How to get strong big glutes?

Gluteal muscles a.k.a. “ass”, “butt” or “glutes“ are a muscle group that make up the buttock area.
Glutes are on of the strongest and largest muscle groups in you body.
It consists of three muscles: Gluteus Maximus, Gluteus Medius and Gluteus Minimus.
The role of glutes is not just to look juicy but to enable you to perform movements such as lifting, rotating or extending legs.
These three muscles always work together and it’s important to show them some love in a gym.
Let’s see how to get the strongest and roundest and firmest and… you got the point!

What do glutes do?

Modern problems

In this day and age, most of our jobs and most of our free time is spent in front of a display in seated position!
We use a car for grocery shopping because it’s 5 minutes walk.
Because of our lifestyle, we forget how to utilise our glutes.
Even people who are active do not know how to activate glutes when supposed to which leads to compensation with other lower body and back muscles.
The end result is a bad posture, tight hips, knee pain, lower back pain and as time goes by you get messed up, both aesthetically and physically.

Let’s fix those glutes

First and foremost, glutes are not a „female“ muscle group, no matter what anyone says.
Although it certainly is an eye grabbing visual experience, vice versa applies as well. Woman love nice man butt, but if that’s not enough (impossible), strong glutes make you strong, fast, agile and all of that good stuff.
Besides, look at Gorillas.. they have a strong big background and you don’t play with them. Bigger the glutes bigger the alpha.

Since this is fitness related channel, we will not talk about home exercises one should do, but what all the gym going bros and gals should do.
Although to be fair, almost all of these exercises can be done at home, but it would be much more satisfying if we actually influence some of you to start training and improve your life!

There is one very important condition to consider before you even think of engaging in these exercises.
You need to know how to activate your glutes. How to squeeze them and let go at will.
I will give you a small idea of what I mean although it is as silly as it gets.
Imagine you put insufficiently hard egg between your butt cheeks so it does not break when you are relaxed. How would you use your glutes to break it?
You squeeze those cheeks!

When performing these exercises, always squeeze your glutes on the way up.

Exercises

There might be better choices for pure glutes builder, but we want to get the most out of our time. So there will be a lot of compound movements where bigger glutes are most welcome side effect.

Squats

Let’s introduce a king of exercises.
Squat is the most demanding of all basic movements, both physically and mentally, but reward is huge. It literally builds your entire body in some shape or form. It is mostly legs and glute mass builder, but it also works on calves, hamstrings, hip flexors, core stabilisation, lower back, neck.
Grinding through the set will make you mentally though and that is important muscle to build as well.
Muscle building should be uncomfortable and hard so don’t chicken out!

Chest up, keep neutral spine and tight core, contract scapula, look straight, toes 45 degrees wide and push with your heel not toes. Go slowly down with your knees in toe direction and explode on the way up!

IMPORTANT:  Use your glutes on the way up. Your priority is not just to get up, but to push your hips as if they are being pulled. And squeeze the glutes!
Thats when your glutes engage in a movement.

Romanian and Stiff Leg Deadlift

Those two movements are almost identical hip hinge movements.
Stiff Leg Deadlift starts with barbell on the floor and ends with barbell on the floor, while Romanian Deadlift starts from standing position and weight never touches the floor.
Another difference is that Romanian Deadlifts allow more knee bending than Stiff Leg Deadlift, hence the name.
The more time you spend in stretched position (eccentric part of the movement) bigger the stimulus.

Both of those movements build same muscles, but with different emphasis. Primary engaged muscles are Hamstrings, lower back, hips and glutes but forearms, calves and quads are impacted as well.

RDL works provides higher stimulus on hips, glutes, hamstrings and forearms while lower back and hamstrings are more emphasised in Stiff Leg Deadlift .
As a glute builder small advantage goes to RDL.

It is very important to lift from your hips in case of both movements and remember to squeeze your glutes on way up.

Good Mornings

Good mornings is a hip hinge movement where the barbell is placed on the back.
Start by pushing the hips back, as if your butt is being pulled, slowly. As you are pushing back you will feel stretch on glutes and hamstrings.
As we already stated, that is good! More time under stretch equals more growth stimulus.

Maintain neutral torso at all times, you will get better stretch and will also train the core and spinal erectors.
When you can not push back anymore, push your hips through until you arrive to starting position.
I feel like I said this before, but.. squeeze your glutes!
Start with small weight and gradually progress! Technique is extremely important with this exercise.

Good Mornings target the posterior chain or the muscles along the backside of the body. The primary muscles worked are hamstrings, spinal erectors, gluteus and core muscles 

Lunges

Lunges hit all major lower body muscles: quads, hamstrings, calves and glutes.
Since there is an involvement of balancing act core and back are also stimulated.

There are multiple ways to hold weight in this movement but we will cover two approaches: holding barbell on the back and holding two dumbbels.

One is not more correct than the other but keeping balance is easier with dumbbells so it is more beginner friendly. It is not a bad idea to milk dumbbell lunges as long as you get additional work on your grip strength and there is a heavy stretch on your entire back (mostly upper back and traps).

When dumbbells are too heavy or you are so strong that those dumbbells are drag, you can switch to barbell.

You should always keep your core tight, neutral spine and chest up. Step one leg forward so you make 90 degree angle with bent front leg.
It is ok to lean forward a little bit, but not more than that. If you lean forward too much your back are taking part of the load which we do not want.

Bro tip: if you go higher than 90 degrees, there will be more stretch on more glutes which is good as we already know.

Conclusion

Now that you got familiar with our exercise selection don’t get mad because we did not mention hip thrusts or other mainstream exercises.
We understand that there are exercises which target mostly glutes, but if you utilise movements we mentioned, you will cover entire lower body and spare so much time.
How often should you work on your glutes? If your glutes are still very sore from previous workout, than it is not a time. A little sore. You can probably work on them again. With this exercises, you will cover entire lower body and you can get at least 6 sets of hip hinge and 6 sets of squats through the week you will be fine.
As you get stronger and get used to workload slowly add more sets, weight or both.
So think no further, incorporate these movements into your workout and grab your pair of “Gorilla Glutes”.