I’m going to talk a lot about my butt. Or, to use the medical term, my gluteus. Or, to use the hip, fitness person term, my glutes.
Don’t worry, by the end of this post you will not be thinking about my glutes. But, for now, you must.
See, the problem is, I don’t have any. Like I think I legitimately just don’t have the gluteus muscles in my legs. A friend of mine was born without one of his pectoral muscles. Maybe that’s what happened to me.
But this is a significant issue if you want to be athletic in any way. Next time you watch a sport, just take a look at the backsides of all the athletes. They are always prodigious. These muscles provide speed, balance, and power. According to Wikipedia, “Well formed gluteal muscles have long been associated with health, strength and sexual attractiveness.”
When Bad Bunny says, “Shorty, tiene' un culo bien grande, eh/De-Demasia'o grande” I am decidedly not the shorty he’s talking about.
A sizable donk is such an important feature for a soccer player that former Manchester City star Yaya Toure once wrote an entire essay praising the value of using your bum in the sport.
Besides tennis, the only sport I consistently play these days is indoor soccer. It might surprise you to learn this, but I am terrible at it.
So a few months ago I set out to try and strengthen my legs, specifically my glutes, in order to be a better athlete. Among other things, I did weighted squats multiple times a week. I started off with really low weight and gradually added more and more over the course of a few months.
However, because my glutes are truly nonexistent, what ended up happening was that they were not engaging properly during my lifts. Instead my quads and hamstrings were taking the bulk of the weight. They were getting stronger, but my glutes weren’t. Then, I’d go play soccer every Thursday night with strong, but extremely tight, hamstrings and no glutes. The tight hamstrings would tug on my lower back and I’d end up limping around for days after a game due to the significant pain that caused.
I tried stretching my legs throughout the week but, to be honest, they were way too tight to fix on my own. I needed help. Fortunately, there was a brand new fitness franchise opening in Dallas that promised to give me exactly what I needed.
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StretchLab Highland Park is perfectly located in the Mockingbird Station shopping center in Dallas, surrounded by yoga and fitness studios. They do exactly what it sounds like: stretch you out. They offer an aided stretch from a “flexologist” as well as guided group stretches.
It’s a franchise that’s exploding all over the country, with at least nine locations opening up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and more than 300 nationwide. It’s clear that I’m not the only one who could use a little help with flexibility.
When I arrived, general manager Dana Roberts took me over to an iPad attached to a wall. Using a program called MAPS, I performed three standing squats in front of the iPad and it was able to diagnose any mobility and flexibility issues that I had so Roberts could better target these in our session.
Let’s just say I have a lot of mobility issues.
And it’s not just mobility issues that MAPS so kindly pointed out. It’s activation issues. None of this was a surprise, but it’s still pretty jarring to see a rendering of my body with bright red buttocks.
This confirmed that I absolutely needed to be there. So Roberts had me lay down on the table and proceeded to do a 25-minute leg stretch routine. It involved hamstring, glute, groin, and calf stretches. Nothing was too surprising or weird. Frankly, a lot of it reminded me of the partner stretching we did before every baseball practice in high school. But it’s been nearly 15 years since I’ve done that. It was much more painful this time than it was back then.
It was a good pain though. I felt better immediately. Just walking out of the building I felt fresher. I wanted to go play soccer that night. Unfortunately my game was several days away. The next day I felt even better. My workout was more effective and I felt less stiff afterwards.
A few days later Roberts invited me back for a mini-session so we could take some photos. This time I was stretched by flexologist Amrutha Ravikrishnan. Now it was Thursday, the day of my soccer game. Having two stretches in the course of a few days had me feeling incredible. I was ready to play.
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When the game started I felt like Superman. I was faster than I’d been in years, my back wasn’t hurting, and I was making some solid passes and taking good shots. I couldn’t believe what a difference being properly stretched out was making. I could actually feel my glutes getting engaged as I ran.
But there was a problem. The other team was great and they were dominating the game. Their goalie was making things so much worse. He was super athletic and their best player. From the very beginning of the game he was taking the ball out of the goalie box and trying to dribble it down the field to score. It was an amazingly cocky move.
If I was Superman, he was my arch-nemesis: the Joker. And I wasn’t going to go back to being Bruce Banner after this game without trying to punish him for this move. If only my lady, Mary Jane, could talk me off this ledge before I ended up like Superman does at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.
(I hope that last paragraph made someone extremely mad).
Anyway, suffice to say I had it set in my mind that if he tried this move again I was going to do everything in my power to stop him. Towards the end of the first half he tried it again. Me and the other attacker, Ryan, were closing in on him when he grabbed the ball out of the air, put it at his feet and ran in between us.
One or both of us yelled “Oh hell no” and we both started trying to take him out. Ryan is faster than me and got there first. The goalie shrugged him off with ease and kept running. Normally I would be out of contention by this point.
However, these newly stretched out hamstrings and groin muscles, along with somewhat active glutes, propelled my body forward at a speed I haven’t had since my early 20s. I caught him at midfield and grabbed his right bicep with both of my arms. He ripped it away, but his momentum was slowed enough for me to grab at it again. At this point, the foul I was committing was, without a doubt, worth a card. He ripped his arms away again and this time I lost my balance. As I went down to the ground, my finger stuck briefly in his goalie glove, taking away any chance that I’d be able to fall with any grace.
My knee and my left hand hit the ground simultaneously. The knee was immediately bleeding from the carpet burn caused by the indoor soccer turf. But my left arm was far, far worse.
I heard a crack the second it made contact with the ground. I try to never lay on the turf after an injury unless I physically cannot get up, so I jumped to my feet and looked up to see the goalkeeper at the other end of the field celebrating the goal he just scored.
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I broke my elbow.
Of course, StrechLab is not the reason I broke my elbow. They are the reason I felt good about myself, but I’m the idiot who got too prideful and confident.
Confident is never a word I would use to describe me athletically in anything but softball. So the fact that StetchLab had me feeling confident at all is a testament to their service.
I plan to go back there any time I feel too tight or before a game where I need that extra boost. I just promise not to let it go to my head.
See, I told you that you’d forget about my butt.
There’s almost certainly a StretchLab near you. They work with everyone from athletes to people recovering from surgery/injury to older people who need help with mobility issues. This was seriously one of my favorite things I’ve tried out and I will absolutely return as a paying customer some day (after my elbow heals). The intro price is $29 for 25 minutes and $49 for 50 minutes. I would suggest springing for the 50 minutes, the 25 minute stretch left me wishing I had more time.
Thanks again to Dana and Amrutha at StretchLab Highland Park.
No thanks to that cocky goalie.
Next month’s Trial & Error is going to be almost the exact opposite of this one. Get ready to chill.
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