No, there is no cake recipe to build that cake (pun intended). This is an article directed mostly to women, just to balance things out a little bit, since last one was directed mostly for men. You can check it out here:
You will need to put together work ethics + knowledge. Some people already have them bigger naturally, and just some basic exercises with not extremely high effort will do a great job. Some others are not that lucky, but hey…weight training is here to save your lives 😀
Let’s get to the point:
HOW TO GET YOUR DREAM GLUTES part 1 – ANATOMY
You have mainly 4 muscles there: Gluteus Maximus, Medius, Minimus and Tensor Fascia Latae.
Gluteus Maximus – Functions: Extension (like doing a kickback), external rotation (rotating your thigh outside of your body), abduction (pushing your leg to the side away from the body) and adduction (pulling your leg from the side towards your body) of the thigh
Gluteus Medius – Functions: Abduction and internal rotation (rotating your leg towards the other leg) of thigh; pelvis stabilization
Gluteus Minimus – Functions: Abduction and internal rotation of thigh; pelvis stabilization
Tensor Fascia Latae – Functions: Internal rotation of thigh, external rotation of leg; hip and knee joint stabilization
I’ll keep this section shorter on purpose and explain exclusively what’s necessary for your understanding during the rest of the article. Also, you will have smaller muscles there like the piriformis and quadratus femoris, but those will not matter that much at this moment. Let’s focus on the “main” ones.
HOW TO GET YOUR DREAM GLUTES part 2 – Targetting different portions and muscles of your glutes
In order to have that “rounder” look in your glutes both from the back, side and front view, you will need to “shape it” with different exercises and specific angles. Don’t get me wrong, form all the people I have seen with the best gluteal development, 100% of them do the basic exercises HEAVY (heavy for THEM. What’s heavy for them might be impossible or light for you). Pay attention to female powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters from lighter categories, for example (usually at heavier categories the ladies will have a bit more body fat accumulated, since it is beneficial for their sport). Those girls most likely never did a single kickback or hip thrust their whole lives, and still got great glute development.
Why so? Basic lifts (and Olympic lifts) performed day after day with heavy loads at high rates of speed and effort (except for powerlifting, where the loads sometimes are too close to their maxes, so it’s hard to move them very fast. The intent to move the weight as fast as possible though is always there).
You will also notice one thing in common for all of them: They have their “lower glutes” more well developed (Gluteus Maximus), with the other muscle not necessarily well developed. That is because the basic movements like squats and deadlifts (conventional deadlifts are better for the gluteus than sumo deadlifts, by the way) will work your gluteus maximus at very high levels, while the other muscle will have a stabilization role in those movements. And that is the reason why you need variation, from the bodybuilding point of view. Having your Gluteus Medius more well developed, for example, will make your glutes look wider from the front, which automatically makes your waist look smaller, creating this illusion of a “X” body type.
From the “activation” point of view, the Box Step-Up and its variations come in 1st place with very high levels of activation, according to this research here
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32132843/
followed by lateral step-up, diagonal step-up, cross over step-up, hex bar deadlift, rotational barbell hip thrust, traditional barbell hip thrust, American barbell hip thrust, belt squat, split squat, in-line lunge, traditional lunge, pull barbell hip thrust, modified single-leg squat, conventional deadlift, and band hip thrust.
Activation is just one layer of the whole cake though (yes, another intended pun). You can activate as much as you wish a muscle, but if you don’t overload it, nothing will happen. So it is important that you utilize challenging weights for each exercise at the repetition range your coach designed you.
Isolation exercises like kickbacks, hip thrust, abductor machine and etc have their place in training too, and in fact I would leave the “lighter” work for those, except maybe for the hip thrust, which is a barbell movement and it’s extremely interesting to be done with heavier loads.
HOW TO GET YOUR DREAM GLUTES part 3 – Frequency and Training Split
Just like all other muscle groups, frequency doesn’t play that much of a role in your results when volume is equated, meaning, if you are doing the same amount of work every week, let’s say 20 sets of 10 reps each, it doesn’t matter if you do them all in one day or split them into 2 days. BUT…
Your glutes will be activated both during quadriceps training AND hamstrings training. It is impossible to do a squat without recruiting your glutes, and isolating them would only be possible if you trained quadriceps (thighs) exclusively doing leg extensions, and hamstrings exclusively doing leg curls, which we know does not happen, at least not among intelligent people. Make sure you count all the sets of squats, leg presses, lunges and split squats INTO your TOTAL GLUTE VOLUME. From there, it is ok to ADD one or maybe 2 specific glute exercises for areas you didn’t emphasize that much with the basic compound exercises. I’ll give you a 2 day split workout example.
