3 Hacks For Bigger Glutes!

No time to waste! Let’s get right to today’s THREE Hacks so that you can build bigger and stronger glutes!

Hack #1 - Learning How To Activate Your Glutes

As a personal trainer for many years, I notice a lot of people skip out on exercises like Barbell Glute Bridges or Hip Thrusts because they tend to feel more lower back pain than glute activation during their reps. 

To be honest, this is probably what spawned the pure garbage exercises that a lot of “Woman Fitness influencers” push for bigger glutes on Instagram and Tik Tok.  You know what I am talking about.

So, let’s take a look at the big three exercises for engaging your glutes which are Barbell Glute Bridges, Hip Thrusts and Deadlifts, and make sure you’re doing them with a glute focus and not with your lower back.

Now for each of these exercises, if you maintain a neutral or posterior pelvic tilt, that's good. That's how we want to engage the glutes.

But if your pelvis is anteriorly rotated, or in other words your butt is sticking out too much, all of the weight will be transferred to your lower back which will cause a lower back strain, and of course, will also limit the growth of your glutes.

So, make sure before you start a glute bridge, hip thrust or deadlift, that you tuck your hips and when you lockout, you FLEX your glutes as hard as you can with each rep.

Hack #2 - Overloading Your Glutes

Your glutes are A LOT stronger than you think. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cued up a barbell glute bridge for someone and they looked at me like I was crazy when I put 225lbs on the bar. Then they get down and hit it for 15 reps.

This is why if you keep training your glutes with isolation exercises like Glute Kickbacks, you’ll never see any real progression. What I think happens is that a lot of people get confused by how their glutes feel when they “flex” them. 

By this I mean that when you do these easy exercises like “kick backs” or a “booty squeeze”, you’re always told to “FLEX” your buttcheeks on the concentric phase of every rep and that flex on each rep will eventually result in a nice pump in your glutes no different than if you were to do a bodyweight arm curl and flex your biceps at the top of each rep.

Remember that the flexing and squeezing of your muscles is bringing blood to the area, but the muscle damage for growth is minimal at best. And this is because you need to overload with WEIGHT if you want to grow.

Hack #3 - Train Your Glutes Multiple Times A Week!

You should know by now that just performing squats on leg day doesn’t quite cut it if you’re trying to build big glutes and that’s because squats are a more quad dominant exercise anyways. 

So, if you want to see real results, add a glute specific exercise to your leg day like Barbell Glute Bridges or Hip Thrusts and then pick ONE other day to target the glutes again. 

I guarantee the added workout volume with the CORRECT exercises will speed up your results and if you need help with proper form on either of these exercises check out my article“GLUTES: The Only TWO Exercises You Need For Growth!”