Want Attractive Butt? Do these 3 intense Glute Exercises

If I asked any beginner or intermediate gym going person which is the biggest muscle of human body?

Most of them will say Quadriceps!

Well, to be honest, It's not true.

The biggest muscle in our body is gluteus maximus, which is the part of the glute muscle.

If you want to have bigger body, it is very important for you to train all big muscle in your body.

Most of the time people tried to train their butt but they failed because of the complexity of the muscles.

So, in this article we're going to see 3 intense glute exercises which make your butt more attractive and bigger than ever before.

I'm afraid to tell you that, I'll not explain how to do exercise for the glutes because there are already a lot of How to guide for the exercises on the internet.

Bonus: I have included printable pdf version of Glutes workout along with the glute's super- sets.

Anatomy of Glutes

Whenever I start any exercises article, I started it with the anatomy of that muscles.

Most people failed in developing their body parts after the years and years of training because they don't know the anatomy of particular muscle.

If you know, you'll do only those exercises which you needed to do. NO extra exercises.

So, Glutes have total 3 main muscles.

1. Gluteus Maximus(G-max)
2. Gluteus Medius(G-med)
3. Gluteus Minimus(G-min)

Gluteus Maximus is the biggest muscle in your butt. So if you want to have bigger butty then do more exercises for it.

Its origin is the posterior line of the upper ilium, the posterior surface of the lower sacrum, and the side of the coccyx.

Function of Gluteus Maximus

The function of G-max is primarily upper leg extension, such as moving the upper leg backward as in rising from a squat position. 

The same with bent-leg dead-lifting, the rear-leg drive in sprinting, and simply extending the thigh backward in any hip extension exercise (i.e., glute press).

Gluteus Medius is located under the gluteus maximus and connects the ilium (hip bone) to the side of the upper femur. 

It helps you externally rotate your leg when it’s extended behind you, and internally rotate your hip when your leg is flexed in front of you. 

Together with the gluteus minimus, this muscle abducts the hip (moves it outward). If you want to move side then this muscle is the "Key" muscle.

Gluteus Minimus, a smaller muscle located under the gluteus medius, the minimus helps you abduct, flex, and internally rotate the hip. 

You’ll use this muscle when you make circular movements with your thigh.

The G-med and G-min perform similar functions, depending on the position of the knee and hip joints. 

With the knee extended, they abduct the thigh (out to the side away from the opposite leg). 

When running, they stabilise the leg during the single-support phase. With the hips flexed, they internally rotate the thigh. With the hips extended, they externally rotate the thigh.

Why it is so Difficult to have Bigger Glutes?

There are many theories and myths around the glutes training that you should do this and this amount of reps, set and what not? to develop attractive butt.

Here are the reason why you're not able to develop your glutes.

1. Most people will recommend you to do more squats, dead-lifts and lunges to develop glutes. In fact, these people spent years and years in training to strong in these exercises.

Just imagine, most power-lifters do these main three compound exercises most of the time then why they don't have bigger and well-developed butt?

To be honest, three three exercises will help you to make your glutes sore not strengthening it. 

These exercises target mostly the quads and erector spinae. Even box squatting, walking lunges, and sumo dead-lifts don't activate much glutes.

2. Lack in exercise progression: Most people are unable to develop their body part as they wanted to because of the above reason.

Most of the people don't know how to do progress in particular exercise but for the glutes, they don't have any idea. That's why, Bret Contreras aka "The Glute Guy" Suggests four phase for having bigger and rounded butt.

Phase 1: Hip Flexor Flexibility and Glute Activation

Phase 2: Glute Hypertrophy

Phase 3: Glute Strength

Phase 4: Glute Power and Speed

It is important for you to start from the first phase if you don't know where your belong.

IF you're a beginner then this phases are perfect for you for the progression.

3. Glutes Contain Fast Twitch Muscle fiber so trained it with heavy weights.

Scientists have done two studies on the fiber type percentage of your glutes. One study found 52% slow twitch vs 48% fast twitch, while the other found 68% slow twitch and 32% fast twitch.

In other words, your glutes are NOT primarily a fast twitch muscle.

That means you shouldn’t just focus on high weight / low rep exercises when training them – you should do a wide range of exercises for them. 

4. Trained Your Glutes once per week

Glutes are the biggest muscles in your body. so you should trained them hard at-least 3x per week.

