The 4 BEST Glute Exercises For A Nicer Butt (GYM OR HOME!) Ft. Bret Contreras

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Is home to a powerful group of muscles that play a key role in many movements. And of course, they just look good when they're well developed on both men and women. But they're also a muscle group that many tend to struggle with developing and strengthening. This can not only potentially lead to problems and imbalances elsewhere in the body, but can also lead to the dreaded pancake butt. To fix this and to maximize your glutes development, you need to first realize that they are designed to do much more than just squat and deadlift, and that you can experience much more overall growth and strength in the different regions and muscles that make up your glutes by simply implementing the right variety of glutes exercises. Now, although the best exercises for the glutes will vary individually, generally if we want to maximize the glutes development, then you'll want to ensure that you're training them with at least one exercise from each of the following four categories, and this applies to both men and women. The first category is a thrust or bridge exercise to build the upper and lower glutes and will provide the most amount of tension on the glutes when they're in the fully contracted position. The second category is a squat or lunge exercise to emphasize the lower glutes and quads and will provide the most amount of tension on the glutes when they're in a full, fully stretched position. The third category is a hinge or pull exercise to emphasize the lower glutes and the hamstrings. And the fourth category is an abduction movement, which will mostly emphasize the upper glutes by targeting the glute medius, a muscle that's often left neglected. Choosing an exercise in each of these four categories helps provide not only total glutes development, but total leg development as well. Now, as for what the best exercise is for each of these four categories as well, that is going to vary individually, but some options are definitely better than others. And to help us out with choosing what an appropriate exercise would be for each of these four categories, we're going to rely on the expertise of Brett Contreras, AKA the Glute Guy, a well known published researcher and author who's had the pleasure of studying the glutes for over 20 years and was actually the one who initially popularized the hip thrust. Here's what he recommended.

All right, so, Brett, going into the first category of a thrust or bridge movement for the entire gluteal region, what would you suggest is a good exercise to throw on this one?

Well, I would just say just a barbell hip thrust. And I like pausing at the top, too, if possible. So the pause barbell hip thrust would be my exercise of choice for that category.

In terms of execution, what are some cues and form tips that you could give to help maximize glutes activation with this movement?

So. So for the hip thrust, the general form, there's two different strategies. One is the posterior pelvic tilt method, where you're looking forward, you move mostly from the sternum down, and you kind of scoop the weight up and posteriorly rotate the pelvis into lockout. Two thirds of people prefer it that way. One third of people prefer the hinge method, where you think of your head, neck and torso as a solid unit. You're looking forward at the bottom. When you come to the top, you're looking up, you keep it in neutral. In general, you want a horizontal torso at lockout, you want neutral or poster tilted hips, but that happens naturally if you squeeze the glutes hard at lockout. And then you want vertical shins when you're at the top. So, like the knees stacked over the feet, but that happens naturally if you have the foot distance at the right place, not too far away, not too close.

So knees stacked over the heels, and avoid overextending at the top position and just focus on squeezing the glutes as hard as you can at the top.

Main thing is to avoid spinal hyperextension and excessive anterior pelvic tilt at the top.

And for those who are limited in terms of equipment, a suitable alternative that Brett recommends would be the single leg hip thrust with your back resting on a bench, couch or any elevated platform. And for this movement, you actually want to execute it using the hinge method that he previously described, which involves focusing on keeping your head, your neck, and your torso in alignment and neutral as you execute each rep. And then now.

Going into the squat lunge movement for the lower glutes and the quads. What would you recommend here?

If you follow Dr. Brad Schoenfeld's research, he's a hypertrophy expert. He will say that mechanical tension is the most important mechanism for muscle hypertrophy. But then metabolic stress and muscle damage likely play a role. Well, with the hip thrust, you're going to get lots of tension. You'll also get a lot of metabolic stress, but you don't go deep. You don't get a lot of stretch in the glutes with the hip thrust. So this is why the lunge complements the hip thrust very well with the Lunge, you get a stretch in the glutes and it's the hardest at the bottom. Whereas the hip thrust is hardest at lockout, the lunge is hardest in the stretch. And so you'll actually be sore the next day and you'll develop some soreness, which is likely related to muscle damage. So you're getting a little bit of muscle damage. Not too much, though. When you do the lunge, you want to do them in a way that maximizes, like, you know, the glutes, like the effect on the glutes. So instead of. You don't want to take too short of a stride because then you're working more quads. You don't want too long of a stride because then you bring your hamstrings into play more. So I like the tibia angle. The knee travels forward a little bit, but not too much and not too. But doesn't stay vertical. It doesn't go too far forward at the bottom of the movement. Your knee, the front of your knee would be lined up with the. The front of your shoes. That's, to me, the form that maximizes glute activation. And you're going to lean a little bit, but you're only going to lean like, say, 20 degree towards the lead, not 45 degree. You don't lean too much, push through the heel. Don't let the hips shoot up. That's the most important thing. Don't turn into like a good morning where you shoot the hips up and then. So if this is your torso at the bottom, that's how it stays for the first half of the movement. You don't go like that.

