If you want to get a bigger butt, you’re not alone. Many people have been searching for the best exercises to develop their glute muscle groups. This article will help you learn what butt exercises you should try without the need for a personal trainer, and as long as you perform them in proper form, you’re sure to see muscle growth in your butt muscle.
How to Get a Nice Butt
There are plenty of ways to get a delightful derrière from working out. Getting the perfect butt for your body can be as easy as figuring out the best workouts for the muscles you want to strengthen.
After you find the right workout, building the perfect ass requires persistence and practice. Perform the workouts with the correct form and challenge yourself regularly, and you’re sure to build the best booty possible.
When you work out to build a better butt, the first mistake many people make is ignoring other muscles too. Forming the perfect ass works best when targeting your legs, glutes, and abs. It never hurts to throw upper body workouts into your routine too, but it’s not necessary to build the best butt for your body.
There are four main shapes for the butt: the heart/pear, inverted, round, and square butt shapes. By figuring out what type of butt you have, you can target specific muscles in the butt to bring out the curves you desire.
Muscles in the Booty
There are tons of muscles in the butt, and all of them contribute to your butt’s shape. The biggest and most popular muscle is the gluteus maximus. This muscle takes up the most area in your butt, and it’s responsible for lifting your leg backward and rotating your pelvis and thighs. The gluteus medius is located on top of the gluteus maximus and helps raise the leg out to the side while promoting overall body balance. If you feel your butt is flat at the sides or think you have a muffin top that overshadows your perfect butt goals, then working your gluteus medius is necessary to build the perfect ass. The gluteus minimus resides under the upper part of the gluteus maximus and works with the gluteus medius to maintain balance.
All three of these muscles are important to everyday bodily movements and functions. They also all support the shape of your butt, which is why you can achieve the perfect ass by isolating specific muscles during your workout.
Having strong glutes and a strong core can decrease any risk of serious injury while improving your posture. Working out can also help your butt look great in any outfit. Regardless of your genetics, you can shape your ass any way you want if you understand the muscles you need to work to attain the butt of your dreams.
Best Equipment for Butt Exercises
To perform butt exercises as effectively as possible, you’ll need a bunch of helpful equipment. Things like dumbbells, yoga balls, and resistance bands can add to many different exercises and help increase their intensity. Also, you should make sure you have comfortable shoes and a soft surface like a yoga mat to do free weight workouts on.
How to Get the Perfect Ass with Butt Exercises
Deep Squats
If you’re only using your body weight, you should practice deep squats and lower yourself as low as possible to get the most intense workout. Deep squats are a great exercise to ensure maximum glute activation.
Put your feet a little farther apart than shoulder-width to perform deep squats. It’s important not to let your knees cave in. Make sure you engage your core, so your upper back doesn’t round. You should hold your palms together in front of your chest and allow your elbows to flare out.
You can make this workout more difficult by holding a weight right in front of your chest or by performing these squats with only one leg. You can get very strong leg and glute muscles by practicing this workout, and it will improve your balance, flexibility, and core strength.
Horse Stance
The horse stance is a staple of many different styles of martial arts. This workout can help your build strength and muscle mass in your thighs and glutes.
When you do the horse stance, you’ll start by standing straight and keeping your stance open. You’ll need to move your feet a little beyond shoulder-width apart. It’s best to start shoulder-width apart and extend both of your feet out, one more foot away from your body. This stance requires a really large space since your legs are spread apart so far.
As you squat down, keep in mind that you should move like you were going to sit back in a chair. Move your hips back and drop down until your thighs are parallel with the ground. If you’re doing this stance correctly, you’ll be able to feel a burn in your thighs, and you might want to quit. This workout is great because it forces you to focus on your resilience and determination while you feel the burn and work your quads and glutes.
