Strengthen Your Glutes – BowlFit Tips

Your gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in your body and SHOULD be the strongest. However, with age our glutes usually become weaker because they aren’t being used enough. As adults we aren’t running and jumping around outside being as active as we were as kids.

If you’re a desk jockey all day chances are your gluteus maximus is becoming weaker even faster. For bowlers, the glutes play a major role in our braking mechanism and transfer of force at the foul line so it is important to strengthen our glutes for multiple reasons. bowlfit-tipThe primary action of all three glute muscles is hip extension, therefore the best exercise to begin building strength back up is hip lifts or floor bridges.

You can start bilaterally with just your own body weight then progress to doing single leg hip lifts. Once you are efficient in single leg hip lifts you can start adding weight with a barbell across your hips or holding a kettlebell at your hips.

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About Heather –

Heather D’Errico MS, CSCS, CFSC, LMT

Heather began BowlFit in 2013 with the hope to provide awareness to bowlers about how crucial training off the lanes truly is. She has been an avid bowler her entire life competing as a collegiate bowler for Robert Morris University, assistant coaching at the University of Central Missouri, and now head coaches at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY.

She obtained a master’s degree in kinesiology with an emphasis on exercise science and interned with the head strength coach at UCM. She became a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) through NSCA shortly after graduation and began coaching athletes at Next Level Strength and Conditioning in Fairport, NY.

In October 2015 she received her certified functional strength coach certification and then went back to school in July 2016 for massage therapy. She is now a licensed massage therapist and runs a business called Restorative Bodywork in Rochester, NY that specializes in movement therapy and sports massage.

Heather has also been competing on the PWBA tour the last 3 seasons and continues to use her experiences as a competitive and professional bowler to create programs for bowlers. She enjoys the challenges of making programs specific to each bowler as every person needs to focus on different areas for their performance goals. With that said her training motto is “do no harm” and believes each program should most importantly make a bowler FEEL better and play with minimal injuries/pain.