I want to talk about something that is costing a lot of you watts and you probably do not even realise it. Your glutes are not firing properly. I know that sounds dramatic, but I have seen it so many times — riders with solid aerobic engines who fade in the last third of every ride, whose quads blow up on climbs, whose lower backs ache after anything longer than two hours. And when you look at the root cause, it almost always comes back to the same thing: the biggest muscle in your body is barely showing up to work.
If you sit at a desk all day and then hop on a bike — which is also a seated position — your glutes get very little reason to activate. Your body is clever. It routes power through whatever is available, and that usually means your quads and hamstrings pick up the slack. The problem is they were never meant to carry the full load. That is where the cramping comes from. That is where the back pain comes from. That is the power leak nobody talks about.
The fix is embarrassingly simple. Five minutes before you ride. Glute bridges, clamshells, banded walks, single-leg hip thrusts, donkey kicks. Two sets of ten to twelve reps each. Light resistance, controlled tempo, and an actual mental focus on squeezing at the top. You are not trying to build muscle here — you are sending a signal to your nervous system that says, "Wake up, we need you."
I started doing this three years ago after I kept getting hamstring cramps on long climbs. Within two weeks the cramps were gone. Not reduced — gone. My pelvis was more stable, my lower back stopped aching after century rides, and my power felt like it was coming from a completely different place. The watts on the screen were similar, but the effort distribution had changed entirely.
Activation is not a replacement for heavy strength work. You still want hip thrusts and deadlifts in the gym. But activation is the thing that makes everything else work better, and it takes less time than filling your bottles.
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