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Check out this article from the Figure side of TMuscle: http://figureathlete.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/most_recent/how_strong_are_your_glutes_really

*I am not a figure competitor nor do I wish to be but I find this site to be a treasure trove of useful information for body building, fat loss, strength training, and generally getting into phenominal shape.*

I consider myself to be pretty strong. I can currently deadlift my weight (135) for 4-5 reps and lunge 80lb for 8 reps and squat about the same. Definitely room for much improvement but fairly respectible. However, my upper body is stronger (which is pretty unusual esp for a woman) and my hamstrings and hip flexors are too tight and I struggle with cronic pain in my hips. I've always written this off as due to the mild scoliosis in my lower back. BUT (butt, lol), I found this article yesterday and did the two tests.

TOTALLY failed the first one, passed the second one. This shocked me. The exercises that use my glutes I have doing by overcompensating w/ my hams and quads and my glutes are a very weak link in the strength chain. I'm going to focus on training those muscles to activate so I can balance my strength and hopefully start to see better lower body gains. Curious and hopeful to see if this will also help my hip/glute pain isses.

So - try it and share! Did you pass? Did you fail? Surprised? I believe this is more of an issue for women than men b/c of wearing heels and general lack of lower-body strength training by the female gender....but maybe there are lots of men out there too who need to retrain their glutes to fire. Sitting for most of the day (in an office) will also turn off your glutes and certainly wide swaths of both genders spend a disproportionant amount of time sitting.

My upper body used to be much weaker. There was a time I couldn't do a full pushup and get my chest down to the ground and make it back up, I would shake doing just a couple of tricip dips and I certainly couldn't do a chin up. Since I have been seriously and consistantly weight-training on a plan though, my upper body strength has increased exponentially and overtaken my lower - and I think this glute weak point may be why.

Let us know how you do!