In America today, more and more people are inactive and sit for long periods of time.  Many jobs require people to sit all day.  When you are sitting, your hip flexors are shortening and stiffening and your glutes become dormant.  When you have overly stiff hip flexors (in this case usually psoas, rectus femoris, tensor fascia latae or a combination) and glutes that are weak, don't fire, and are virtually non-existent, your low back, knees, and/or hamstrings tend to pick up a lot of the slack. 

People with back pain often have very weak glutes that don't turn on when they are needed.  With no support from these hip muscles, the back absorbs much of the force that is created with various movements, which in time is bound to lead to back problems. 

If hip flexors are too stiff and you can't get your hip into full extension with the glute muscles, anterior hip pain can also occur since the hamstring will try to perform the extension instead of the glutes, and cause the femur to rub against the joint capsule.  

If you are talking about athletes, those with no glutes often perform movements in a strictly quad dominant fashion.  With no assistance from the glutes, the knee joints end up taking extra stress and pain and injuries can result. 

Glutes are one of the biggest, strongest, and most powerful muscles in the body (at least they should be) and athletes that don't use them to their full potential are not only asking for pain and injuries, but also are hindering themselves from their ultimate performance potential. 

So what needs to be done to fix this problem?  The hip flexors (and any other stiff areas) need to lengthened and mobilized, and the glutes need to be activated and strengthened.  I will give some examples of how to accomplish this in my next post.  Stay tuned!

So you say that you don't have enough time to workout? I doubt it.  One of my favorite ways to get a great workout in with a shorter amount of time is with complexes.  With a complex, you combine multiple exercises into one larger movement.  An example would be a squat and overhead press.  Here is an example of a great workout that shouldn't take you more than 20 to 30 minutes to complete. 

Front Squat and Overhead press  3-5 sets x 8-12 reps  45sec rest between sets

Romanian Deadlift and Row  3-5 sets x 8-12 reps 45 sec rest between sets

Stability Ball or ab wheel rollouts 2-3 sets x 10 reps   30 sec rest between sets

A barbell or dumbbell can be used for the complexes.  Combining multi joint movements like this allows you to stimulate a maximal amount of muscles throughout your entire body in a shorter amount of time, and also proves to be a very fatiguing and effective workout.   If you think that you don't have time to get an effective workout in, think again.   You don't have to spend hours training to get a good workout in. 

I can't tell you how many times a week I have to explain to people about the correct way to eat in order to speed up metabolism and lose fat.  Time after time, I run into people or hear about people who think that eating almost nothing maybe once or twice a day and practically starving themselves is the way to lose weight.  This is not only unhealthy, but KILLS your metabolism and slows it down to the rate of a snail. 

When you eat very infrequently like this, your body doesn't expect to get more food anytime soon so it goes ahead and stores what you do eat as fat, so that it will have something to use when it needs it.  Your metabolism slows down and you burn off nothing.  When these people do start to eat anything in excess of their crumbs they've been getting, their bodies blow up because their metabolism has slowed so much and everything gets stored as fat.

 On top of these poor eating practices, a lot of these people seem to do lots of steady state cardio.  This promotes muscle wasting since they have no fuel to use and burn off; which in turn kills metabolism and fat loss even more, since muscle is so important.

 What you need to do for optimal fat loss and leanness is to eat a small to moderate sized meal around every 3 hours, 5 to 6 times a day.  When you do this, your body expects more so it doesn't need to store things all of the time, and is able to use more of what you give it as fuel.  This speeds up your metabolism and your body ends up doing things much more efficiently.  Couple this with an effective exercise program and you will be a lean, fat burning machine.