Who doesn’t want a nice butt? It’s the common denominator of attraction for everyone for all genders and non-genders, and it’s a signifier of good health. Not to mention, a good booty is brought up almost every rap song… This article is about how to build a bigger butt THE RIGHT WAY. No need for butt implants, you just need to get your booty to the gym!
What Are Glute Muscles
The three major muscle groups are the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. There are also supporting muscles to our glutes such as the hamstrings, core muscles, quads, and hip flexors. To effectively train the glutes, you’ll want to focus on training hip joint movements including hip extension, abduction, and external rotation exercises in various positions.
How To Grow Glutes
To grow your glutes, you have to be doing the big movements such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, and hip thrusts. These movements need to be staples in your routine if you want to grow a nice and firm booty. Cable kickbacks and an hour on the stairmaster wont cut it, you need to be squatting and deadlifting heavy.
WIth these big movements, you need to incorporate some sort of progressive overload with your training and varying your rep ranges frequently, but not too often. try sticking to a rep range for 4 weeks and then progressing from there. Doing movements just to “feel the burn” – as in high rep cable kickbacks, etc. isn’t going to grow the glutes alone, though these can be utilized in your training.
Glutes respond to more frequent training and grow when there are multiple days during the week where one of these movements is taking place. If glutes are your main focus, train them 3x per week. An example of this would be one day of squatting and lunging, one day of deadlifting, and one day of hip thrusting. Think of constantly stimulating your glutes vs hitting them hard one day per week and letting them rest for the next six days. You also need a well-structured program, and you need to see how you personally respond with a certain frequency and intensity for your glutes.
In your training, try focusing on the smaller glute muscles, the gluteus medius and minimus, just as much as the major glute muscles. A great movement for this is the peeing dog. This movement lights up the glute medius and hips, and it’s a great movement to do before you go into the heavier, more compound movements.
If you’re already doing squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, and lunges but your progress has stalled, don’t neglect tempo work! Try some heavy hip thrusts with a 4 second eccentric each rep, or try some squats with pauses.
There are so many variations you can do to give your body a different stimulus with these important lifts. Introducing novelty is a great way to spark some serious muscle growth if you do it right. Also, it doesn’t need to just be barbell back squats, conventional deadlifts, walking lunges, and hip thrusts. There are so many other different variations of these movements. For example, try a bulgarian deadlift. For hip thrusts add Romanian deadlifts, you can try a staggered stance. Both of these variations are fun glute killers.
Glute Workouts For Muscle Growth
Here’s a general outline for a glute specific program. Again, there is no single recipe that will fit everyone, so having a well structured program designed by a trainer is optimal. First and foremost, you need to wake up the glutes before getting into the squats and lunges. Try side plank clamshells (which also helps wake the core up for heavy lifts), peeing dogs, bodyweight glute bridges, or cable kickbacks. Pay attention to your mind muscle connection before you go into your squats and other big movements.
Taking into account the glutes generally need to be worked out 3x a week, try doing 3-4 sets of squats and 3-4 sets of a lunge variation for day one. For day two, do deadlifts, either a conventional, sumo deadlift, or whatever is in your program. Try 3-4 sets of deadlifts with as much intensity for whatever rep range you’re working in that you can. The third day is 3-4 sets of hip thrusts. Remember to do some warm up/priming movements before these big movements.
Recovery After A Glute Workout
If you’re hammering your glutes every week, but aren’t recovering properly, you aren’t going to build them. The building of muscle happens during recovery, so it’s very important that you recover properly. Being a couch potato is not actually the best way to recover either. Be sure to go on walks, even clean your house, and incorporate regular daily movement.
Obviously, proper nutrition is essential too. You need to eat more calories (protein, carbs, and fat), and you need to be ok with getting bigger and gaining a little body fat. Bottom line, if you want to be building anything, you need to eat more calories. Your workout routine will dictate WHERE you are building. Sleeping is huge when you’re trying to build muscle as well. This is when you recover the most, and the better you sleep, the more muscle you will grow. Don’t let all of your hard work and effort go to waste: eat enough calories, hydrate, sleep, and gently move to facilitate recovery.
Final Thoughts On How To Grow Glutes
Glutes are a dynamic muscle group to build because they respond to a multitude of exercises. The key is to work them out multiple times a week. There are lots of variations to work with, so training them can feel diverse and fun. And if you want to get that booty, you need to make sure you are eating enough of the right things and allowing yourself the recovery you need. All in all, building your glutes is a great way to incorporate key movements into your workout routine, while maintaining balance.
You can checkout our Youtube channel for tutorials on all the movements we mentioned in this blog and check out our library of over 750 videos of movement tutorials Q&A’s fitness programing and so much more.
Want to learn more on how to grow your glutes? Listen to The Stronger than Your Boyfriend Podcast: Episode 96, How to Build Series: Glutes
