Okay, we need to have a little talk about your glutes.
I know, I know. Not exactly the conversation you expected when you booked a massage. But hear me out, because this might be the most useful thing anyone in the wellness space has ever said to you: your glutes are probably the most important and most neglected muscle group in your entire body, and there is a very good chance they are quietly running the show on that chronic back pain, hip tightness, or leg weirdness you’ve been dealing with.
I spend a lot of time on glutes. Like, a genuinely significant amount of time. New clients are sometimes surprised by this. Returning clients request it specifically. And once I explain why, pretty much everyone wishes someone had told them sooner.
So consider this your official glute education moment. You’re welcome in advance.
Why Your Glutes Matter More Than You Think
The gluteal group, which includes the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus along with the deep hip rotators like the piriformis, is the largest and most powerful muscle group in the human body. These muscles are responsible for hip extension, rotation, and stabilization, and they play a central role in basically every movement you make throughout the day. Walking. Standing. Climbing stairs. Picking something up off the floor. Sitting down and standing back up approximately 400 times a day.
When your glutes are doing their job well, they absorb a massive amount of load and protect everything around them. Your lower back stays happy. Your hips move freely. Your knees track correctly. Everything downstream of your pelvis works the way it’s supposed to.
When your glutes aren’t doing their job, which is the case for most people who spend significant time sitting, everything else has to compensate. And that compensation shows up as pain and tightness in places that seem totally unrelated to your backside. Your lower back muscles take on work they were never designed to handle. Your hip flexors get chronically shortened because nothing is balancing them out. Your piriformis, deep in the glute, goes into protective overload and starts compressing the sciatic nerve, producing the burning, radiating pain down the leg that people often assume is a disc problem. The pain shows up in your back, your hip, your knee, sometimes even your foot. But the origin? Almost always the glute.
Why Nobody Is Actually Working on Them
This is the part that genuinely puzzles me about standard massage culture, and I’ll just say it plainly: most massage sessions barely touch the glutes, and most clients don’t think to ask for more attention there because nobody has ever explained how connected everything is.
Part of this is cultural. There’s some awkwardness, on both sides of the table, around working a body part that’s adjacent to areas people feel protective of. I completely understand that. But proper glute work is clinical, professional, specific, and frankly, one of the most effective things I do. It’s not weird. It’s just good bodywork that most people have never actually received.
The draping stays appropriate the entire time. The work is focused and intentional. And the results are honestly kind of remarkable for something that doesn’t get nearly enough credit in the massage world.
Did You Know? The piriformis muscle runs directly over the sciatic nerve in most people, and in about 15% of the population it actually runs through it. When the piriformis is chronically tight due to glute inhibition or too much sitting, it can compress the sciatic nerve and produce symptoms that are frequently misdiagnosed as disc herniation or true sciatica. Targeted release of the piriformis and the surrounding deep hip rotators can resolve symptoms that have been present for years, sometimes in just a few sessions.
What Tight Glutes Are Actually Doing to the Rest of You
Let me paint you a picture of what I see pretty regularly.
Someone comes in saying their lower back has been killing them for months. They’ve tried stretching. They’ve tried chiro. They’ve tried the foam roller they bought with great intentions and used twice before it became an expensive doorstop. Nothing is sticking.
I ask them about their hips. They shrug, say their hips feel okay, maybe a little tight. We start the session and I get to their glutes and find tissue that is basically concrete. Locked down, overworked, and completely ignored by every treatment they’ve tried because everyone has been focused on where the pain is instead of where the problem started.
When the glutes are chronically tight and inhibited, here’s what’s happening. The lower back muscles are in constant overdrive because they’re doing the stabilizing work the glutes were supposed to handle. The hip flexors are shortened and pulling the pelvis forward, which compresses the lumbar spine. The IT band gets overloaded because the glute medius isn’t stabilizing the hip during movement. And the whole posterior chain from the hamstrings down through the calves and into the feet is compensating for the dysfunction happening upstream. All of that because nobody addressed the actual source.
The other thing worth knowing is that inhibited glutes don’t just cause pain. They change how you move. When the glutes stop firing the way they should, the body recruits other muscles to pick up the slack, and those muscles weren’t built for that job. Over time, this creates movement patterns that compound the problem. The longer it goes unaddressed, the more ingrained those compensatory patterns become. This is why I always say: the sooner you address the root, the easier the fix.
Insider Tip from Amy: When you come in, if you’ve been dealing with low back pain, hip tightness, sciatic-type symptoms, or really any chronic lower body issue, tell me specifically. Even if you’ve been told it’s a disc problem or general back tension, I want to assess the whole posterior chain and the glutes before we decide where to focus. The percentage of back problems that are actually glute problems is genuinely high. And glute problems are something we can work with directly and effectively.
