If you want to get bigger glutes, I’ve got your back.
One might even say I’ve got your backside!
Even if you don’t naturally have a lot of “junk in the trunk” so to say, you can grow a bigger and rounder butt with the right exercises and program. I’ll lay out all the exercises you need if you want to know how to get bigger glutes now and how to progress them.
You’ll learn how to grow your glutes in the fastest, most efficient way possible. At the end of the article, I’ll give you a workout program that will put everything into a nice neat plan that you can start doing today.
But please, please, please do not just skip to the workout!
It’s important that you read the entire article so you know the why behind getting a bigger… behind.
Let’s get started.
What that booty do?
Before we can get to the best exercises and how to program them, we have to know what the glute muscles are and what they do!
Your glutes are really three different muscles:
Your gluteus maximus, or glute max for short, is the biggest muscle in your body and it’s what is going to grow your booty the most.
Exercises that extend your hip are going to work your glute max.
When you bend over and then stand back up, like during a barbell Romanian deadlift, you are extending your hips.
The gluteus medius and gluteus minimus are smaller muscles that help stabilize your hips and contribute to something called hip abduction.
Hip abduction is where you move one leg away from your body, like during a glute kickback.
When you’re balancing on one leg, these muscles will also be active because they are working to keep you from falling over.
Even though these muscles are part of your glutes, you’re going to see the best results by focusing on exercises that extend your hips and work your glute max.
A common mistake people make when trying to grow their glutes is doing a ton of abduction exercises for these smaller muscles while neglecting compound exercises that work your glute max.
Using a few exercises that work abduction is fine, but just know that you don’t need to be doing a million different abduction exercises to grow your glutes.
You’ll also still be working the gluteus medius and minimus during single leg exercises where you need to balance on one leg.
The best exercises to grow your glutes
If your goal is to grow a particular muscle, you’re going to want to use a few different exercises, rather than just one.
The reason is that different exercises work muscles in different ways.
You can split exercises for the same muscle groups into two categories: lengthened position and shortened position exercises.
When you work a muscle in the lengthened position, the exercise is going to be the most difficult when you are at the bottom of the exercise, when the muscle is fully stretched.
Think about that barbell Romanian deadlift again. At the bottom of the exercise, when the barbell is right below your knees, your glute muscles are fully stretched out. This is where the exercise is the hardest.
Shortened position exercises are the most difficult when your muscles are in the shortened, or contracted, position.
Take a barbell glute bridge for example. The most difficult part of the exercise is at the top, when your muscles are in their shortest position.
Using a combination of lengthened and shortened exercises is going to get you the best results, because you’ll be challenging your muscles through different ranges of motion.
Lengthened position exercises
Barbell deadlifts
Romanian deadlifts
Single leg Romanian deadlifts
Barbell squats
Leg press
Bulgarian split squats
Dumbbell lunges
Shortened position exercises
Barbell glute bridge
Single leg hip thrusts
45 degree hyperextensions
Cable glute kickbacks
How to grow your glutes
So you know what exercises you should be doing.. Now what?
You need a plan in order to get bigger glutes. Just going to the gym and doing the exercises you like isn’t going to cut it!
You probably need to be in a calorie surplus..
If you want to grow your glutes, you’re probably going to need to be in a calorie surplus.
This means that you’re going to have to eat more calories than you need to maintain your body weight.
Unless you’re very overweight, you’ve taken a long time off from working out, or you’re a complete beginner in the gym, you need to eat more calories than your body burns to build bigger glutes.
These extra calories are going to go towards building muscle.
To find out how many calories you need to build muscle, you can use my calorie calculator below.
Cal’s Calorie Calculator
The three mechanisms of hypertrophy
In order for your body to build muscle, you need to give it a really good reason! Your body generally wants to stay where it is.
There are three mechanisms that cause muscle growth, and your workouts should include all three of them.
Mechanical tension
Mechanical tension is a type of pulling force that your muscles experience when they are being stretched under load.
This type of tension really only happens when you are lifting weights that challenge your muscles.
To create mechanical tension, you need to be lifting close to failure!
You should not have more than 1-3 repetitions left in the tank when you finish an exercise if your goal is to build muscle.
Mechanical tension is the most important aspect of building muscle. If you want to grow your glutes, you need to be lifting weights that are very challenging.
This doesn’t mean you should only be lifting heavy weights though. You can create mechanical tension in your muscles using heavier weights and lighter weights, as long as you are lifting close to failure.