For those with limited equipment, then a viable alternative would be something like the deficit reverse lunge, where you elevate your front foot. And it can vary how much you elevate that front foot, just depending on what you have. And then a similar execution in terms of form would be applied to this one, as you did with the walking dumbbell lunge, right?

Yes.

Next we have the hinge or pull movement for the lower glutes and hamstrings. What would be your exercise of choice for this one?

So my choice would be the dumbbell 45 degree hyper. And the reasons why it really leads to very high. When I was doing EMG experiments, I was very surprised how high the glute activation is. But you also get very high hamstring activation because the knees are straight and therefore the hamstrings are in a much better position to produce force compared to when the knees are Bent, as in the case of a bridge or a thrust. But it's also a very safe exercise. Like, anecdotally, you don't get nearly as many injuries with the dumbbell 45 degree hyper as you do, say the deadlift or the good morning. So you can do them frequently, week in and week out and not have to worry.

I've also found that executing this exercise, it seems to be pretty tricky for a lot of individuals. Are there any quick tips that you can provide to help clear this up?

Now, we do this two different ways. Option one is the neutral neutral neutral feet, neutral spine. That's going to work the hamstrings, the glutes and the erectors very well. If you are trying to bias the glutes, you want to round over, fully round over the spine. It's kind of hard for some people to do that. The reason why is now you're not erecting the spine, you're not activating the erectors. They completely shut down. And now that they're shut down, it's more. It's a pure gluten hamstring movement. But you also flare the feet out 45 degrees. Turning the feet out puts the glutes in a better position to activate. They get higher activation that way. And so when people try the round back method, a lot of times it's the first time that they feel the glutes like fatigue, first in a back.

Extension and then as far as alternatives, this one does seem a little bit tricky to replace at home, but would you say something like reverse hyperextensions done on a bench or even a countertop would be suitable?

Yep. And you can do reverse hyper is very controlled. If you have a very tall surface, you can do straight legs. I like doing spread eagle method, which means you'll start narrow at the bottom and end wide at the top. You kind of go like that. If you have a low bench, like, say you just had like a bench press, you can still do them. You'll just bend the legs at the bottom and then kick the legs out at the top.

So lastly, we have the abduction movement to the upper glutes. What exercise would you recommend here and how exactly do we go about performing that?

So I choose the bodyweight sideline hip raise. What's nice about this is it's just body weight. You can do it anywhere. This is going to hit the upper glutes, so when you're at the bottom of the movement, it's going to work the entire glute, like glute max glute medius. But when you're at the lockout, you're more in the frontal plane. So it's going to focus more the lockouts more targeted in the gluteus medius. Now the way you do this, you start off in a side plank, the position kind of like on your elbow, but your, your body's on the ground, your hips are and knees are touching the ground kind of as if you were doing a sideline clam, but on your elbow. Then you push through the grounded knee, push as tall as you can and you're going to have achieve you aim to achieve maximum hip separation. So both legs abduct as much as possible when you're at the top and you kind of drive the hips forward and then on the way down you sink the hips back and, and you're going to feel it in the entire glute. I do three sets of 12 with a nice controlled tempo. I don't try to get three sets of 30 over time. I always just do between 10 and 15 and my glutes are lit up after three sets of these.

Another great alternative for this and a move recommended by Brett are seated banded hip abductions. Here you're going to take a mini band, wrap it around your knees and perform reps of pushing your knees out by using your upper glutes. Perform 1015 reps with your back straight up, 1015 reps with your back bent over, and then another 1015 reps with a lean back. These various positions are just going to help stimulate different fibers in different regions of your glutes. So to sum everything up for you, here are the recommended exercises with reps and sets for each of the four categories. You can add these exercises into your weekly routine as needed, or even perform it as a complete lower body workout on its own. But hopefully you were able to see that in order to speed up your results and train efficiently, then you need to pay close attention to both the exercises that you include in your routine, but then also how you go about implementing and performing them. And for a complete step by step science based program that shows you exactly how to train, eat and recover week after week to maximize your results. Then simply head on over to builtwithscience.com and take our analysis quiz to discover which of our approaches is best for you and your specific body. And of course, a huge thank you to Brett for his help on this video. To check out some of his work and the various programs that he offers, you can simply head on over to his site. Brett contreras.com Anyways, that is it for today guys. I hope you enjoyed this video. Please don't forget to show your support by giving the video a like leaving a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next, subscribing to the channel and turning on notifications for the channel as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone and see you next time.

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