

That is why bodybuilders are not fast. Aesthetically they look strong but are not athletically fast and build their muscles for looks and not sporting application.

This is also the reason why you don’t let your aspiring teenager loose in a gym without a sports scientist. They build for looks and not for function.

Coming back to elite sprinters, this term “elite” refers to athletes sprinting under 9.99 seconds in a 100m race.

The researchers took a sample group of 44 males – five elite sprinters, 26 sub-elite sprinters and 11 untrained athletes. All their performance ranged between 9.91 seconds and 11.25 seconds. They scanned the entire lower body and found a massive difference in variance,  astonishingly the elite athletes had a 45% bigger gluteus maximus than sub-elite athletes.

Jonathan Folland was incredibly excited to find a single muscle that accounted for the massive variability. He also added that there was a remarkable difference in the size of the hip flexor as well.

If you ask any sprint coach, there are several variables that make you faster, such as technique, posture, holistic strength, genetics, nutrition, recovery, flexibility and gait mechanics just to name a few.

You need all these variables to work harmoniously on the day to achieve a consistent and decent sprint time. For young aspiring athletes, make sure you are developing holistically but for sub-elite athletes wanting to break through the wall with sub-times, this single bit of research will be a game changer for thousands of athletes across the world.

This single-handedly changes the game for sports scientists and performance coaches all over the world from a design point of view.

Athletes have the potential to get faster. Sub-athletes spend thousands of hours a year trying to get faster and are mostly self-funded.

The pay cheque comes when they break into the elite circuit, and this is probably some of the most exciting news to come out of research for athletes all over the world.

There you have it, its official – bigger bums are better, but not in the way you thought.

Muscular bums are important for power generation but before you go out and do squats and floor thrusters, understand that it must be part of your development, but not the only thing to focus on. A fast car in the hands of an inexperienced driver leads to injuries.

The golden rule is, develop holistically with an expert.