Day 1 (Quadriceps) – Squats, Leg Press, Bulgarian Split Squats, Lying Leg Curls (I just added one hamstring isolation movement in the end of the training)
Day 2 (Glutes/Hamstrings) – Deadlifts, Seated Leg Curl, Unilateral Romanian Deadlift, Side Lying Hip Abduction (where you lie on your side and lift your leg up. Doing it on a bench can increase your range of motion. It will activate your Gluteus Medius).
This workout is JUST AN EXAMPLE of an exercise selection you can utilize. It is important to emphasize here that it is ok to make it a 3 day split too, where you could perform one day exclusively for glute exercises, which would allow you to work your glutes in different angles and rep ranges. This strategy can be used for a short period of time (around 8 weeks is ok), and in here you would ramp up your usual volume by sometimes 50%. Extending this period with higher volume can lead to injury and overtraining. Use this strategy in case your glutes are a lagging body part. If they respond normally to training, no need for this, focus on your technique and mind/muscle connection, and your results will come.
HOW TO GET YOUR DREAM GLUTES part 4 – Do Not Neglect Your Quadriceps
It happens a LOT, WAY more often than I would like to see it. Yeah I get it, ladies. Having a nice butt feels good and attracts attention, plus all the extra likes and so on so forth. But some of you are ABSOLUTELY NEGLECTING your quadriceps training. Some of you have a huge ass and NOTHING in front of your thighs. Now let me show you something then:
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/12/20/bjsports-2021-104861
This study was a meta-analysis including 46.819 men and women, and guess what? It found out that “knee extensor muscle weakness increased the odds of symptomatic knee osteoarthritis in women and in adult men, and for radiographic knee osteoarthritis in women and in men”
You are PUTTING YOUR KNEES AT RISK by not training your thighs. I have had 4 knee surgeries that caused me to have osteoarthritis nowadays. Believe me, you do NOT want to have it.
Also from the aesthetics point of view, it looks ugly and disproportional when your glutes are really well developed and your thighs are not (I’m talking as a whole, hamstrings too). Always remember what a wise man once said: “Thicc thighs save lives”
HOW TO GET YOUR DREAM GLUTES part 5 – Debunking Myths
1: “How do I get rid of hip dip?”
You don’t. That’s normal human anatomy. In fact if you take shots of male and female bodybuilders on stage, you will see that the anatomical shape of their glutes is very similar. If you notice an Instagram start at very low body fat % and with very round glutes, most likely they have done surgical procedures there to achieve it. There is nothing wrong with your “hip dips” and nobody cares about them. If anything, they showcase hard work, cause you worked hard and long enough to have ENOUGH MUSCLE MASS to show them. They will only appear seriously at very low body fat levels, and if you don’t want them, just don’t get that lean, simple.
2: “I will do kickbacks on the stair master for the burn”
Don’t. This “burning” sensation you feel in your muscle is just a physiological response to stress in that specific region. The thing is, without mechanical tension (heavy enough weights) this “burning” alone will do nothing good for you in terms of hypertrophy. If you want to feel a REAL burn and put your glutes through REAL stress, go do sled work instead. Sled pushes, try doing them heavy for 30 meter trips, 10 times with minimal rest in between. Tell me later how your legs stopped responding after finishing 😀
3: “I will add those rubber bands during my squats to active my glutes more”
Stop that too. First of all, there is nothing wrong with your glute activation. If they weren’t active, you wouldn’t be walking. You might not feel it during squat work because you don’t have the best mind/muscle connection. Work on that instead. Second, usually when adding bands to your knees you will decrease the total load you are using to squat, which is also a bad choice. Remember, your muscles (all of them) need mechanical tension to grow. If you decrease the amount of weight you use, you are decreasing mechanical tension there. Sounds counterproductive. Just try squatting deeper and heavier. Your glutes will be on fire after.
4: “Sumo everything to target my glutes”
Wrong as well. When you take a sumo stance, you are actually SHORTENING your glute muscles by ABDUCTING your hips and EXTERNALLY ROTATING your thighs. This leads to what we call “ACTIVE INSUFFICIENCY” which is a complicated biomechanical concept, but to make it easier: the sumo stance was “invented” by Dr. Fred Hatfield who was a ph.D Powerlifter and world record holder, and he found out that by pushing his feet apart from each other, he could lift heavier, which is the point of powerlifting. Can that be useful in bodybuilding? YES. Mechanical tension, I just mentioned it. So if you are going to ADD WEIGHT to the bar because you will do sumo, that’s alright. Just sumo for the sake of sumo will make no difference. Having a conventional stance for squats and deadlifts will actually stretch more your glutes, especially at the bottom of each rep. It is interesting to pay attention to your anatomical proportions as well. If you are a person with longer legs and short arms, you will definitely benefit from lifting sumo, since you’ll be able to get your torso closer to the bar. Conventional stances will most likely not feel the most comfortable for you.
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