Don’t worry about training your glutes multiple times a week. You won’t be destroying your efficiency, you’ll be increasing it.

The Best Glutes Exercises

Like any other body parts, there are many exercises you can do for glutes for beginner,intermediate and advanced version.

You can also build glutes with body-weight and resistance bands, if you can't have access to gym.

But if you have, do these 3 intense exercise to target all of the muscles in the Glutes.

Exercise 1: Target Gluteus Maximus

Gluteus Maximus connects with lot of upper and especially lower body muscles. so you can do variety of exercises to target it.

So, which exercises you should include to target Gluteus Maximus?

EMG amplitude of gluteus maximus is lower in combined hip extension and Knee extension movements than in isolated hip extension movements.

The best exercise to target gluteus maximus likely involve hip extension not the combined version of hip and knee extension.

Barbell Hip trust is the best exercise for this type of movement, in fact, this study shows that EMG amplitude of gluteus maximus in barbell hip trust is much greater than barbell back squats.

Many people do different variations barbell hip trust exercises to get most out of it, however, one study shows that among hip trust variations standard barbell hip trust produce more mean and peak activation.

Studies have found that antero-posterior exercises like quadruped hip extension, prone hip extension,  front plank with hip extension, and gluteal squeeze produce more gluteus maximus EMG amplitude than any other exercises. 

If you want to know how to do it, which are the variations you can do for more g-max development check this link.

Exercise 2: Target Gluteus Medius

Gluteus medius is most untrained muscle by most of the people, which leads to increased risk of injury chances in the athletes.

One way or another, we all always train gluteus maximus but in the gluteus medius case, we almost forget to train it.

Because of injury chance is more in gluteus medius than any other glutes muscles, most exercises which are passed through EMG analysis is rehabilitation.

However, these exercises are also important in terms of lifting heavy resistance based gluteus medius exercises.

One study compared all the lower body exercises to check the highest activation of gluteus medius muscles.

They found that G-med activation during complex, multi-joint exercises is relatively low. However, they also discover the exercises which provide the high and very high level of gluteus medius activation. Check out below table for the exercises. 

                                        Exercise 3: Target Gluteus Minimus

Gluteus minimus is the mini version of gluteus medius and it is also smallest and deepest gluteul muscle.

Like gluteus medius, we never trained this muscle. For well development of any muscle, it is very important for us to train all of the head of any muscles.

Gluteus Minimus is also called as glute min, hips or hip abductor.

Because G_Med and G_min perform similar function, most of the time when you train G_med, you will also target G-min.

So, you should include those exercises which include thigh abduction, thigh internal and external rotation in order to hit both of these muscles.

Thigh Abducting Exercises

• Seated hip abduction machine
• Multi-hip machine thigh abduction
• Low pulley thigh abduction

Thigh Internal/External Rotation Exercises

• Lying and Seated Hip Internal Rotation
• Standing Cable External Rotation

Sample 6 Week Glute Training Workout

SET	EXERCISE	Week	REPETITIONS	SETS	REST
1	Glute Ham Raise	1-2	12-15	3-5	2-3
		3-4	10-12
		5-6	6-8
2	Band Hip Thrusts	1-2	15-18
		3-4	12-15
		5-6	8-10
3	Bulgarian split squats	1-2	12-15
		3-4	10-12
		5-6	6-8
4	Side Lying Hip Abduction	1-2	10-12	3-5	1-2
		3-4	12-14
		5-6	14-18
5	Low pulley thigh abduction	1-2	12-15
		3-4	10-12
		5-6	6-8
6	Standing Cable External Rotation	1-2	12-15
		3-4	10-12
		5-6	6-8

   

This is the sample 6 week glute training workout, follow this and you'll definitely see some decent changes in your glutes.

You can also change exercises with different variations, if you found it easy after 4 weeks.

if you want to download this as a pdf file format click here. In PDF, I also Include the super-sets for the glute training which you can include in this workout to increase intensity of it.

Final Thoughts

There are many exercises and variations you can include in your glutes workout in order to maximise your gains. This is just a small list of it, feel free to change the exercise, if you found it easy or difficult.

I hope, you like these 3 intense glute exercises for having an attractive and well-developed butt.

If you've amazing butt or having a struggle in developing it, let me know in the comment section. I would love to hear from you.