Let's face it ladies, we all want a big booty.
As a personal trainer I get tons of emails and DMs from ladies all the time saying:
“I really want to shape up my butt more; how do I do it?”
“I want to work on my booty so it can grow asap!”
Ladies, we want to be strong and fit, but let’s face it - we also want perfect glutes. It’s by far the most common thing my clients ask for, and I have the answer.
I won’t give you all those sugar-coated lies that you see from Instagram girls who post pictures of their booty all day and even companies that advertise oils that promises to make your booty bigger in a week. Let me give you the science behind glute training.
First, you need to understand the muscles involved. Those that give us that nice, curvy bottom include the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus.
A lot of our daily movements, like walking or running, involve these muscles, and yet, most people never train them specifically.
When you do train your gluteus muscles, it’s possible to achieve hypertrophy, or growth in the size of the muscles. The secret is to target each of the glute muscles and to progressively overload them with high intensity.
This can be achieved within any range of reps, but you get the best muscle hypertrophy results from a rep range of six to twelve and with a heavy resistance.
In the world of fitness, the word Glutes refer to your booty. Glutes is a shortened form of gluteus maximums. You should know that the gluteus maximus is one muscle. There’s no such thing as “upper” or “lower” regions or “glute-ham tie-in muscles” or anything else, and thus, exercises that supposedly “targets” these areas is not true.
Second, you shouldn’t be aiming for a ‘fat’ ass, you’re aiming for a well sculpted ass that similarly takes the form of a peach. This requires well-built glutes and hamstrings, so a proper butt training routine should emphasize both of these muscle groups.
Keep in mind that no exercise magically makes your butt grow. It can, however, give your already sized glutes a rounder and fuller shape to make it look bigger. What I mean is if you naturally have smaller hips, doing squats or any butt exercise won’t make your hips wider because you can’t change your bone structure BUT there are exercises you can do to add muscle on the hips that’ll give you the illusion of a wider hip. The exact same way you add muscle to your glutes to give it the illusion of a big booty!
Third, you can never build a booty without resistance. Infact, you can’t build muscle without resistance- period. By resistance I mean weights. Always use weights to squat. It doesn’t matter what anyone says or what you see on social media.
To build a well rounded booty you need weights. Heavy weights. Other resistance items like resistance bands can be used in substitution, you can also use them at the same time like squatting while using a resistance band.
Lastly, if you’re looking for quick, easy results then weight training is not for you. You have to be ready to put in consistent work for at least 3 months.
“Can’t I Just Squat and Lunge?”
From a lot of people who haven’t done their research, you’ll hear:
“Just squat more! And dead lift more!”
Squats, deadlifts, and lunges definitely hit the glutes, but they also target a lot of other muscles, like the quads, hamstrings, abs, and others. But this is not a bad thing because you need well defined quads and hamstrings to give your glutes that LOOK!
Although some people may build a beautiful booty from just squatting, deadlifting, and lunging - like I did- one size does not fit all and this approach may not work for everyone. For those who need a little extra help, or don't want to spend all their time at the squat rack, hit those glutes directly.
If you want to really build an awesome tush, you need to hit it directly, with exercises that cause the highest percentage of muscle activation from the three gluteus muscles.
The glutes are most activated when the hips are near full extension, so focus on exercises that target the glutes and achieve this full range of motion.
Your Best Bets to Target the Glutes:
Now, let’s get specific. What exactly are the best exercises for seeing growth in the glute muscles?
• Side plank abductions
• Single leg squats
• Hip bridges
• Kettle bell swings (with an emphasis on hip thrust with glute contraction)
• Hip external rotations
• Single-leg elevated hip thrusts
Exercises I did to build my glutes- take lots of notes!
I keep my leg workouts basic and simple. You will hear that squats are not the only exercises to do when building a booty and this is very true but just doing squats and deadlifts, extensions and curls worked for me ! But like I said before not everyone is the same! There are exercises that targets your glutes directly!
Other glute building exercises like cable kick backs, side hip abductions, hyperextensions and the rest do help. But these are the exercises that I did religiously:
1. Barbell squats
There are tons of squat variations. You can use a barbell, a kettlebell, dumbbells, cable machines and so much more but for me, the barbell is the one that gets the job done. This is a great foundation for booty building
There’s a reason why people with great physiques are always banging on about the importance of squatting regularly. This is because its the single most effective movement for building total lower body strength and muscularity.
If you want great legs and a great ass, you want to take your squatting seriously. Right now I squat between 80-100kg.