What Happens When the Glutes Finally Release
This is my favorite part to talk about because the ripple effect is always a little surprising, even to me, and I’ve seen it hundreds of times.
When I do real, thorough work through the gluteal layers, including the deep rotators and the attachment points along the sacrum and the iliac crest, here’s what tends to happen. The lower back visibly softens within the same session as the muscles in chronic compensation finally get to stand down. Hip mobility improves almost immediately, often noticeably enough that clients feel it getting off the table. The breath tends to deepen, which sounds unrelated but makes complete sense when you understand how the hip flexors and the diaphragm are neurologically connected. Sciatic symptoms often reduce significantly, sometimes dramatically, within one session or a short course of sessions. And the whole posterior chain, the hamstrings, the calves, sometimes even the feet, tends to feel different because the tension pattern running all the way down from the glutes has been interrupted at the actual source.
It’s one of those things where clients come in saying their foot has been weird for six months and they leave wondering why nobody looked at their hips sooner. The answer is that most people don’t know to look there. Now you do.
The Sitting Epidemic Nobody Is Talking About
Here’s something worth understanding about why this has become such a widespread issue, and why it matters even if you think of yourself as an active person.
The human body was not designed to sit for eight or more hours a day. But most of us do exactly that, and the glutes pay a heavy price for it. When you’re seated, the glutes are in a lengthened, passive position and they’re not doing any work. Over time, the brain essentially starts to forget they’re there. This is called gluteal amnesia, and yes, that is the actual clinical term, and yes, it is exactly as straightforward as it sounds.
When the brain stops reliably recruiting the glutes during movement, other muscles step in. The hip flexors, already shortened from all that sitting, start taking on more of the load. The lower back muscles compensate. The hamstrings overwork. The whole posterior chain reorganizes itself around the absence of the glutes, and suddenly you have a pain pattern that doesn’t make obvious sense because the thing that caused it is a muscle that stopped participating rather than one that’s been overworked.
This is also why people who go to the gym regularly, who do squats and deadlifts and hip thrusts, can still walk around with glute dysfunction. If the neural pathway isn’t firing correctly, the muscle isn’t fully activating no matter how much you train it. Manual release work, combined with the right activation work afterward, is often what finally breaks that pattern and gets the glutes back online.
How This Work Actually Feels
Real glute work involves working through the gluteal layers with sustained, specific pressure, often with the knee bent to help relax the muscles and allow access to the deeper rotators. The piriformis in particular requires working through the gluteus maximus to reach it, so there’s some depth involved.
It can be intense in areas that have been locked up for a long time. I always say it should feel like productive, purposeful pressure that the tissue is actually responding to, the kind where you find yourself thinking oh yeah, that’s the thing. It should never feel sharp or wrong. If it does, we adjust. The goal is never more pressure for the sake of more pressure. It’s the right pressure in the right place for what that particular body needs that day.
I usually spend a meaningful portion of any longer session in this area because it genuinely warrants the time. If you’ve been in for a 90-minute or 2-hour session with me before, you already know I treat the glutes like the priority muscle group they are. If you’re coming in for the first time, just know that this is a feature of working with me, not a surprise. Your whole posterior chain will thank you, possibly loudly.
Also worth mentioning: I sometimes give clients a few simple activation exercises to do after a session. Not a fitness program, just a couple of minutes of basic glute activation that helps reinforce the neural pathway we just woke up. The release I do on the table works best when the brain has a chance to practice recruiting those muscles again right away. Think less gym homework, more nervous system conversation.
Making the Most of Glute Work at Evergreen
If you want to get the most out of your session, a few things will help.
Tell me your history. If you’ve had low back pain, hip issues, sciatic symptoms, knee tracking problems, or anything showing up in your lower body without a clear cause, say so before we start. The more context I have, the more precisely I can direct the work.
Book longer if you can. Glute work is thorough work, and it’s best done as part of a full-body session rather than the last ten minutes of a rushed hour. A 90-minute session gives us time to address the glutes properly and also work through the rest of the posterior chain that’s been compensating. A 2-hour session lets us get into the kind of depth that actually shifts chronic patterns rather than just providing temporary relief.
Come back consistently. One session of good glute work can produce noticeable results. A series of sessions is what changes the long-term pattern. The tissue needs repetition to reorganize, and the nervous system needs repetition to reinforce new recruitment patterns.
Your glutes have been holding up more than their fair share for a long time. It’s time to give them some proper attention.
Reach out through evergreenwellnessspa.com.