Following Instagram Advice Won't Grow Your Glutes
By: Melshon Carter
I want to address the Instagram reels you’re seeing that show the latest glute workout. It’s usually influencers with giant behinds who magically discovered the secret to bigger glutes. Their special workout can somehow blow up your glutes to the size of two beach balls. You get convinced you decide to try one of these workout routines. And you end up feeling all these exercises in your lower back and wonder if your glutes are even working. You wonder if something is wrong with you are just not doing the exercise right at all.
There’s nothing wrong!
First and foremost the main reason is that you need to practice the movement, especially if it’s a barbell, not a fixed machine. A 10-second video isn’t enough time or information to teach the nuances that occur when performing new exercises.
10-Second Video Won’t Teach How to target Your Glutes
Now listen, I’m not saying that you HAVE to feel your glutes during the exercise. We know, based on multiple studies, that muscle activation still occurs without you feeling the targeted muscle area during the movement. What that means is your glutes may still be working even though your lower back is on fire and taking on the load. The burning sensation after performing an exercise is due to lactic acid buildup. This is one of our only indicators as homosapiens have that our targeted muscles are being worked. Another indicator is not being able to match our reps and the number of reps significantly drops off between sets. Both these indicate that our muscles are the thing that is being taxed and not our nervous system, meaning going into failure. And is this
Example: Hip thrusts
Set 1 x 12
Set 2 x 10
Set 3 x 5
You can see that the 3rd set drops 5 reps from the 2nd. If we are unable to complete the movement
Our nervous system is tapped out, which is a whole other discussion. This means that the brain, spine, and nerves are too tired to send singal to our muscles to tell them to contract. This is called central nervous system fatigue.
The area we mainly want to tire out is the peripheral nervous system, meaning the local muscle area and fibers (our glute muscle fibers). If the local muscle sites are out of commission, then they are doing their job, and we get bigger glutes eventually.
Now all I am saying is that everyone is different, your exercise form is going to look different from others. And you will need to move differently or add a slight adjustment to movement to make it work for you. There are general principles to follow when preforming a exercise correctly but once you nail down the basics, you can adjust it to fit your personal needs.
What about frequency, reps, and sets????
Anyone who has been training for long enough will tell you that you need to exercise in a wide range of reps combined with hitting your muscle in different angles to get the most out of your training. Some exercises perform better than others at certain rep ranges, like the barbell back squat better 5-10 rep range because of how taxing this exercise can be. So it’s to learn what is best for you in different exercises
These influencers won’t explain the nuances of these movements or exactly what ranges will work best for you because it would be impossible without knowing your specific circumstances. But when you train on your own, it’ll take you a while to figure out how all this stuff works best for you. You could take a one-size-fits-all approach to training by using a cookie-cutter workout plan but soon start to hit walls when you get out of your beginner phase of training, which is when you are getting bigger every month. So to break down this wall, you need to either get a coach who understands the process and that learn how you operate, and use this to take the best approach. Or you can just start trying different things, and eventually you get there but the coaching route will probably be the fastest option.
“These Exercises Work Best For You”
So you get a list of the best exercises that work your glutes from these videos. What if you hate all of them? You won’t do them, and you just wasted your time trying exercises you hate. There comes a time when you have to do stuff that you hate because eventually your body adapts to all these new stimuli you give it. What does that mean? The exercises become stale, and your body won’t get stronger because there’s nothing new to adapt to; your glutes won’t grow after a while of performing the movement for years on end.
Influencers never mention when you need to switch up exercises, so you’ll assume that you just do the specific routine indefinitely until your progress comes to a halt. That’s why you need to learn about exercise programming, how your body responds, and what sort of signal to look out for.
And Don’t Be Fooled By The Glutes
When you see these videos, you’re probably like these girls or guys have big glutes, so all these exercises must work. Let me remind you it’s the internet most of the time when people post stuff. Unfortunately, it’s all marketing to get you to buy something or subscribe, not saying it’s a bad thing. Heck, the word you are reading now is for marketing it’s to educate and inform. And to introduce you to Coach Alex, who specializes in glute development, who will get you bigger glutes in an optimal way, so sign up now!
Commercial break over….
So back to the discussion, everything can be manipulated on the internet. A lot of these people are a lot smaller in person than you can imagine. It’s all smoke and mirrors, good lighting, angles, poses the works.
This is the Only Advice You Need to Get Bigger Glutes!
- Train with heavy weights
- Perform glute exercises that hit every angle at least 2x a week for each movement type
- Move deep ranges of motion
- Stick to one routine for a couple month, stop changing programs every week
- Have fun
Some of the best general advice that you can get!
Now, this is general advice I didn’t give out any specific advice because more detailed require me to know who the heck you are. Exercise programming is very personalized. At some point you’ll notice that everyone is really doing the same exercises or some sort of variation. Generally, there is a place for every exercise only difference is what type of doses fit your lifestyle and goals. Doses, meaning reps, sets, weight, exercise order & sections all these variables can make or break your success depending on how many years you have trained.
None of these influencers, with their 5-second videos talk about this stuff. So if you are really serious about trying to get the biggest glutes you can or at least get to where you can’t stop looking at yourself in the mirror. Coaching is the best option to help you progress, and you’ll learn how to do this yourself. Our head coach and founder Alex will teach how to start training the right way. And she’ll educate on what will work for your body d schedule. Sign up for her 1:1 glute coaching for bigger glutes.