I think my glutes (strength) are holding me back, but I'm not entirely sure.

While there is all this talk on glute activation drills and exercises, I'm wondering if any NON-BEGINNERS have focused on the glutes stuff and significantly improved their squat and pull numbers (not just for injury prevention).

I would like to be a bit more convinced before I allocate my valuable training time to that stuff (training economy perspective). I have the feeling that the people advocating that stuff are often either weak themselves and/or in the business of marketing something.

For example, you see pretty weak guys pushing very heavy weights on the supposedly gold standard glute exercise, the hip thrust.

Thoughts?

I would be interested to hear answers on this as well.

I used to have issues recruiting a muscle in my hips. It wasn't my glutes, and I'm not sure which one, but my ART guy found some muscles in my hips that weren't firing properly.

I incorporated glute bridges and split squats in my training. The whole process took several months but now my hips operate much better. I still keep split squats in because I feel they are more beneficial and for maintenance. I don't do glute bridges anymore. I do feel the process made me more hip dominant.

I didnt notice anything in your squat video that would lead me to think "weak glutes". And I second the above statement, I still include heavy Bulgarian split squats to my routine for this reason.

How much time are you thinking about using for glute activation. Considering proper squats and deads work the glutes too, you wouldn't need more then 2 minutes work on glutes if you are worried about activating them for those exercises.

I havent gotten to the tons of progress point yet, as I am coming back from an SI joint injury. Focusing on glute activation though has allowed me to get better leg drive and feel my legs working a lot more in squat and deadlift. I used to use much more lower back (which I still cant). Thus, I see myself set up to surpass my old numbers fairly soon.

@tattoo'd'popeye: Perhaps, but my deadlift lockout strength is horrible. I'm not sure whether it's a glute or form issue. I tried so many setup variation but still no dice. I will try to post a vid to illustrate the problem.

@Airtruth: True, activation doesn't take much time but directly strengthening them does.

KB Swings helped me a lot with glute activation. I used to do a couple of light 20 rep sets. Don't do them anymore, they seem to fire just fine now.

Well if your having trouble at lockout, I would say yes glute strength needs to be addressed. Im no expert at lock out because I have never had a problem with it. Mine is off the floor, if I can get it off the floor I will lock it out. Wheres Larry been, we need him to chime in here???