The “squeeze” may have been passed down by teachers who were hypermobile and needed the additional stability, or from students trying to fulfill their teachers’ instructions of “use the glutes”. The glute max and deep rotators are all involved in external rotation: the fascial layers are gliding and tensioning, and the muscle fibers are shortening to move the femur (thigh bone) into external rotation. This “relax” cue may have also developed around the idea that dancers need to find the deeper layer of muscles for external rotation, and the belief that squeezing the glute max interferes with this. Relaxing the butt and letting it all hang out most likely came from a dance teacher trying to help their students stop intentionally squeezing the butt muscles at full force, as this can interfere with neurological coordination, and won’t allow for the quick weight shifts needed for dancing. And, while we’re at it-let’s give dancers back their power, by helping them find strong, functional glutes that come in all shapes and sizes! ![]() This is one of the dance training myths that should be corrected. So, what are dancers to do? To start, let’s acknowledge that asking dancers to purposely “not use or relax” any muscle or region of the body just isn’t possible! The motor control center in the brain doesn’t work that way. And I’ll add a third option that is popular in ballet classes, where students hear repeatedly, “use your turnout muscles!" This usually results in dancers re-cranking their turnout from feet, or knees, holding on fiercely with their quads so they don’t fall over and hoping that the burning sensation in the hip region is proof that something must be working “back there.” I have been pleased to see more teachers using anatomy images in class to show what the deep external rotators look like, but we’re still a long way from truly finding activation and proper use of the gluteal region. “Squeeze the butt, show me the dimple” to “let the butt go, let it all hang out” (Erkert 2003). Jan Erkert states, “Dance teachers argue about the role of the butt” and compares two points of view. They are eager to discover a new solution. The majority of these students are dealing with lumbopelvic instability, struggle to find balance on one leg, and lack the power to push off efficiently in jumps and leaps. They say, “My teacher told me to never, ever use my butt, I should keep it off!” When I ask them for more details about this cue, they seem to believe that something bad will happen if they activate the muscles in their butt and they should try to “ relax everything back there”. ![]() No Butts About It: What I hear most frequently from dance students is that they have been told to “Never use the butt”. Can a focus on proper muscle function overtake our society’s obsession with form and shape? Let’s examine the training myths that may be preventing dancers from understanding how to find functional strength and honor the butt as a site of power, literally and figuratively. Embarrassing or not, the dance field needs to deal with all this “junk that has accumulated in the trunk” from training myths, media pressure that we either have too much or too little back there, and Insta images of the so-called #perfectbooty. She’s shaking her head at me as I type this. My tween daughter is pretty embarrassed that her mom’s favorite research subject is the butt. Butt Seriously Dancers Need Glutes! Part I by Susan Haines, MFA, NKT, FMT, IASTM
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