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Best Tips to Great Glutes! - A Bodybuilders Guide

May 15, 2021 5 min read

Best Tips to Great Glutes! - A Bodybuilders Guide

Let us talk Booty Gains - It is a little more complex than some may think. Gluteus Minimus, Gluteus Medius and Gluteus Maximus. The glutes are made up of these three main muscles and are the foundation of all lower body movements. Glutes that are trained to generate force through these muscles will assist you to jump higher, run faster, squat heavier, deadlift heavier and become a better athlete in general.  

Glute training, although widely seen as female only territory due to the way some glute exercises are performed; men should not shy away from it. You can train your legs as many times per week as you like, but in my opinion, you cannot build a decent amount of muscle mass in your quads without strong and muscular glutes. So, if you want the quads, you must train the glutes!  

When it comes to training the Glutes, I like to use the KISS analogy (Keep It Simple Stupid). There are hundreds of fiddly glute exercises all over the gram that claim to isolate the three main muscles of the glutes, but I find many of these to be time-consuming and not ideal for the daily, natural, biomechanics of the human body's functions.

Unfortunately, due to modern day society, the increasing demand for typical 9-5 office jobs, and advancements in technology, the need to use our glutes has significantly decreased. This is because we are now spending most of our days in stationary seated positions, causing the glutes to become weaker and under-trained, leaving us with unshapely booty's. This also causes the surrounding musculature to become weaker and take more of the workload, leading to increased risk of injury. Hence why it is necessary to target one of our body's largest and most powerful muscle groups by implementing these glute developing movements.

While every multi joint lower-body exercise works the glutes to some degree because of what is called hip extension; there is no exercise that truly isolates the glutes, however, if you are looking to emphasize them, here are my top six basic or as some may say, old school exercises that I would recommend. You can even tweak these exercises to really focus on the Glutes and Hamstrings - Including foot placement, stance, tempo, and form adjustment.  


My Top 6 Best Glute Exercises

1. Wide Stance Hack Squats or Barbell Squats

If using a squat machine such as the hack squat; opt for a wider and slightly higher stance as this will provide more glute/hamstring activation. The squat is one of the best overall lower body building exercises, targeting the quads, hamstrings, and glutes. I would suggest performing the type of squat that powerlifters use, which is called a low-bar squat for better glute/hamstring activation. Another way to enhance glute development, is to ensure you are reaching depth with your squats, parallel or below if you can. If you do partial reps when squatting the load is mostly in your quads so reduce the weight if you need to, focus on your stance, depth and squeeze your glutes at the top of the movement.


2. Heavy Barbell Hip Thrusts

The Hip Thrust is a glute exercise designed to improve your strength, speed, and power through optimal hip extension. Although the word thrust implies a fast and explosive movement, I would suggest hip thrusts be performed in a controlled manner with a brief pause and squeeze at the top of each rep.


3. Lunges

Lunges are one of my all-time favourite lower body exercises. Performing walking lunges will help develop your glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves and even your inner and outer hips and thighs. Lunges are a great exercise to do at the end of your workout especially for your glutes because of the degree of hip extension involved, especially with longer strides. Another great thing about lunges, they can be easily modified from very easy bodyweight lunges to extremely difficult reverse weighted lunges and many more variations to suit all fitness and strength levels.  


4. Bulgarian Split Squat

The Bulgarian split squat is a unilateral movement; it helps you build up strength and stability. To emphasize your glutes, take a slightly longer stride and place your foot further out in front of your body compared to the standard variation. This will shift more of the load into your glutes when performing the movement. If you would like to increase the difficultly of this exercise, try holding dumbbells at your side or use a smith machine and add additional plates.  


5. Romanian Deadlifts

All forms of deadlifts target the same primary muscle groups including the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. However, I have noticed that majority of people do not know how to activate their glute muscles in other forms of deadlifts. I believe that the best way to learn mind to muscle connection with your glutes during a deadlift movement is to start with RDLs. The hamstrings cross both the knee and hip joints, so a movement like Romanians targets the hamstrings mainly from the hip joint – although, mostly hitting your hamstrings you will feel it in your glutes as well, so make sure you concentrate on flexing your glutes at the top of the movement in the standing position.


6. Monster Walk

Monster walks are a great exercise to target the glute Medius and are fantastic to superset with any of the above compound movements. They can also be used as a warm-up exercise prior to training. Monster walks are perfect for activating the muscles in your hips and glutes. The hip extensors and abductors play a major role in the function of your kinetic chain. To perform monster walks you can use a resistance band or (booty band) around your ankles, feet, knees, or upper legs, depending on the range of movement and level of resistance you would like to create. Standing in an upright position, bend your knees slightly and walk with diagonal step, moving ahead and outwards, as opposed to side to side. 


Recommended Booty Building Supplement Stack:

CREATINE MONOHYDRATE

Creatine increases strength, builds muscle, increases endurance, reducesfatigue, and provides cognitive benefits. 

VENOM® PRE-WORKOUT

Increases enduranceand strengththe benefit of increased strength and endurance when taking pre-workout means thatpotentiallymore weight can be lifted in a training session, therefor, may assist inan increase in muscle mass. 

BCAA 7000

Taking BCAAs before and during training can decrease the breakdown of muscles and fuel your muscles to increase performance. 

PREMIUM WHEY (WPC)

Whey Protein Concentrate has a full amino acid profile, rich in BCAA’s, WPC is highly effective at repairing and building muscle tissue after strenuous exercise.

Happy Training!  


Creatine Monohydrate-VPA Australia
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BCAA 7000
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Premium Whey (WPC) - 22
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KLEOS Pre-workout-VPA Australia
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Rebecca Pateman

INBA PNBA Figure Professional, online coach, I have been training for 9 years and I have been competing for the past 3 years, I now look forward to using my experience to assist others in their own health and fitness journeys.

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