People tend to over-engage their quads, leading to pain and injury.
When they’re used correctly, strong glutes can power heavy lifts, carry you through runs and rides, and keep your lower back and knees from aching. But in most people, the muscle group is actually at rest during exercise, says Sean Peters, a former personal trainer and current licensed massage therapist and lead educator for EQX Body Lab in New York City. Instead, the quads do the bulk of the work.
The reason: The body always favors the path of least resistance. We’re almost always moving forward through walking and running, which are quad-dominant activities. In turn, your brain learns to activate and rely upon the quads during other kinds of movement, too, whether you’re squatting, lunging, or jumping rope. The glutes are left largely at rest, even though engaging them would improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury. This imbalance is made worse if you spend most of the day seated.
Powering through your workouts without addressing the glute-quad disparity compromises your ability to move quickly and powerfully. It also makes you more likely to feel knee pain and develop issues like tendonitis and plantar fasciitis.
There are a few step everyone should take to avoid this dysfunction. First, walk at regular intervals throughout the day. Aim for a total of 60 minutes. Second, roll a tennis ball under your glutes every hour at your desk. Third, take yoga weekly to teach you how to slow down your movements, carving deeper neural pathways in muscles other than the quads for more balanced engagement. Finally, add lateral exercises to your routine to get out of the sagittal plane.
If you’re a cyclist, runner, or heavy lifter, here’s how quad dominance will manifest for you—and how you can avoid it.
Cyclists:
“Because you’re seated, it’s easy to favor the hip flexors and quads and limit glute activation,” Peters says. This can lead to soreness in the quads, reduced range of motion in the knees, and pain in the low back and IT band.
Avoid it: You need to re-engage with the ground before you clip into your pedals to maintain proper form and alignment, which helps activate the glutes. To do it, perform 2 sets of 8 to 10 reps each of plank walkouts, alternating side lunges, and glute bridges before you cycle. All three exercises require strong body-ground contact.
Runners:
The front-and-back motion can easily place most of the force on the quads, Peters says. Like in cycling, this can lead to low-back pain or IT band friction syndrome. Shifting some of the effort to the glutes will help you run faster and more efficiently while taking stress off the quads.
Avoid it: As a pre-run warm-up, foam roll your quads and the surrounding areas for 10 minutes to desensitize them (so they’re less likely to be overworked). Follow that with 10 walking lunges and 5 T-spine rotations per side. Perform them slowly and prioritize form so you can fully recruit the non-quad muscles. Focus on diaphragmatic breathing while doing these prep movements so the efficient pattern can carry over to your run. “If you’re not breathing correctly, you’ll get winded, which can cause your muscles to lock up and prompt your quads to take over,” Peters explains.
He also suggests adding 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps of multiplanar step-ups (stepping up from all sides) and Turkish get-ups to every strength routine, ideally twice per week. Because these moves recruit so many muscle groups, it will be difficult to overuse your quads.
Lifting:
It’s especially common to become quad dominant during heavy lifts like deadlifts and squats, where you need to hinge correctly to leverage the posterior chain. A few signs your muscle recruitment is off: you’re sore in muscles you shouldn’t have fatigued (for example, if deadlifts tire out your back rather than your glutes and hamstrings) and an unexpected lack of flexibility (say, you can no longer touch your toes or bring your arms fully overhead without discomfort), Peters says.
Avoid it: Before you lift, foam roll any sore muscles for 5 minutes. Start lower-body days with exercises that take you out of the sagittal plane, like windmill ball slams and inline band lifts. Complete 3 sets of 10 reps for each. Include at least one accessory day (focused on basic isolation or unilateral movements rather than compound lifts) per week with only frontal and transverse plane movements like hinged T-spine rotations and anti-rotational presses, he adds. Over time, these habits will teach you to engage the whole body—not just the quads—giving your fitness more longevity.