Atlanta Personal Trainer | Ray Grayson

How to Build a Better Butt with Rachel Murray

Der­rière, tush, bot­tom, back­side, rump, bum, don­key, pooper, booty, bub­ble or what­ever you call it…

I’ve had a lot of ques­tions about train­ing your Glutes lately, so I wanted to spend a lit­tle time focus­ing on our favorite rear view.

The main ques­tions were:

How do you get a round butt?

And…

What are the best exer­cises for train­ing the glutes?

First of all, you have to under­stand that if you have extra ‘stored energy’ (aka, body fat) there’s a good chance it’s hangin’ out on your back­side and hips (espe­cially if you’re of the female per­sua­sion: women nat­u­rally tend to carry more body fat around hips, butt, and stom­ach than men). This is one of the rea­sons you don’t have the butt of your dreams.

How­ever…

Even if you lose the body fat cov­er­ing your pre­cious assets, if you’re not train­ing to build mus­cle in the lower body regions, there’s a good chance (unless genet­ics blessed you with some strong and pow­er­ful hindquar­ters) you may find your­self suf­fer­ing from “Noasa­tal” (trans­la­tion: ‘no a** at all’ or ‘flat butt’ or ‘pan­cake butt’, etc.) and you’ll have to start work­ing hard for some curve.

That said, no mat­ter what your cur­rent ‘con­di­tion’, you’ll still want to con­sider adding some glute spe­cific train­ing to your cur­rent work­out rou­tine, because your bum mus­cles are some of your body’s most impor­tant mus­cles for move­ment, hip sta­bi­liza­tion, and over­all strength.

A lit­tle more info about your bum…

These three mus­cles make up your backside’s shape and are respon­si­ble for most of the to-and-fro move­ment you do every day, as well as joint sta­bi­liza­tion of the knees, hips and back. Your glutes and leg mus­cles are the largest mus­cles in your body and so they also have the poten­tial to help you get in great phys­i­cal shape, fast.

How­ever, we’re specif­i­cally talk­ing about how to cre­ate the best butt pos­si­ble and that may not be as fast as you’d like, but with the proper direc­tion and train­ing, you’ll be well on your way.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR BUTT (with the your goal being: shapely, cur­vey, round, firm and lifted):

There are a few things you’ll need to include in your fit­ness routine:

1. CLEAN nutri­tion to fuel your fit­ness goals and BUILD muscle
2. HEAVY lift­ing using exer­cises that tar­get your gluteal muscles
3. STRETCH daily to lengthen the mus­cles (and to build more) and avoid injury

Let’s assume, for the sake of the post focus today, that you’ve got nutri­tion down, but you need to know how to tar­get the glutes in your

train­ing…

Here are some of the BEST BUTT EXERCISES you should be incor­po­rat­ing into your workouts:

*Press your weight down through your HEEL to bet­ter tar­get glutes and pro­tect your knees in most leg exercises

1. Wide Stance Squats (the deeper the better)
2. Walk­ing and/or Sta­tion­ary Lunges (the deeper the bet­ter, and keep a 90 degree angle in both knees)
3. Step ups
4. Sin­gle leg squats (back leg on a bench or step)
5. Don­key Kick­backs (Hip Exten­sions with cable or ankle weights)
6. Sumo/Plié Squats
7. Sin­gle Leg Deadlift

Here are video demon­stra­tions of the above men­tioned exer­cises in order.

*Try sets of 8–12 each (or ea. leg) for max­i­mal butt-building-benefit!

1. Wide Stance Squats (the deeper the bet­ter)

2. Walk­ing and/or Sta­tion­ary Lunges (the deeper the bet­ter, and keep a 90 degree angle in both knees)

3. Step ups: For this video, they demo a step up with a knee raise, which isn’t nec­es­sary. Just step up and step back down with con­trol.

4. Sin­gle leg squats (back leg on a bench or step): For this video, the exer­cise is shown to iso­late with slow move­ment with­out weight. Try it with weight, for rep­e­ti­tions.

5. Don­key Kicks/ Kick Backs (Hip Exten­sions with cable or ankle weights)

6. Sumo/Plié Squats

7. Sin­gle Leg Dead­lift (Keep chest up, shoul­ders back, core engaged, and weight in heel of stand­ing leg)

REMEMBER: These exer­cises will do you the most good in the least amount of time when you are eat­ing clean, to fuel mus­cle build­ing (See: How many calo­ries do you need?), and stretching/rolling (See: What is SMFR Foam Rolling? and When is the best time to stretch?)

Here’s to your best butt yet!

#Caus­e­Fit­ness — Rachel Eliz­a­beth Murray