There’s quite a bit that goes into a proper squat. The secret (it’s actually not a secret) to seeing those booty gains through a squat is to
Squat deep.
The deeper and heavier you squat, the more work your legs and butt have to do. I recommend either full squats or parallel squats, but not half squats. Practically speaking, this means adopting stance that is about 125 to 150% of shoulder-width.
2. Romanian Deadlifts
If I could only do one exercise every week it would be the deadlift. In this case, the Romanian deadlift is a variation of a deadlift. These are also known as straight leg deadlifts. It trains everything in your body which is why it’s a compound movement. It builds a tremendous amount of whole body strength and power.
It’s particularly good for building your booty because it heavily involves both the hamstrings and glutes. It also involves heavy lifting.
3. Deep Dumbbell lunges
Your glutes are very involved with pulling you back to a standing position when you’re doing a lunge.
Each time I go down on a lunge, I put all the tension in my glutes before I come up.
I also switch from waking lunges to the Bulgarian split squat where one leg is on an incline and the other extended in front of me and I’m going down as low as possible holding a pair of dumbbells.
Always know that weight progression is key to seeing results! If you keep squatting or lifting the same amount of weights each time you’re at the gym, you will remain stagnant in your gains. This is the most important principle in strength training, and it gives you the best results in muscle growth and strength.
This is because our muscles increase in strength and size when they are forced to contract at tensions closest to their maximum.
To achieve this you can either:
• Perform more reps with the same amount of weight.
• Increase the resistance load and perform the same amount of reps.
• Add more sets of “work” to a specific muscle group.
SOFit tips to building your own booty:
Have two to three leg days per week but squat every day regardless of whether it’s leg day or not. This approach has helped me make some serious progress over the past year.
Start with three sets of 10 of every glute exercise and then gradually increase to at the most 6 reps. Here are the most adviced Rep Ranges For Glute Training:
• 5 or less (per set): Strength
• 6-8: Strength and hypertrophy
• 8-12: Hypertrophy/pump
• 12 or more: Hypertrophy/endurance
Squat Wide, Go Deep
During a movement like the barbell squat, you can put more emphasis on the glutes just by adjusting your foot position. A hip-width or wider stance will allow you to utilize the glutes more than a narrow stance. Your legs should always be shoulder-width apart. Here’s the proper squat form and how low you should always keep your squat:
Side view:
Back view:
When doing Smith-machine squats, kicking your feet well out in front of you rather than keeping them directly under your body can put extra emphasis on the glutes too. Your glutes will definitely benefit from going down to a point where your knees are bent at least 90 degrees, or what is usually called a parallel squat like the image of me above.
Don’t Forget the Legs!
From my own personal experience, I have seen the greatest results in glute muscle development when I added an additional, glute-intensive workout day.
But, I also include my legs because they are all related.
On Mondays I dedicate my workout to leg exercises that also hit the glutes:
• Heavy barbell squats
• Split lunges
• Leg extensions
• Hamstring Curls
Do Booty-Strengthening Cardio
Because women tend to store more body fat in the hips and thighs, the booty can be stubborn when we try to make it look the way we want. I’m by no means suggesting that everyone needs to live on cardio machines, but at least three days per week of some sort of cardio activity, from 20-40 minutes each session, is a great idea.
Eat/drink your protein!
What you eat also affects the way you look. There are foods that make your muscles pop. This is why strength trainers eat lots of protein! Protein builds lean muscle.
Reduce your carb intake and increase your protein! Your muscles are made of Protein and if you’re trying to build lean muscle, you need to consume more protein. Protein makes you bigger so you have to combine it with the right workouts! Diet and exercise can lead to some incredible results.
Variations of exercises YOU can add to your leg day. Choose four and create a proper gym plan!
• Sumo squat
• Plie squat
• Sumo deadlift
• One-legged deadlift
• Curtsy lunge
• Curtsy lunge off a stair or low platform
• Reverse lunge
• Reverse lunge off of a platform ( ~1 ft.)
• Cable kick-back
• Kettlebell swings
• Cable pull-through
• Side lunge
• Hip thrust (weighted or unweighted)
• Step-up
• Step-up with kick-back
• Walking lunge
• Hip abduction on cable (use ankle cuff)
• Side lunge on cable (using the ankle cuff)
Please don't take the list I gave you into the gym and try to do a little of everything. Go into the gym with a plan! I never show up to the gym without a solid outline in my mind of what I want to accomplish and what exercises I'm going to be doing.
You can purchase my 31 day gym workout plan right now and get started on getting the glutes of your dreams!
Hope this helps my babes! 💕