This workout will give you the most benefits if you hold it for as long as you can. Most beginners will aim to hold the squat for 15 to 30 seconds, but keep in mind that you might not be able to hold it for that long or might find you can hold it much longer. Everyone’s stamina varies when trying to hold this position, so keep track of how long you can hold it and work on beating your last record every time you practice it. The most advanced practitioners can hold the horse stance for 5 to 10 minutes, but these are usually martial arts masters, so don’t stress out about reaching 10 minutes in the horse stance.
Step-Up
Step-ups are a classic workout that is great at giving your glutes and thighs a sufficient workout. This workout can help activate your glutes and provide cardiovascular workouts all in one movement. This workout will require you to have a slightly higher platform than your knees. Typically, an eight-inch platform is desired. One rule you should acknowledge is that your knee should have to bend more than a 90-degree angle when stepping up, so make sure you aren’t trying to step up on anything too high to avoid the risk of injury. Aim to get a smaller platform to begin with.
To begin, place one foot on your platform and raise your body up to that level. Then you should bring the knee of your other leg up as high as you can before stepping on the platform. You can make this move more challenging when you’re rising up to the platform by not bending your other leg until it is above the platform. This way, the leg you’re stepping up with has to work harder. When both of your feet are on the platform, step down to the beginning stance and repeat the workout on the opposite leg.
This move can be made more difficult by adding weights to your hands. You can also add ankle weights if you feel you need more of a challenge. You could also hold something like a big water jug or weight plate to make this more challenging.
Glute Bridges
Glute bridges are a challenging and helpful glute workout. You need to lie on a comfortable surface like a carpet or preferably a yoga mat to perform glute bridges. Then, lie with your back and feet planted comfortably on the ground. You should have your knees bent, so your feet are just a few inches away from your butt. You can put your arms down by your sides with your palms facing upwards toward the ceiling.
Raise your butt up and off the floor until only your feet, arms, shoulders, and head are touching the floor. You must push your hips up as high as you can and squeeze your glutes hard at the top to get all the benefits of this workout.
This exercise can become easy when you practice it often, so you might want to make it more challenging by raising one leg and pushing off one leg at a time. You can also put some weight on your lower ab area and hold the weight steady with your hand.
Full Bridge
The full bridge is a much more challenging variation of the glute bridge. This workout will work your arms, abs, and glutes all at once. You’ll need to lay down on your back with your feet planted just beneath your butt to perform a full bridge. Then, bend your knees till they point to the ceiling. Place your hands in the area next to your shoulders, and make your fingertips point up and away from your body. You might need to sit up to get your hands in the right position.
Once your hands are planted flat on the mat and your feet are planted on the bottom of the mat, raise your butt off the floor until only your feet and hands are on the mat. It’s best to push up from your feet and hands while raising your hips to get in the correct position.
This workout requires a decent amount of wrist and shoulder mobility and some arm strength, so you may not be able to do this workout at the beginning of your fitness journey, but as you get stronger, you might be able to do this. This workout is highly effective in strengthening your legs, glutes, and shoulders and stretching out your abs and upper body. Hold the position for 30 to 60 seconds but no longer than 2 to 3 minutes to avoid blood rushing to your head. A full bridge is a great finishing workout.
Rear Leg Lifts
Rear leg lifts are very challenging, and you can perform them anywhere are long as you have a mat to kneel on. You’ll need to kneel on your hands and knees and keep your arms straight below you to do rear leg lifts, but don’t lock your elbows. Then, lift one leg off the floor and push that foot toward the ceiling. You can bring the leg back down slowly in a controlled manner and alternate which leg you push into the air.
This workout might be more difficult at first, but the more you practice it, the easier it will get. You can get cramps during it, and if you do, you should pause for a moment or two before continuing your workout. Make sure you stretch properly afterward to reap more benefits.
If you want this workout to get more challenging, you can add some ankle weights or pinch a small dumbbell between your calf and hamstring.
