Exactly how to squeeze a butt workout into every sweat sesh

pulse

December 28, 2016 2:31 AM

Building a stronger butt usually entails a mix of heavy, light, and bodyweight exercises.

After all, it’s the year of the booty.

This year was all about the butt.

We had more people asking about it - and we created more workouts for it - than we even did for abs. (Shocking, but true.)

I like that it’s getting more attention, not only because it’s the strongest group of muscles in your entire body - but because, inevitably, when you start focusing on your butt, you tend to also engage most of your posterior chain (a.k.a. the backside of your body: hamstrings, low back, etc.). And that area could always use some extra love.

Building a stronger butt usually entails a mix of heavy, light, and bodyweight exercises. This quickie workout focuses on the latter.

Using these non-weighted moves will not only help strengthen your glute activation, but they’ll help you really zero in on your form on two of the most fundamental lower-body movements: the hinge and the squat.

By getting stronger at these two movements without weight, you’ll be able to get stronger (and fend off injuries) when you start adding more weight to moves like deadlifts, squats, lunges, and swings.

When you’re doing the hinge you want to focus on pushing your hips back and keeping your back flat; you should feel the stretch in your hamstrings and glutes as you hinge forward on every rep.

With the split squat, you want to think about sitting straight down - almost down and back - while keeping your chest tall; this will keep the emphasis on your glutes and quads, without adding pressure to your knees.

You can do this as a dynamic warmup - or a metabolic finisher - at the start or finish of any workout (for a warmup, aim for five minutes of continuous work, as a finisher aim to get closer to 10 minutes).

Or you can build it in as a complement to a heavy lifting day that focuses on your lower body: By completing this superset at the start of your session, you’ll more fully fatigue your glutes by the end of your workout - which will lead to better results.

pulse