Why the glutes switch off during sitting and what that means for the rest of the body
Nicola Tik
The gluteal muscles, the large group of muscles that make up the buttocks, are among the most powerful in the body. They are designed to drive movement, stabilise the pelvis, and support the lower back during almost every activity that involves the legs. During prolonged sitting, however, they are largely switched off, compressed against the chair, and asked to do very little for hours at a time. Understanding what happens to the glutes during sustained sitting, and what that means for the hips and lower back that depend on them, helps explain a pattern of discomfort that many desk workers experience without connecting it to this particular cause.
The gluteal muscles consist of three layers, the largest of which, the gluteus maximus, is the primary driver of hip extension, the movement of pushing the leg back and straightening the hip that powers walking, climbing, and rising from a seated position. The deeper layers contribute to rotating the hip and stabilising the pelvis during single leg activities like walking and standing.
Together these muscles are responsible for transferring load between the lower back and the legs, keeping the pelvis level during movement, and protecting the lower back from the excessive demand that would result from the spine having to manage that load alone. When they are functioning well, the lower back is supported and the hips move freely. When they are underactive or weakened, the lower back tends to compensate, and the hips lose some of their stability and range.
During sitting, the gluteal muscles are in a passively shortened and compressed position. The hips are flexed, which places the gluteus maximus at a mechanical disadvantage, and the body weight is distributed across the sitting surface in a way that compresses the muscle tissue directly. The muscles are not being asked to produce force or maintain stability in the active way that standing and walking require, and they respond by reducing their activity significantly.
This reduction in muscle activity during sitting is sometimes referred to colloquially as dead butt syndrome, a term that captures the experience of the glutes feeling unresponsive or numb after a long sitting session. The term is informal but the underlying phenomenon is real. The gluteal muscles become progressively less responsive during sustained sitting, and the longer the sitting continues without interruption, the more pronounced that reduction in activity tends to be.
The compression of the gluteal muscles against the chair surface during sitting also affects circulation in the area. Sustained pressure on the soft tissues reduces blood flow, which contributes to the feeling of numbness or discomfort that many people notice during a long sitting session and which takes a few minutes of standing and movement to fully resolve.
The relationship between the glutes and the hip flexors is one of the most important and most commonly disrupted consequences of prolonged sitting. The hip flexors, which run from the lower back and pelvis down to the front of the thigh, are held in a shortened position for the entire duration of sitting. While the glutes are being compressed and switching off at the back of the hip, the hip flexors are shortening and tightening at the front.
Over time this creates a significant imbalance between the front and back of the hip. The hip flexors become tighter and more dominant. The glutes become relatively weaker and less responsive. This imbalance affects how the pelvis sits, pulling it forward into an anterior tilt that increases the curve in the lower back and places additional load on the lumbar spine.
For many desk workers, this hip flexor dominance and gluteal underactivity is a significant contributing factor to the lower back tension and discomfort they experience, even when the lower back itself is not obviously being overloaded by any specific activity.
The lower back relies on the gluteal muscles to help manage the loads that pass through it during movement and posture. When the glutes are underactive, the lower back muscles take on more of that load than they are designed to manage alone. This compensation tends to produce a chronic low-level overload of the lumbar muscles that accumulates over weeks and months rather than producing an acute episode, and it is one of the reasons that lower back tension in desk workers is so persistent and so resistant to purely local treatment.
The connection between weak or underactive glutes and lower back pain is well established in rehabilitation literature, and reactivating the glutes tends to produce improvements in lower back comfort that local lower back treatment alone cannot always achieve. This is why exercises that target the glutes, such as bridges, clamshells, and hip extension movements, feature prominently in rehabilitation programmes for lower back pain rather than only in training programmes aimed at athletic performance.
The hips are affected by prolonged gluteal underactivity in a slightly different but equally significant way. The gluteal muscles contribute to the stability of the hip joint during movement, keeping the head of the femur centred in the hip socket and managing the rotational forces that walking and standing produce. When they are underactive, the hip joint has less dynamic stability, and the surrounding structures have to work harder to compensate.
Over time this reduced stability can contribute to discomfort in and around the hip joint, a reduced sense of confidence or control during movements that load the hip, and a gradual reduction in the range of movement available at the hip as the surrounding structures adapt to the altered loading pattern.
The physiology above points clearly towards what is most effective. Interrupting prolonged sitting regularly with standing and movement reactivates the gluteal muscles and gives them the varied loading they need to maintain their responsiveness. Exercises that specifically target hip extension and gluteal activation, done consistently rather than occasionally, gradually rebuild the strength and responsiveness that sustained sitting reduces.
Stretching the hip flexors alongside activating the glutes addresses both sides of the imbalance that prolonged sitting creates, and tends to produce more complete results than either intervention alone. Your VIDA programme includes exercises targeting the glutes and hip flexors that are designed to address these patterns gradually and at a pace the body can manage, alongside the broader movement habits covered in the other articles in this series.