Side-Lying Leg Lifts
To perform side-lying leg lifts, you’ll need a mat to lay on your side. You should use extra padding on the floor if you don’t have a mat since this can hurt your joints if you’re performing this exercise on a hard surface. Once you lay on your side, make sure everything is in line with each other, your ears, shoulders, knees, and ankles should be right on top of each other to make sure you aren’t leaning too far forward or backward. Then, you can lift one leg up and bring it almost all the way down very slowly before raising it up again. When you do this workout, you need to work out one side for ten or so repetitions before switching sides to work out your other leg. It’s a good idea to put one of your arms under your head to make it more comfortable and place your other arm on the floor in front of your hips to prevent yourself from leaning forward while you work out.
This workout is great for hitting smaller muscles in the legs as well as all of the glutes. You should repeat it for as many repetitions as you’d like and add ankle weights if you want to increase its difficulty.
Fire Hydrants
The fire hydrant workout begins in a kneeling position, just like rear leg lifts do. You’ll need to put your hands and knees on a comfortable surface like a yoga mat. Then, you should raise the leg to the side and keep it at a 90-degree bend so your calf and thigh are perpendicular to each other. After your leg is raised, you’ll need to rotate your leg outwards from the hip. Then, slowly let your leg fall back down to its starting position. Alternate which legs you move into the air and do this for as many repetitions as you desire. If you’re a more visual learner, just imagine a dog lifting its leg to pee on a fire hydrant. That’s exactly what you’re doing here.
This workout is great at opening up the hips and improving your mobility. Also, this workout is excellent at strengthening the glutes and some smaller muscles in the legs that can be tough to target in most workouts.
Flutter Kicks
Flutter kicks are excellent workouts for the abs and glutes. If you’re working on getting a slim figure with a great butt, then these workouts are a must for your routine.
You’ll need a yoga mat to lay down on to perform flutter kicks. Lay your back on the floor with your legs extended and place your arms at your sides with your palms facing upwards. Make sure you keep your head down on the mat for this workout, or you might accidentally injure yourself when you do this workout.
Raise your legs off the ground to about a 45-degree angle, or between 6 and 12 inches off the ground. The closer your legs remain to the ground, the more challenging this workout will be on your abs. You’ll then drop one leg closer to the ground and quickly alternate which leg is closer to the ground and which is up in the air. It should look like you’re kicking in the air.
Try to hold this position for as long as you can, but aim to do this for 30 seconds if you’re a beginner. It’s okay if you can’t do this workout for that long. It’s just a general time stamp to aim for but keep track of your personal record so you can work on beating it the next time you try this workout. We all start somewhere, and tracking your progress will be such a great motivator!
How Often Should You Do These Workouts?
You should do these workouts regularly if you want to achieve the best butt possible. It would be best to prepare a workout routine consisting of about three different sets of two to three butt exercises to build the behind you want. Making these workouts challenging is important, so you can add weights to them, or increase their repetitions, so you have to do 12 to 15 of these. More repetitions will work more endurance than growing your muscle mass faster.
It’s important to work consistently but allow yourself to increase the challenge level in your workouts slowly. Over time, you can increase sets, repetitions, weights, challenging variations, or slow your workouts down.
Even if you only care about getting your butt muscles popping, it’s important not to neglect the rest of your body, this way, you look balanced and strengthen more of your body. Workouts like deadlifts are great at providing full-body fitness while also especially working that peach cake you got going on.
Rest days are essential. Overworking your glutes will cause trouble and make it harder for you to gain muscle faster. It may seem counterproductive, but allowing your glutes to rest is vital to ensuring they grow fast without injuring yourself.
The Perfect Ass is a Few Booty Exercises Away
The gluteal muscles are popular targets in lower body workout routines. You can work so many muscles in regular exercise routines, or you can practice an isolation exercise to really target specific areas in your lower body.
When working on getting the perfect ass, you should focus on things like your hip flexors, gluteus minimus, and gluteus maximus. Working these muscles through regular exercises can help you develop lean muscle mass and burn body fat in these areas. The key to this muscle growth is consistency and strength training. Practicing the right butt workout routine can be fun and easy. All you have to do is stay motivated, positive, and patient, and you’ll see the results of your hard work in no time. Get ready for some belfies!