Metabolic stress
When you lift lighter weights for very high reps, you will be creating metabolic stress in your muscles.
Metabolic stress is when your muscle builds up metabolites. Metabolites are the byproducts, or waste, of producing energy.
You’ll know you’ve created metabolic stress in your muscles when you feel that burning sensation from working out.
This burning sensation really only occurs when you lift lighter weights for high reps.
Muscle damage
You probably know that when you start a new workout routine, you get really sore a few days afterwards.
This soreness is caused by microtears in your muscle fibers, or muscle damage.
It used to be thought that muscle damage was a really important part of the muscle building process, but it turns out that it might not matter all that much.
What that means for you is that you don’t need to be so sore after your workouts that you can’t walk the next day!
However, if you never get sore from your workouts, you might need to start training a little bit harder in order to see results.
Sets and reps to grow your glutes
You can build muscle doing anywhere from 3 reps all the way up to 20-30 reps.
With that being said, most of your exercises should be done in the 6-12 rep range.
Doing your exercises in this rep range will allow you to use a heavy enough weight to create mechanical tension, but not so heavy that you won’t be able to recover from your workouts.
Think about it this way. Imagine you had to do every exercise for heavy sets of three reps. You’d be pretty beat up after a few weeks!
Likewise, if you did every exercise for 20-30 reps, it’s going to be hard to create enough mechanical tension to grow your muscles.
This is another reason you should include some variety in your workout programs. If you’re only doing one or two exercises for your glutes, you’re going to be leaving results on the table.
If you want to build muscle, it appears there is a total amount of sets you need to be doing each week.
Unfortunately, you can’t just do one set of hip thrusts per week and expect to grow your glutes!
You should be getting 10-20 hard sets per muscle per week to see booty building progress.
Those sets are going to be divided up over a few different exercises, to make sure you are working your glutes through their entire range of motion.
Make sure you’re doing this in your workouts!
You can do everything I’ve written about in this article so far, but you won’t see any progress if you’re not doing this in your workouts..
Each week, you need to be trying to improve upon last week’s workouts.
You need to be trying to lift more weight, more repetitions, or a combination of the two.
This is something called progressive overload, and it’s the most important part of building muscle and getting stronger!
Remember that you need to give your body a really good reason to build muscle.
If you keep doing the same workouts and using the same weight for longer than a few weeks, you aren’t going to see any progress!
I have all my clients track their workout progress each week. They keep track of their sets, reps and even notes like how they were feeling that day.
Slowly increasing your performance each workout is what is going to tell your body that it needs to build muscle.
The “Baby got back” program
This is a 3 or 4 day template that you can use to build your glutes.
Days 1 and 3 are lower body workouts that focus on building bigger glutes.
Days 2 and 4 are blank upper body workouts. You would simply plug in upper body workouts on these days. If you only want to train 3 days per week, you would do the two lower body days and just do one upper body workout.
Day 1 (Lower Body)
3 sets of 6 reps
*Rest 3-5 minutes between sets
2) Dumbbell Bulgarian split squats
3 sets of 8 reps each leg
*Rest 2-3 minutes between sets
50 total reps each leg in as few sets as possible
*Rest as needed!
4A) Hollow holds
3 sets of 30 seconds
4B) Side planks
3 sets of 15 seconds each side
*Rest 1 minute each side
Day 2 (Upper Body)
*Insert your upper body workout of choice here*
Day 3 (Lower Body)
3 sets of 8-10 reps
*Rest 3-5 minutes between sets
2) Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts
3 sets of 10 reps
*Rest 2-3 minutes between sets
3) Walking lunges (use bodyweight ONLY!)
Perform as many reps as possible in 10 minutes.
*Rest as needed!
3 sets of 30 seconds
4B) Suitcase carries
3 sets of 20yds each side
*Rest 1 minute each side
Day 4 (Upper Body)
*Insert your upper body workout of choice here*
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Wrapping up: How To Get Bigger Glutes
There you have it.
You should have all you need to build a set of glutes that will be difficult to find jeans for.
Remember that as long as you are progressively overloading your exercises, and striving to get stronger each week, you’ll make progress.
Don’t just jump from one glute workout you found on the internet to the next. Stick with the workout above for at least a few weeks before changing anything.
Want me to take care of everything for you and take all the guesswork out of your workouts and nutrition? You can apply for coaching to see if we’d be a good fit for each other.
If you have any questions, leave them below!