For years, all of my clients (and myself until about 4 years ago) thought that they needed to do countless amounts/variations of squats, lunges, and deadlifts in order to build their booty.

Now, don’t get me wrong, those exercises are great, and do undoubtedly work the gluteal muscles. They are extremely functional movements that challenge integral parts of your body. I recommend that everybody should consistently be working on a lunge, deadlift, or squat pattern in their program

Unfortunately, these above movements don’t “target” the glute muscles quite like these two exercises…

Introducing… The Hip Thrust, and Weighted Glute Bridge! These are your secret weapon when it comes to building strong, lean, and sculpted glutes.

These exercises are THE BEST exercises to maximally target your glute muscles. You are not limited by core stability, neuromuscular coordination, or ankle/hip mobility issues. All it takes is proper positioning of your back on a platform/bench, and proper grounding of your feet in front of you. From there, you let your glutes do all the work.

The best part of these hip thrusters and bridges is that you can push your glutes to ABSOLUTE FATIGUE/FAILURE! This is important when it comes to really improving muscular strength and structure. How many times have you performed a squat or lunge to failure? If you have, you know that you aren’t failing at your glutes. You are most likely failing through your legs. Once you get close to failure your form starts to break down, rendering it impossible to put an emphasis on the glutes.

With the hip thruster, you are able to torch those suckers until they just can’t take it anymore! Try doing that with any other exercise and you’ll find it’s next to impossible to bring your glutes to complete exhaustion. Here’s what I want you to do…

Try adding these exercises into your routine twice a week (One day focusing on weighted bridges, one day focusing on hip thrusters). I guarantee that you’ll be sore if you do this right, and as a result you’ll start working those glutes harder which will yield more results! Get comfortable with the form, the starting position, and the range of motion. Make sure you watch the video linked above for a breakdown of the setup/movement!

-Perform 5 sets @ 15 reps with 75 second rest in between sets.

**Prioritize finding a weight that you can do 15 strong reps on. You should be getting close to failure when you hit rep 15**
-1 warm-up set
-4 working sets 
Try keeping the contraction (squeeze) in your glutes at the top for a split second in order to maximize glute fatigue.

Performing these exercises are guaranteed to take your glutes to a whole new level! Obviously you shouldn’t neglect lunges, squats, or deadlifts because I believe that they are an extremely important piece to functional strength and physique, but add in hip thrusters and glute bridges to take your training to the next level.

If you are having a hard time “activating” or feeling your glutes during movements like squats, lunges, deadlifts, hip thrusters, and glute bridges, click this link right here to show you how to get those suckers working properly! https://www.myfitphilosophy.com/training/easy-fixes-to-make-your-glute-exercises-more-effective-2/