This is How to Grow The Glutes Without Making Your Quads & Hamstrings Bigger
Some of us just have giant quads and hamstrings with no glutes to show for it. If you’ve been training for a while, you probably realize that you can’t really just train your glutes without engaging your quads or hamstrings.
So, how do we actually make a program that just trains your glutes?
To answer how we accomplish this. I have two things to say. First, it is going to be complicated, and second, it is going to be a lot of work. Trying to isolate your glutes is a tall order they are the biggest muscles in the human body, which are connected to everything. The glutes are involved in a lot of movements it is hard to separate these muscles from others. They are responsible for hip extension, abduction, and external rotation. This means that they are involved in squats, lunges, walking, and all kinds of other movement. So what you have to do is exercises that cause the most glute activation and do less of the exercises that involve the hamstrings and quadriceps. What that means is we don’t have a lot of exercises to choose from. If you hate squats, than your in luck because they’ll be on the chopping block. Your exercise program will paper thin because of the limited number of glute-focused exercises. You will have to be creative with the variations of exercises.
What To Avoid
Any exercises that activate the quads are out. Any kind of knee extension exercises is out. If you figure out how to hit your glutes on the knee extension machine, please email me because I want to learn. Any exercise that involves your ankle bending past a 90° angle. Bending at the ankle causes quad activation, which you don’t want. This also means no squatting ass to grass of any kind. Instead of performing a traditional squat, pushing your knee and ankle past 90° when squating, you can do a glute-biased squat. When descending, you sit backward, leaning into your glutes almost like a good morning, keeping your ankle at 90° throughout the movement. Forward lunges are also out. You don’t have a lot of options because, as I mentioned your quad and glute muscles are so interconnected.
If you also don’t want your hamstrings to grow, traditional deadlifting is also not on the list. RDL, Sumo deadlifts, Deficit deadlift, and good morning are out. All these exercises will most likely cause more hamstrings activation than the glutes. If you love deadlifts and don’t want to drop them, then American deadlifts are the right exercise for the job. Basically they are the same as the Romanian deadlift but you tuck your pelvis in asyou start to move the bar/dumbbells upward into the lockout position. This position of tucking the pelvis will make you feel the glutes engage more.
Trying to keep your quads and hamstrings out of your program is tough and limiting. Most of the advice & program you see online if you look closely at them, there will be exercises that still involve the hamstrings and quads.
Generic Advice Won’t Build Your Glutes
Starting a glute only hypertrophy program is nuanced and you won’t have a lot of exercises to choose from. Depending on your lifestyle and training goals if might not be an efficient use of your gym time. Also the type of equipment you have may limit you. Growing your butt without growing your legs can seem simple at first. But exercise selection and placement can get complex. General advice on social media won’t cut it, you’ll eventually hit a wall if you are following a program that is not personalized for you. My other blog post talks about the pitfalls you face when trying to follow advice online. The best way is to figure out how to program your training yourself and hire a coach who understands glute exercise physiology.
How to take a concept of a training plan and turn it into a plan
As you see how the glutes are connected, you have to fight against two other big muscle groups. You have to get creative and strategic with what exercises to put in your program. If you are to do a glute focus exercise program, be prepared to do a lot of sets. In current science, we don’t have a limit on how many sets you can perform a week without diminishing returns with muscle hypertrophy by itself. Other things could get in the way, such as time constraints, injury, etc. Some papers show that we can do as many as 40 sets per muscle group a week and survive. I’m not saying that you need to do that you need to do that large a number in this case more is better than less. You can do as much volume as you can recover from.
A general program can look like this:
Day 1:
American Deadlift 3×5-8
Glute kickback 4×10-20
Rest Day
Day 2:
Barbell Glute bridges 3×6-10
Abduction machine 4×12-20
Kettlebell swings 2×5
Rest Day
Day 3:
Glute focus back extension 3×10
Cable Glute lateral raise 3×12-20
Step up 3x 8-12
Notice that I only included the glute exercise in this sample of glute because if you are focusing on training your glutes at this stage in your training, then you should be prioritizing them. You should do your training around them and then add in exercise for the other muscle groups that you care about.