Glutemaxxing
Glutemaxxing is a term you will come across when you see any trendy glute exercise video. All this means is that people are just focusing all their training on growing their glutes.
Is this just a viral trend?
No!
In the strength and hypertrophy training world, this is called periodization. This means you just spend a significant amount of time training one area of fitness. In this case, your glutes. If you really want to see some improvement in one muscle group, then maybe you should think about glutemaxxing. Focusing most of your training volume in one muscle group will ensure that you are getting the most gains.
Glutemaxxing is an actual smart way to train
You would be able to grow all your muscles at the same time if you didn’t have to worry about fatigue. Trying to grow everything at once just won’t work to hit the optimal amount of groups; you would need at least 10 sets a week for each muscle based on science. And depending on you may need do more sets for a certain muscle group. Not all of us are professional bodybuilders we have full time jobs or we are parents. So focusing on bringing up one lagging muscle group for a couple of months maybe the best approach.
Also, if we try to train everything at once, they may interfere with each other. The term I want to introduce to you is “interference effect” when one completed task affects you from another task. To put it in gym terms, if I overhead press fo 20 reps and then try to barbell back squat, I can’t hold the bar on my back because my shoulders are too tired that’s the interference effect. One exercise is stopping me from doing another. You will battle with this all throughout your lifting career.
Our best tool to fight this is just having good exercise programming and fatigue management. Everybody responds to exercise differently so it’s up to good coaching or you learning how your body works over time if you are trying to grow your glutes to be bigger than they are now.
How to actually glutemax
All we have to do is make the focus of our training program glute hypertrophy.
Here's how:
- Start the workout with your glute exercises at the beginning of your hypertrophy session
- Train them at least twice a week
- Make sure you work your way up to doing 10-20 sets per week
- Start your training at 4 reps from failure
- Stay within 4-0 reps away from failure(RIR)
- Progressive overload:
- Increase weight or reps
- Decrease rest time
Add sets - Change range of motion
- Do a harder version of the exercise
Including most of these tips in your program will cover almost everything you need to build your glutes. There are many other things that could be listed, but it would be too much for this blog.
Eat to grow your glutes
I am not a nutrition expert, but I had to study some nutrition science. I focus more on the exercise part of things. If you are trying to see noticeable progress quickly don’t be afraid to add some weight to your body. If you do it right you probably won’t notice.
In the past, we thought that we could go on these big bulking diets where we have to eat 1000kcal extra to see some muscle. But we found that extra calories don’t match up with the rate of muscle we are actually growing. So the extra calories that we were consuming were causing more fat growth than we would like. So the answer to solve this may be just doing a slight increase in calories 100-300kcal on top of your maintenance intake(amount you need to maintain body weight) .
A lot of influencers tell you to maingaining this involves eating your normal daily average of food. Their reasoning for this is that resistance training is the main star of the show for muscle growth not eating extra + training. My thought you need at least some extra calories for your muscles to grow. What that number is still debatable. Also eating enough protein is a good idea if you are training to grow your glutes as fast as possible. Don’t be afraid of a little extra calories; your muscles will thank you.
FAQ about glute maxing
What exactly is glutemaxxing
It is making your training revolve around growing your glutes. This involves starting your workout with glute exercises. Dedicating most of your sets per week to glutes. Decreasing the number of exercises for other muscles so you can target your glutes more.
How to start glutemaxxing
To first start, look at your hypertrophy training program and make sure you are getting at least 8-10 sets of glute exercises per week. You can increase the number of sets periodically just make sure you can recover(not getting too sore). If it is taking you a week for your glutes to not have DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) then you are doing too much. And you need to decrease the training volume.
You should be training glutes at least 2 to 4 times per week. Make sure that you do some kind of squat, hinge, thrust, lunge, hip abduction type of movements in there. Don’t change exercises often; keep them in your program for at least a couple of months(3 months maybe?). Unless you really hate the exercise and aren’t able to do them effectively.
How to know your glutes are growing
Get a tape measure. Make sure you learn how to measure your glutes. Take a measurement at the beginning and then measure at least every 3 months again. If you do it weekly or monthly, then you won’t see much growth unless you are a genetic freak. Make sure you are eating in a slight caloric surplus. If all of your glute exercises are getting stronger, you feel them activating while doing the exercise and you get slight soreness from these workouts, you are more than likely growing the muscles in your glutes
Glutemaxxing is not another dumb trend
Focusing on your glutes is actually a smart way to train. As I mentioned before you just need to have good programming for this to be effective. You need to know how to manage your fatigue well when training this way. Although I don’t have the data to back this up, if you’re training too much and not recovering enough before your glute session, you might get injured from overworking them.
So if you really want to grow your glutes to the biggest possible, then start glutemaxxing.