I think I speak for most of us ladies (and gents) when I say that having a large, defined booty is probably in my top 3 physique goals. A struggle I tend to hear from women is that they’re having difficulty actually defining their glutes – especially where they end and their hamstrings begin. In the fitness world, this area is known as the “glute-ham tie-in”. Now, just a little disclaimer – there is no such thing as a “glute-ham tie-in” muscle. This “tie-in” is basically the definition between the muscles of the glutes and the muscles of the hamstrings.
I find that women tend to hold a lot of fat in that “under butt” area – unfortunately that’s just genetically how we’re built, we can’t change that! But there are ways that you can go about making your glutes, or booty pop.
You can either focus on growing your glutes so that the difference between your glutes and hamstrings is apparent, or you can work on leaning out your body fat in the hopes that fat will shed from the “under butt” area so you can clearly see the difference. My advice would be to do both, however doing both at the same time may be a little challenging.
You see, in order to build muscle efficiently, you need to be fueling your body with enough food – this means being in a calorie surplus. In order to lean out, you need to be in a caloric deficit. There is no point in trying to lean out if you don’t have any muscle there to be “shown off” upon leaning out, especially if you are wanting that slim thic appearance – so my advice is to focus on building muscle first, and the rest will fall into place. Another reason it makes more sense to build your booty up first – and I have mentioned this before – is because muscle burns more calories than fat. When you focus on building muscle, the amount of calories you burn per day will increase – this means that when you’re ready to start leaning out it’ll be easier as you have a higher calorie-burning potential.
In order to target your glutes specifically for growth, you need to be doing glute-specific exercises. I have done a blog post previously on my top 5 fave glute exercises, and an at home glute workout, but I will go into a little bit more detail here on how to target all areas of your glutes.
Bret Contreras (@bretcontreras) – the master of all things gluteal – is where I go for most, if not all, of my booty knowledge. He once said that there are three main reasons that can explain why your glutes aren’t growing: you’re not training them enough, you’re not training them from every angle, and you’re not eating enough. I couldn’t agree with him more.
Training from all angles
We’ll start with training your glutes from every angle – what in the heck does that even mean?! Contreras wrote a blog post on Force Vector Training a while back which is very in depth and full of information that I believe will be very helpful for you to understand what I’m about to explain!
There are three main types of load vectors in regards to the extension of the hips: axial, anteroposterior, and a combination of the two. A combination of exercises taken from all three of these three categories is ideal for building well-rounded glutes (Advanced Glute Training – T-Nation).
- Axial
- Direction of resistance comes from top to bottom (or vice versa), usually performed from standing
- E.g. squats, leg press, jumping, deadlifts
- Anteroposterior
- Direction of hip extension comes from front to back (or vice versa)
- E.g. hip thrusts, cable pull thrus
- Axial/anteroposterior blend
- Direction of the resistance is halfway between axial and anteroposterior (45 degree angle)
- E.g. sled pushes, walking lunges, 45 degree hyperextensions
Most people solely perform exercises from the axial hip extension group, and by doing so they are robbing themselves of maximum muscle activation through the hip extensors. It has been found that the activation of the gluteus maximus (the biggest glute muscle) is lower in the squat than it is in a hip thrust or hyperextension. By not partaking in exercises from all three groups, it will lead to a lack of athleticism and increase your chances of injury due to muscle imbalances. Basically what I’m saying is, stop doing 100 squats/deadlifts/leg presses per leg day in the hope that it will grow your glutes into the masterpiece that you’re looking for – it won’t!
Training frequency
Ok, next; training frequency. If you’re training your glutes/legs once a week with the expectation that they will grow… imma just let you know right now that that ain’t gonna work. Just like with any muscle group, they need consistent, REGULAR stimulus in order to grow in size and strength.
For a muscle or muscle group to sustain growth, it needs to be called upon to work against a resistance every 48-72 hours.
As seen in the graphic below found on bodybuilding.com, directly after working out the capacity of your muscle decreases (this goes for anywhere in the body). After the recovery phase your muscles overcompensate – this essentially is the process of making this muscle stronger and more resilient in anticipation that it will undergo the stress of working out again. The best time to re-train that muscle is within this overcompensation phase as you can continue to build on this new, stronger “normal”. If you leave the muscle for too long without stressing it, it will go back to where it was before that first workout. I wrote more about this in my Fitness Myths You Should Know About post!
Keep in mind that everyones recovery time is different, one person may be able to train the same muscle within 48 hours, some 72. This recovery time is unique to everyone and can depend on many things such as how often you stretch, how good your diet is, amongst other things.
Fuelling with food
You gotta eat if you want to grow! Like I said before, you need to be in a caloric surplus if you want to gain muscle – it needs fuel to grow!
Everyones caloric intake is different, and what is considered a surplus for me may be maintenance for you, or vice versa. If you are interested in taking a peek at the kinds of things I include in my diet, I did a full day of eating blog post earlier this month.
If you’re finding that what you’re eating now is getting you nowhere, I would suggest increasing how much you eat daily, or consulting with a personal trainer/nutritionist so that they can give you specific macros catered to you.
Leaning out
Once you’ve finished your growing-out-the-glutes phase, you may want to lean out a little bit to show off their definition a little bit more.
I’ve said it before in previous blog posts, and I’ll say it again here: you cannot spot reduce fat. As in, you cannot specifically target a certain area of your body for the fat to fall off… just like you don’t get to choose where it is put on. So before you spend hours on the stair climber with the hopes that because the stair climber is killer cardio for the legs it will shred the fat on your legs fast – don’t!
Losing fat means losing fat overall – some areas may be more stubborn than others (and sorry ladies, that stubborn area is usually your legs and hips!), but that doesn’t mean it will never come off.
To lose overall body fat you need to be in a caloric deficit. This means that you either need to be burning more calories than normal, or eating less. So yes, that does mean incorporating a little more cardio into your routine, or workouts that are a little higher in intensity. OR, you can modify your daily eating habits to be eating less calories throughout the day.
A healthy, sustainable rate of weight loss is approximately 1-1.5lbs/week – anything more than that and you run the risk of tearing down muscle mass as well. I would suggest cutting your normal, maintenance calories by about 10-20% – and take it slow! Rushing into a weight loss program will shock your body and you may end up bouncing back after a few days (as in eating a whole box of cookies) because you cut your calories or increased your workout intensity by too much!
Don’t over complicate this! The booty of your dreams is right around the corner.
Until next time
xx