How to grow the booty!

Danielle de Haas
Jan 25, 2017
2 min read

How to grow the booty!

Having a big, round, firm booty is the craze at the moment. So, I thought I’d share with you some of my tips and tricks to growing your glutes.

Firstly, a little info about your 'booty'... Your 'booty' is a muscle containing the glutei minimus, medius and maximus. The maximus, most identifiable due to its size, is the largest muscle in your body. The prime action of the glute maximus is hip extension - pushing your leg backwards in a running stride. The glute medius mainly helps stabilise the hip by stopping the opposite hip from dropping or knees from falling inwards.

The craze is all about growing bigger glutes for appearance, however having strong glutes also comes with other benefits too. You gain the ability to generate more power in just about every movement, including running, squatting and jumping. As well as producing more power, the hip muscles work to stabilise your pelvis and trunk especially when you’re standing on one leg. Having strong glutes will also assist in averting unnecessary movement in your lower back and knees, therefore reducing injury to those areas.

So, lets get on to the tips..

DIET

Proper diet is an integral component of building your glutes. The correct diet can lead to improvements in your workout performance and therefore, muscle gain in the glutes. You need the correct balance for YOU - between protein, carbohydrates and fats. NB: Having processed foods will only store fat throughout your body.

EXERCISE

Before you get in to any weight training – it is beneficial to activate your glutes through some warm up movements. These are all to be performed with body weight or a resistance band. Some examples include; glute bridge, clamshell and superman.

When performing weighted exercises, follow these two tips at all times for glute activation.

Number 1: Always move from the hips. For example, when you squat, don’t let the weight pull you down, instead, consciously push your hips back whilst keeping your chest high. This will help emphasise hip flexion and will make you use your hips more.

Number 2: Incorporate one-legged or asymmetrical exercises. These exercises will challenge your stability and develop strength in the whole leg. These exercises will target all of your hip muscles.

1. Deadlifts

Conventional, Sumo or Stiff-Legged, toes pointed slightly outwards. Squeeze glutes at the top of the movement.

2. Squats

Toes pointed slightly outwards, shoulder-width apart.

Depth is key! If you are struggling with depth; stop with the ego lifting. Take some weight off and get low. Squatting above parallel or barely below puts most of the emphasis on your quads. Squatting below will target your glutes and hamstrings.

3. Lunges

Lunge low and make sure your knee never goes past your toes.

4. Hip thrusts

Hip thrusts activate and build the upper glutes. Make sure to squeeze your glutes at the top.

5.Bulgarian split squats

The further you place your front leg in front of you, the more emphasis you put on your glutes.

6. Swiss ball hip raise and leg curl

7. Kettlebell swings

8. Abduction/Adduction machine

Don’t forget to continuously squeeze your glutes throughout your workout!