By far my most popular article for Her Campus is “9 Tips to Grow Your Glutes”. I wrote it a few years back but more often than not it is still the article that brings a decent amount of traffic weekly. I’m not sure where people are accessing such an old article but it does make me inclined to follow up with more glute growth tips and tricks. Which brings me to the topic of this article: glute isolation exercises.
Glute isolation exercises do exactly what you’d think; they isolate glutes. To put it in different words, these exercises focus directly on your glutes and not on the other leg muscles such as quads or calves. This way you are getting resistance directly on the glutes thus making them larger (which in this Kardashianithith period, is most of our goals). Strengthening the booty muscles is especially beneficial when you realize that most people have weak glutes. According to Shape “We tend to be a very quadriceps-dominant society, just by the way we move….Most people have some strength in the major part of their glutes and hamstrings because we use these walking, climbing steps, biking, etc….The other super-important areas of our backside-gluteus medius and gluteus minimus-are generally weak since we don’t target them as much as we should…Not only do our glutes tend to be weak, but it’s very common that most individuals cannot activate the muscle properly,” While it clearly is worthwhile to target glutes, do not and I repeat DO NOT cut out all other lower body exercises. This can cause muscle imbalances and tightness in your lower back. With that being said, here are 5 glute isolation exercises I live by. I cannot stress enough how important form is so I hyperlinked YouTube videos for each exercise to help perfect your form and get the most out of these booty busting exercises.
A classic. Hip thrusts target both the gluteus maximus and the gluteus medius and are one of those exercises that make me feel like I am ready to be in a rap video afterwards. Do I want to be in a rap video? Not even a little. I’m just saying feeling like I could if I wanted to is powerful. I have a few tips for the BB hip thrust. First one is to either buy a foam barbell pad or bring a couple towels to put between your hips and the bar while completing your reps. Some people don’t have trouble with it but it hurts my hip bones. The next tip is that you don’t need to have a huge range of motion when completing this exercise. It’s about hinging at the hips. If you go too far down you may be unintentionally putting that weight on your lower back and you’ll feel that in the morning FOR SURE. Be aware of your shoulder blade positioning on the gym chair as well as your legs. The video provided will further detail the proper form.
Take it up a notch: try pausing at the top of the thrust for a few seconds and/or lowering slowly. It is going to hurt but you’ll see that progress in no time.
Kicking back is a great way to activate your glutes and adding weight to that is extremely beneficial. This exercise targets the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. There are a few ways to execute this movement but the majority of gyms will have cable machines so that is my suggestion. I sometimes struggle with these hurting my lower back but that is just an indicator that I am doing it wrong so pay close attention to form.
A couple years back resistance bands blew up. People made millions selling these rubber circles by slapping on a cute name like “peach” or “booty” bands and charging people $50 a pop. As cute as they are, you don’t need to spend that much to get a solid set of resistance bands. You can get the same results just buying a pack off Amazon. Fire hydrants get a really good burn going in the gluteus maximus muscle and you don’t even have to stand up for them! Just slip the band around the middle of your thighs, get on all fours, and pretend like you are a dog peeing on a fire hydrant (yup, that is where the name comes from). It is a rather compromising position but it is an easy one to complete at home and anyways, everyone is focused on themselves at the gym.
Take it up a notch: try holding at the top of the movement and pulsing your leg.
I don’t depend too much on machines for my workouts as I prefer to use free weights. Free weights help with muscle balances and in general yield better results than machines. However, there’s nothing wrong with throwing a machine or two into the mix and the hip abduction machine is a favorite of mine. The seated hip abduction machine mainly works the gluteus medius and parts of the gluteus maximus. It feels almost like a break as you have a chance to sit down and yet it also allows you to put a decent amount of weight on the gluteus medius.
Take it up a notch: Superset this exercise with a hip adduction by just turning around the pads! (You will also likely have to take the weight down for the adduction)
This exercise is potentially the most painful of the bunch but all that burn turns to booty. (Did I just come up with a new workout slogan?) If it’s too hard there is absolutely no shame in switching to body weight. I’ve been lifting for about 3 years now and I even have days where bodyweight is all I am getting out of this particular exercise.
Take it up a notch: Try slipping a resistance band around your thighs to add an extra element to this workout