Lets be honest, as women we all want to have a great behind. Anyway we can make it smaller, firmer or more ‘uplifted’, we’ll try. But it’s an area that many of us, myself included, can struggle with. As females, we naturally store fat in our lower bodies and this means that the butt is often the last place that we lose fat from. For years I looked at women in my gym and realised that those with the best physiques (and the best butts!) were not those spending hours upon hours doing cardio, but instead those that spent time hitting the weights.
It’s unusual to find many women (at least in my gym) in the weights area. Instead they prefer to sweat it out on the cross-trainer or the bike. But this will have little effect on building great glutes. In order to really work your glutes you need to utilise exercises that will hit your glute muscles from every angle and the best exercises are the big compund movements. These form part of my glute workouts and have made such a difference. The best exercises for building a great butt are:-
The Squat: This is by far the best exercise for shaping the glutes. No other single exercise has quite the same effect. In today’s increasingly sedentary society, we all tend to sit too much, either like I am now, in front of the computer, or in the car or just in front of the television. This has resulted in loss of muscle activation in the glutes, hips and hamstrings. Squating can help this too and will really start to engage our posterior. You don’t need to lift heavy barbells either. Simple bodyweight squats can be just as effective.
The Lunge: This is one exercise where I can really feel my glutes working. It’s essential to get the mechanics of the exercise correct, but once you do you’ll find you will start to hit the glutes in a way that is difficult to achieve through any other exercise. You can perform a range of lunge exercises, from bodyweight lunges, to barbell lunges and single to multi-directional lunges. Try varying them up to add variety.
The Deadlift: Whilst this exercise doesn’t specifically target our glutes quite like the first two, they do work our entire back-end immensely and help to encourage better posture. They strengthen our lower back, hips, hamstrings and stabilizer muscles, meaning they can have a positive effect on our glutes. There are many versions of the deadlift from sumo lifts to single legged deadlifts. Try different versions to see what works best for you.
A Healthy Diet: Great bodies start with a great diet and you’ll never have a butt to be truly proud of if you eat junk. (heard the phrase junk in the trunk?!). You have to eat a lean and clean diet that will work in unison with your workout program. Through eating right and focusing on the above exercises I have been able to really make a difference to this hard to sculpt area and you can too.
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