Why do you need big glutes and why should you train them?
Glutes are an extremely important body part and muscle you should definitely pay attention to. They are crucial for athletic performance, speed, correct posture and overall health. They are also one of the most attractive body parts for both men and women and big glutes will always turn its owner into a center of attention, wherever he is. Big round glutes look great in business pants, sweatpants, shorts, jeans and, of course, underwear.
As with any other body part, the overall development will depend on your genetics. While some guys have a great genetic predisposition and they can grow powerful big backside just from sprints, squats, deadlifts, leg presses, and other leg focused exercises, others will have to take a more sophisticated approach to their glute training if they want to achieve big and strong bubble glutes.
So how should you train your glutes?
First, you need to understand that to fully develop glutes, you need to include three types of exercises. What are these three types?
Stretchers
Stretchers use muscle damage as primary driver for muscle growth. This occurs when the muscle is stretched. A typical example is squat. While you should be activating the glutes throughout the whole movement, the phase of the squat when you should feel the biggest activation is when squatting below parallel, in the lower portion of the movement.
What are some examples of stretchers?
Bulgarian split squat
Lunge
Any squat variation
Romanian deadlift
Sumo deadlift
Conventional deadlift
With stretchers, it is recommended to train with a full range of motion, that means no partial squats, but rather below parallel squats, that really stretch the glutes.
How often should you be doing these exercises? Ideal recovery time for stretchers is 72 hours, so if you were squatting heavy on Monday afternoon, ideally you would squat again on Thursday afternoon. The rest period of 2 days will allow for full recovery. Of course, you can experiment with just one rest day, and it might work. If your squats on Monday were rather light, then the damage on the muscle probably wasn't as significant and you can do squats again on Wednesday.
Activators
Activators use mechanical tension as the primary driver for muscle growth. Activators are exercises that activate the most in the contracted portion of the movement when the muscle fibers are shortened.
Typically, you can think of exercises such as
Barbell hip thrust
Cable pull through
Back extensions
Cable kick back
Standing cable hip abduction
How often should you be doing these? These exercises require less time for recovery than stretchers and it is a good idea to do these every other day, for optimal glute development. For instance, if you did Hip thrusts on Monday afternoon, you should do them or other activators on Wednesday afternoon again.
Pumpers
Pumpers use metabolic stress as the primary driver for muscle growth. Pumpers are exercises that don't activate glutes as much as Stretchers and Activators, on the other hand, they produce blood flow into the area (the “burn”), which can help with muscle growth. It is also smart to include them in your training if you struggle with feeling your glutes. Do them before training to pre-activate the area.
Examples of pumpers are
Glute bridges
Band side walk
Lying band hip abduction
Band side-lying clam
Band sumo walk
Band seated hip abduction
Band hip-hinge abduction
Frog pumps
The good thing about pumpers is that they don't require so much time for recovery and therefore you can do them every single day. You don't even need any special equipment. As you can see, many of the exercises are done with a band, and this is useful, but doing them just with bodyweight will do the trick too, you will just need to do more reps. You can include these in your rest days and do them at home. They will not take more 5-10 minutes.
What glute angles should you focus on?
Your glutes are composed of Glute max, med, and min. While the glute max is the biggest and strongest muscle and it is involved in every glute exercise, it is also a good idea to isolate glute med and min to give more side shape to your backside. Therefore, in every glute training include some of the lateral focused exercises. These are
Abductions (lying, band seated, cable, machine)
Band side lying clam
Bulgarian split squat
Single leg deadlift
Step Ups
Lunges
Band sumo walk
What weight should you use?
So far, we have seen that in order to fully develop the glutes, we need to include different types of exercises and hit the muscle from different angles. Another point to keep in mind is the intensity or the weight to use. If we train only with heavy weights, then we might miss a potential progress from using lower weights, and the other way around. So, use all rep ranges with different intensities.
Heavy sets of 5-8 reps are ideal for stretchers
Medium-heavy sets of 6-12 reps are ideal for activators, although you should experiment with both high rep and lower rep ranges in exercises like hip thrusts
Light sets of 12-20 reps are ideal for pumpers
What should your nutrition look like?
If you want to grow your glutes, you need to pay attention to your nutrition. Two important points to keep in mind are:
You should be in caloric surplus every day
You should consume enough protein every day
You don’t have to focus too much on your exact caloric consumption. Your scale, mirror and ideally also tape measure will tell you if your glutes are growing or not. If not, eat more. However, to have a number for the beginning, a common way to calculate your energy needs is multiplying your weight in lbs by 16. So for a 200 lbs guy, it would be 16x200 = 3,200 kcal per day. This should cover your basic needs for energy. If you try to bulk up, we need to add 20% surplus, so in the example above, we would add 3,200 kcal x 0.20 = 640. So the total bulking energy needs will be 3,840 kcal.
Another (easier) option is to use one of many calculators online, such as this one.
Use the calculator also to figure out your macros. It is crucial to cunsume enough protein which is around 2.5 g of protein per kg of bodyweight. The rest of the calories can be from carb and fat sources.
Once you know your caloric needs and your macros, track all your meals using apps such as Myfitnesspal to see, if you are hitting your goals.
How should you recover to grow powerful glutes?
Glutes are the largest muscle on your body and if you want to grow them, you need to allow them proper recovery. That means 7-9 hours of quality sleep time every night, and using some other recovery techniques at least from time to time. Foam rolling, massages, sauna, cold therapy, yoga or stretching can all be helpful.
How do you track your progress?
How do you know if your efforts of growing your glutes are successful or not? If you grow fast, you will quickly notice that your pants fit tighter around the area. However, the changes might not be so noticeable, but you still want to track them to stay motivated
.
Apart from tracking your weight (remember that to grow, you need to be in caloric surplus which will make you gain weight), and observing the gains in a mirror, you should also track the circumference of your hips. When you do that, keep in mind the following points:
Always measure in the same way - Always measure either without any clothes or with light underwear. Other types of clothing will turn the results inaccurate.
Measure in the widest point - Put the tape on the widest (thickest) part of your glutes, which should be right in the middle. Then wrap the tape around, and get the measurement. The tape should be horizontal, not twisted in any way.
Measure at least once a week and track the progress (using an app or on paper).
Based on the results, determine what should be the next steps. If you see that the measurements stagnate for over two weeks, add calories and protein. If the numbers are increasing, then you are doing everything right and you are on the best way to even bigger, stronger and more powerful glutes!
So what to do now?
Start training your glutes using the advices above and watch them grow! If you are not sure how the training could look like excatly, download this ebook, it includes this article plus a training plan showing exactly how it looks over 7 seven days.
What is your experience?
What is your experience with growing glutes? Are you genetically gifted, or do your glutes refuse to grow whatever you try? What worked for you and what did not? Do you want to grow your glutes even more or are you happy with their size?