Alright I’m going to say something a bit controversial here so brace yourselves…
Monster walks are not ideal for “warming up the glutes” or “strengthening the glutes” and in fact might even be doing more harm than good especially if you have a lower body injury!!
I know, I know. All the trainers at the gyms are having their clients do them and all the girls on Instagram told you they get your glutes firing and sold you their booty bands! I’m here to keep it real and rely on anatomy and biomechanics to prescribe exercises. Plus I don’t have any cute booty bands with my name on them to sell you (but now that I think of it maybe I should 😂)
Alas it’s not all bad news! If you have been doing these or were thinking about trying them out, don’t worry! Resisted lateral movements are fantastic for your hips. The problem with the monster walks is the excessive hip flexion. The idea behind the concept of the monster walk is spot on. We want to strengthen the glute meds and external hip rotators. So let's do it right!
At FMF we simply call them lateral band walks. You can do them alone or add some upper body work in addition for double the benefit. Here’s how they work:
As you can see, we perform these standing mostly straight up. Because of this, the glute meds are actually doing the work and the pesky hip flexors aren’t kicking in and taking over the load. Most people have tight hip flexors. The reason for this is usually because we spend so much time seated throughout the days and weeks that those muscles are constantly in the flexed position and lock up. Now it seems pretty obvious that if you want to counter that and open the hip flexor and engage the glutes, you would definitely NOT get into a pretty much seated position that you’ve been in all day long and then add even MORE resistance to it!