Hi all, let me preface first by:
1) apologising for asking more questions than presenting solutions, and the lack of any pictures. I apologise;
2) saying, clearly, "I am NOT an expert on Physiology"
3) Apologising too for this TL,DR. Or more politely - too long, please save your time.
For the longest time I've struggled to quantify 'Big' glutes. For this post, I'm actually leaving pure aesthetics, as I know we all love GREAT glutes, behind (no pun intended). That for my next thread, however.
Glutes are not a set of muscles that lend themselves easily to measurement, unless you have scientific equipment that can give you the size (and while you're at it, weight) of each muscle. Obviously that is beyond the reach of the vast majority of bodybuilders, male and female alike. We are left with the tape measure, and the plethora of shortcomings.
The first and easiest approach is to happily wind the tape around her cheeks widest circumference, as you would her quads/upper arms etc, all the way around. However, the tape now passes not only over her upper pubis, but much worse, over her hip muscles. These latter too will vary dramatically, just like every other muscle, with genetics and targeted training. You will know how well developed her mid posterior region is, generally.
Is that a bad thing ? No. I also want to know how well developed those very womanly hip muscles are too. Is it ideal? No, again, for two reasons. One - I'd like to get to a future where the ladies have specific measurements listed, and thus when they first enter their details here, a database sitting at the back end (really, I need to stop the puns
highlights how lacking their hip muscles are compared to their glutes and/or overall body size (or possibly vice-versa), and, two - imagine the scenario. We pass the tape around, but stopping where her TFL's, or her hip flexors begin, side to side.
As some of you who are fellow weight-trainers/bodybuilders know, squats/deadlifts often don't target the upper glutes, or more precisely known as the Gluteus Medius. For that, you need lunges. Do it yourself with just bodyweight, you will feel little to no engagement of upper glutes when squatting, but lunge, and they'll fire wildly. You could therefore have a big ass, but low-slung, one that doesn't have that desirable 'shelf' effect.
To counter that, I'd like to add a SECOND measurement - height. Starting from the small of her back, or where during a lunge the glute medius stops firing, to the lower cleft, where her cheek meets her hamstrings.
And a third - distance of furthest glute fibre to spine. Obviously, this is a sideways-on measurement. Like the above, this can be done with a tape measure and is the least invasive, ie requires the least prodding to know where one muscle begins and another bodypart ends.
In conjunction with the other 2 and her exercise regime, this could give us some powerful data for improvement of the gluteals (and their training)
Now, what about the Intergluteal Cleft? Is that not an area ripe for analysis? Or should that be anal-ys (gets boos from crowd, "Ok I'll stop already!!!
) I daresay it could have stats that would be very useful. I suggest a silk-like piece of material be placed on the cleft, in a standing position, and then sprayed with a stiffening agent before removal, so the shape of the groove is preserved, and then it's length, width, variations of width and overall curvature be quantified (though how you'd quantify curvature I'm not sure).
Of course, we still need to analyse these measurements along with height, weight, bodyfat % etc, and I would absolutely LOVE some raw statistics from which to create formulae for Phase II, improving the aesthetic quality.
What measurements would you add/alter, and what other measuring tools would you use?
