Many women want to grow their bum to have shapely, round peaches that fill out jeans nicely!
Within the fitness industry its said that in female line-ups, the winners are chosen from behind. There’s a great deal made about having a great bum, and as the saying goes, ‘No one has ever sung a song about a flat bum’ 😉 Having strong glutes also greatly increases your overall strength and decreases injury risk. The exercises used to build strong glutes also help strengthen your core!
If you want to gain muscle, glutes or otherwise, you need to;
1. Eat sufficient amount of food (this would be at minimum a maintenance level of calories or even better a slight surplus which you increase periodically)
2. Eat sufficient protein (priority), carbs (secondary) and fats (lowest priority BUT still of importance especially for hormone function)
3. Stimulate the muscles with enough load (weight) and be progressive – ie increasing as you move forward
4. Stimulate the muscles with enough volume – while this shouldn’t be increased every week, it should also be progressive*
5. Be patient. Muscle growth takes time! And if you’re being very particular about your nutrition to minimise fat gain, it can require even more patience!
6. Get enough sleep. The importance of a good, solid nights rest, every night, cannot be overlooked! AND even more so rest days (or de-load weeks**) built into your plan periodically
*Use alternating weeks to either increase the load or the volume, and chose a different exercise or two each time, it doesn’t have to be with all of them at once. You want to be maximising your growth potential and this requires increasing the amount of weight used and the amount of sets/reps done.
**De-load weeks are weeks where you drastically reduce your volume, load and intensity. They are structured especially into muscle building plans to allow the body and mind time to rest and recover. Workouts continue during de-load weeks but are a fraction of the intensity with the aim being basic engagement of the muscle fibers, good mind to muscle connection, promoting blood flow into the muscles and improving form/technique.
If you are in a calorie deficit and trying to build muscle, you’re going to have a difficult time.
Two mistakes that commonly get made when trying to grow glutes specifically, well besides for not eating enough are,
• Not enough volume in your plan – fellow Coach David Cross taught me that glutes can tolerate much more volume than we think!
If you are seriously trying to grow your glutes, two sessions a week isn’t going to cut it unfortunately. At least 3 (for those who make muscle gains fairly ‘easily’) or better yet 4 sessions per week- focused on the glutes (and the posterior chain as a whole). This leads me to the next point.
• We want a bum and ______ (insert fitness model’s name here) said we must do squats. I’ve covered in the previous post here, why squats aren’t the only (or even the best) exercise for glute growth.
We need to focus on the ‘Posterior Chain’, this way we hit the glutes from multiple angles and improve overall strength (and conditioning of your bum, hamstrings, quads and core) too. We will address the Posterior Chain in another blog post. Of course, it’s also worth mentioning as explained in the previous post here that form/technique are incredibly important and will require proper glute activation and warm up – this is where your Fit Bands come in.
If you are in a calorie deficit you can still implement the training recommendations. You will see change in the shape of your glutes and an improvement in firmness – just not much growth.
With these points in mind I will help you in the coming weeks to design an effective glute growth plan. We will look at the posterior chain in the next blog post with example exercises. As well as a fourth blog post bringing together what we have learned. And I’ll give you a booty building workout plan you can follow!
Much love
Camella
AKA Fit Farm Girl
