so some of the most important muscles of the hip some of the most important muscles for the lower limb is a whole and therefore some crucial muscles in physiotherapy let's take a look at the gluteal muscles hey guys Khalid here welcome back to clinical physio now when we're going through Anatomy there's only one place to start and that's with our 3D Anatomy model so guys when it comes to the gluteal muscles the most obvious one to start with is the one and only gluteus maximus muscle probably the most recognizable hip muscle and certainly the most recognizable hip extensor alongside the hamstring muscles and naturally it's the biggest muscle in the glacial region now as you can see it actually covers most of the gluteal region and if we bring in some of the other muscles around the hip we can see that these are even more covered by the gluteus maximus it's a huge muscle now if we look at the origins and insertions of this muscle they are quite vast so we start with the origin and the most clear origin of the glute Max Muscle is the gluteal service of the ilium which is the superior posterior surface of the ilium and it has a couple of other smaller origin points including the lateral sacrum and the lateral aspect of the coccyx and it also has other myofascial attachments to the muscles or fascia around the thoracolumbar region and also the sacral tuberous ligament now in terms of the insertion points there are two main insertion points for the glute Max and the first one is at this kind of distal Point here which is the gluteal tuberosity on the posterior surface of the femur but also another really crucial insertion is the connection between the gluteus maximus and the iliotibial band or the ITB one of the most commonly talked about structures at the lateral leg and so we need to remember that the ITB isn't a muscle it's actually a thick fascia and we know that the gluteus maximus fibers almost blend in with the ITB before the ITB continues down the leg so let's talk about the function of the gluteus maximus muscle and how this matters to Physio as you can see it's a huge muscle and the key function is as a hip extensor as we talked about earlier but more importantly than that the key function of the glute Max is all about power a combination of force and speed and when we're thinking about when the glute Max is really needed it's for big powerful movements we're thinking about squatting jumping sprinting pushing all these really important movements that we will do particularly in a sporting environment so how does that matter to Physio well it means that if you want to really get this muscle working number one think about power and number two try and relate it to those movements there's no point under loading your exercises when it comes to glute Max you really want to ramp up the weight because we know that in order to really produce powerful movements we need big forces going through our rehab so the next muscle to talk about is gluteus medius now as we can see this particular muscle originates on the gluteal surface of the ilium but pay particular attention to just how high up on that gluteal surface it does actually originate from then we know that this muscle inserts into the greater trochanter of the femur and in particular we can see that it's almost on the slightly lateral posterior surface of the greater trochanter and now let's move on to the gluteus Minimus muscle so we can see that this actually sits directly underneath the gluteus medius muscle which we looked at a second ago now in terms of the origin of this muscle it also originates from the gluteal surface of the ilium but we can see that it actually originates from a lot lower than the gluteus medius does on that surface then when we move on to its insertion we can see that it also inserts into the greater trochanter of the femur and we can see that here now in relation to the gluteus medius muscle it actually sits a fraction more anteriorly on that greater trochanteric surface now a really important thing to say about both the gluteus medius and Minimus muscles when they attach on to the greater dracanta as we can see here is that it means that when your patients come to see you with lateral hip pain we really expect them to present with pain around that greater trochanter around that lateral surface of the hip which may well tell us that they have a gluteal tendinopathy a tendinopathy of one of these two key tendons so certainly look out and think for that diagnosis when you have patients with that lateral hip pain now we talked about glute Max being a really powerful muscle these big high energy force movements well actually the role and function of glute Mead and glutamine is very very different we can see that these are much smaller muscles they're far less vast in the area that they cover and instead they have more of a role in stabilizing we can see here how they originate from the pelvis and they insert into that greater drochantera as we said and therefore it kind of makes sense that these muscles have a role in stabilizing between the pelvis and the lateral hip and therefore they're going to be most active in stabilizing and balancing those two structures when we're standing on one leg when we're going up and down the stairs when we're jogging those movements that require a little bit of stability for a long period of time so what about rehab well we talked about glute Max being a big vast powerful muscle and therefore we want to think about big powerful movements that's not the case with our glute Mead and glute Min these are smaller muscles we talked about their role being in more of a stabilizing capacity and that's where we want to think about rehab exercises that also mimic that stabilizing capacity so we're thinking about lower intensity contractions maybe we're thinking about higher levels of endurance because we know that that stability is needed all day long so we might be thinking about exercises such as standing on one leg doing different activities on one leg where we're asking those muscles to try and stabilize the position of the hip and the pelvis accordingly we might be thinking about something like a single leg bridge but instead of asking the patient to really force their bottom off the bed we might be thinking about a slower more controlled movement where they're thinking more about balance and stability so hopefully that makes sense in the difference between the two groups so guys I really hope this video has helped you understand the differences both anatomically and clinically for the glute Max glute Mead and gluten muscles if you've enjoyed this video please support us by Smashing that like button subscribing to the channel and make sure you check us out on Instagram at clinical Physio and on our website clinical physio.com my name is Khalid thank you so much for watching see you soon here on clinical physio foreign