One of my pillar exercises that builds your glutes: RDLs

The great debate of which exercises train your glutes the best will continue to the end of time. The field of exercise training is always evolving. We’ll probably never know what works the best because the human body is so complex.

So, throughout my years of lifting and studying about exercises, my principle stands firm that heavy compound movements are the base of any good muscle training program. 

Are they the best exercises to do to target individual muscles efficiently? 

No.

But they teach you how to control your body while lifting heavy loads. They require proper technique to do them efficiently. Isolation exercises on the other hand such as the abductor machine or bicep curls are effective at loading a single muscle. This ensures that the growth-promoting stimulus goes toward the area that is being trained. But you can’t lift as much as with these types exercises because you are moving at only one joint, meaning fewer muscles are activated to help you lift the weight. Isolation exercises have their place, and they definitely should be included in any decent program. Heavy compounds are the foundation of the building, and isolation is the design or the finishing touches. But you can do only isolation exercises and grow at the same rate but you’ll miss out on the other benefits, such as coordination and flexibility you might gain from an ass to grass squat.

So, if you’re trying to build glutes, compound exercises work the best because of their extra benefits. Romanian deadlifts might be the exercise for you. Look at bodybuilders, who arguably have the biggest glutes in the world. Almost all of them which I can bet my life on, got their glutes from doing heavy hip hinges and hip thrusts. They didn’t get most of their glute gains from doing kickbacks and cable abduction. These movements are great but they are just the icing on the cake, as I mentioned before. 

You can’t overload them as much as you can with deadlifts or barbell glute bridges. You are just using more muscles to perform these exercises versus isolation. You can’t really isolate the glutes; they are connected to everything. 

I have always had some kind of heavy movement in my program. And you should too. 

I started focusing on growing my glutes recently but they are already pretty big from just heavy lifting. If I had never done any heavy hip hinges, I would never have grown them to such a size. I have only added a few movements and changed my walking lunge form to make them focus more on the glutes than the quads and other support muscles. You’d better believe some type of RDL will always be included in my program. Another reason I started training my glutes directly to better help my clients.. So let me convince you why RDL should be included in your training