Butt Building Exercises

Best Butt Exercises

Best Butt Exercises for Women Growing your Glutes

Ready for the best butt exercises for building round and firm your gluteus maximus? It’s time to leave your pancake butt in the dust and train like you mean it with the best butt workouts specifically targeted to make your back end strong and defined. Not only can a strong, round butt fill out your clothes and make you look amazing, they will make your whole body work better. Weak glutes can impact your efficiency and strength, affecting how you run, squat, jump and do other everyday activities. It’s important to build those muscles with the right kind of butt exercises to keep your hips aligned and rotating properly.

One of the most common requests I receive from new training clients is a desire to lean out their legs while building more muscle and roundness in their glutes. The are my best exercises for building that are sure to get your butt in shape. Let’s get started with my favorite butt workouts for women!

Butt Building Exercises

Best Butt Exercises #1 - Barbell Back Squat

If you are looking for a great butt building exercise, you would be hard pressed to do much better than the traditional back squat. Back squats place a significant load on the posterior half of the legs, namely the glutes and hamstrings. To execute a back squat with proper form, I recommend practicing first with an unweighted bar as these types of butt exercises require practice to perfect.

Begin with a barbell resting behind your head at your shoulders. Keeping the weight in your heels, begin descending slowly into the back squat keeping your chest lifted. Drop your hips until they are parallel with the floor. As you begin to come back up from your back squat, be sure that you are utilize your glutes and hamstrings by squeezing your glutes to help you rise back to the top. It is critical to keep the core tight during this difficult butt workout.

Best Butt Exercises Back Squat

Best Butt Exercises #2 - Barbell Thrusters

Ready to take things to the next level and make one of the great butt exercises work for your whole body? Meet the Barbell Thruster. Cross fitters have know for some time that combining a powerful front squat with a push press is a full body slam dunk that will help you get stronger and increase your functional fitness.

For those looking to build the best butt possible with great butt workouts will appreciate the barbell thruster even more. Begin holding a weighted barbell at your shoulders, hands in a reverse grip and elbows squeezed together and lifted. Sit back pressing through your heels and holding your core strong as you descend into the front squat portion of the barbell thruster. Sit until your butt is parallel with the floor. With power, press upward unloading your legs and arms at the same time. You end this butt exercise in a full overhead press keeping tight alignment all the way through from the barbell, shoulders, hips and heels.

Best Butt Exercises Barbell Thrusters

Best Butt Exercises #3 - Plie Squat

For one of my favorite targeted best butt exercises, check out Plie Squats. Stand with your feet wider than shoulder width apart, toes turned out. I like to hold a plate in front of me for the plie squat, but you can also hold a dumbbell straight down. Push your hips back and lower your body until your thighs are parallel to the floor.

Be sure to keep your chest lifted and the core engaged. While pressing strongly through your glutes, a plie squat will take you back up to the starting position with your legs straight. As an upper body bonus on plie squats, squeeze tightly with your arms by keeping your elbows in tight to your body.

Best Butt Exercises Barbell Thrusters

Best Butt Exercises #4 - Bulgarian Split Squat / Single Leg Lunge Rear Foot Elevated

Whether you call it a Bulgarian Split Squat or a Single Leg Lunge with Rear Foot Elevated, I love butt exercises that challenge both your glutes/legs and your balance allowing you to really get the most out of the movement. Feel free to use a stable bench as you being learning the Bulgarian Split Squat but for advanced trainers, few things are better than a stability ball to make this one of the toughest butt workouts out there!

Stand lunge-length in front of a stability ball. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and rest the top of your left foot on the ball behind you. Lower your body until your front knee is bent at a 90 degree angle. Squeezing your thighs together will keep you from toppling over in this Bulgarian Split Squat.

Best Butt Exercises Single Leg Split Squat
If you find that this version is too unstable using the exercise ball, you can very effectively still work your glutes and hamstrings by placing a single leg up on any elevated surface. In this youtube video demo, I show the back foot being placed on a bench. You want to be sure that you switch legs moving from your left leg to your right leg and don't forget to be squeezing your glutes as you return to the starting position no matter if you are on a more stable bench or on the ball.

Workout Plans for Women

Workout Plans For Women
Best Butt Exercises
Best Butt Workouts

References:

This article incorporates text in the public domain from page 474 of the 20th edition of Gray's Anatomy (1918)

  1. Norman Eizenberg et al., General Anatomy: Principles and Applications (2008), p 17.
  2. Dobson, F.; Bennell, K.; Hinman, R.; Abbott, H.; Roos, E. "OARSI recommended performance-based tests to assess physical function in people diagnosed with hip or knee osteoarthritis" (PDF).
  3. "Passive Piriformis ROM". Retrieved February 19, 2015.
  4. Hogervorst T, Vereecke EE (2015). "Evolution of the human hip. Part 2: muscling the double extension". Journal of Hip Preservation Surgery. 2 (1): 3–14. doi:10.1093/jhps/hnu014.