For male trainees, the pectorals and biceps are often the most desired muscles to build and bulk.
Most gym bros want to grow them until they explode, and then some. However, when it comes to female trainees, it’s usually a different story.
Many of them mainly want to improve their glutes and grow their butt. Either by adding muscle volume or by removing fat from this area. Building that bubble butt through squats and hardcore diets is what most Instagram wanna-be’s shoot to achieve.
Today, we will look at the factors that will influence your desired goal of building that perfect jiggly bubble butt.
We’ll name exercises that will help you hypertrophy your glutes and enlighten you, based on science, so you’ll understand what it’s all about.
Do you want to Lift Your Butt? Here Are Some Exercises That Will Help
In this next section, we’ll look at some exercises that we believe are the best for building up your glutes into a more formed and shaped bubble butt.
Squats
The squat is one of the best exercises for building gluteal muscle and lifting up that jiggly booty into one that has more of a pop or what most would call, building the bubble of the booty.
Generating a large amount of activation according to electromyographic measurements activates all the muscle fibers in our butt.
You can practice this exercise in several ways, with a single leg, assisted by different equipment, and our favorite way, with a barbell.
The low bar squat achieves a greater activation of our glutes than the high bar variant.
We also find in this variation the greater activation of the hamstring muscle, which will also help build a pleasing aesthetic of the rear of our lower body.
We recommend performing sets of 8 to 15 repetitions with loads that require a perceived effort of approximately 8/10 at the end of the set for best hypertrophy.
To execute a low bar squat more safely, use stops if the rack you are working with has them.
Lunges
Lunges are another excellent exercise for building a bubble booty.
These can be performed in multiple ways, with or without weight, but our favorite is the classic dumbbell lunge for the current purpose.
After a long time performing this exercise, I feel that the best way to introduce it into your routine is as an accessory exercise to your squat, which would be the main one. We recommend performing it in a repetition range of 12 to 15 reps for the best results.
This exercise, which is part of several aerobic or warm-up routines, can be very demanding if performed with a heavy load.
If you have the necessary space, determining a path with a limit that restricts the point of return to the starting spot is a tremendous challenge to motivate us during our series. If this is not the case, they can be performed in a stationary manner, this variation being highly effective anyway.
Deadlifts
The deadlift is another famous exercise found within most weight training routines. This exercise also provides significant activation in the gluteal area.
The best deadlift variation for developing the glutes is the Romanian Deadlift. Unlike the conventional deadlift or sumo, this exercise variation will provide constant tension throughout the entire movement.
By not resting the bar on the floor at any time you will force your butt to be under tension at all times which helps in pushing past plateaus and obviously helps with growing the heck out of your booty.
We recommend performing the Romanian deadlift in a range of 8 to 12 repetitions as an accessory exercise on leg day.
The conventional deadlift, sumo, and SLDL will also provide considerable glute activation.
Hip Thrust
Hip thrusts are the best exercise (in my opinion) to work the glutes directly. We can practice it safely without needing a lot of equipment. It activates and isolates your glutes more than the squat and even the deadlift.
It mainly works the glutes and the abductors, quadriceps, hamstrings, abdomen, and spinal erectors, among others. But this exercise allows us to isolate the glutes better than any other exercise. At least for me, it does.
We recommend practicing it with incremental loads in a range of 8 to 12 repetitions for best results.
Lateral Step-Up
The lateral step-up is an excellent exercise to work the glutes. You will also achieve a great level of hypertrophy in your quadriceps.
One of the advantages of this exercise is that it does not require a machine to perform it. A box, or even with a chair of the right height is enough to get the platform we need to complete it.
We recommend performing this exercise with a moderate weight and a range of repetitions between 12 and 15.
We should prioritize more extensive compound exercises like the barbell squat and deadlift and leave activities like this for the end of our routine.
What does ‘lifting your butt’ mean in reality?
What do we mean when we talk about “lifting your butt”?
This is an interesting question. We adopted this term because it is widely introduced in the vocabulary of trainees, but in reality, it is not very accurate.
This is because two different processes will help us reach the goal we are looking for. It is not correct to unify them, as they are very different and generally cannot be practiced simultaneously.
Muscle Gain
The first process that will be of great relevance when sculpting our butt will be the increase of muscle mass in the gluteal area.
To increase our muscle volume, we need to provide our body with a caloric surplus and a sufficiently demanding workout to understand that the excess calories should go to the muscles and not become fatty tissue.
You can find several calculators on the internet that will give you an approximate number of calories you spend daily according to your weight, your daily physical activity, and other factors that will vary according to the calculator you use.
We recommend gaining muscle volume ingest approximately 250-350 calories more than you expend.
In this way, you will be able to embark on a lean bulking phase in which you will gain as much muscle as possible while minimizing fat gain.
Fat Loss
The second relevant process to our goal is fat loss. Once you’ve built enough muscle mass in your glutes, you should be aiming to eliminate as much surrounding butt fatty tissue as possible. There are many exercises and strategies that you can focus on to shred that butt fat but the most important of them all is to remain consistent.
You need to place yourself in a caloric deficit. To do this, you will need to expend more calories than you consume daily. This is where cardiovascular exercise comes into play and, most importantly, diet.
We recommend a calorie deficit of no more than 500 calories to get the best results. This way, you won’t lose too much muscle while eliminating fat.
If we do not continue to push ourselves during training when we are in the definition phase, the body will not consider it essential to maintain the acquired muscle, and we will lose it all.
It is of utmost importance to keep training vigorously to maintain as much muscle as possible in our cutting phase.
If we do not continue to push ourselves during a workout then we will end up coming to a plateau and this is something we do not want.
When you enter a plateau your body will no longer grow and you will have to find ways to get past your plateau either by switching up your workouts or doing something else to confuse the body to grow.
It is of utmost importance to keep training vigorously to maintain as much muscle as possible in our cutting phase.
Applying what we’ve learned
So, now that we know the best exercises for our glutes, and we know that the only way to get great glutes is to make them grow in volume and eliminate the fat surrounding them, how do we apply the concepts we learned?
Training Program
We recommend training the glutes two to three times a week. In addition to our main exercise, either squat or deadlift, we recommend adding two accessory exercises of the ones we named, no more than four sets each.
If we exceed the indicated frequency and volume, we run the risk of not allowing our glutes the recovery they will need to continue hypertrophying in the next workout.
That is not a rule of thumb; it is simply a number that we consider safe in terms of volume and frequency for most. Experiment wisely to see what works best for you.
Diet
On a diet, the most important thing is energy balance. That is, caloric surplus or deficit, followed in order of importance by protein intake.
Keeping this in mind will be fundamental to maintaining muscle during the cutting stage and increasing it during the bulking phase.
As with everything in the gym, there are no magic solutions to building your glutes, but ironically, by doing things the right way, the results will seem magical themselves.
Takeaway
For many people, a reduction in their butts is an area of body dissatisfaction. Whether or not it is a concern, anyone who wants to increase the size and definition of their behind knows it is the quickest way to see the most results.
Exercises that will achieve this goal vary from person to person, but there are definitely exercises that are safe for all areas of the body. These exercises will help the working muscles around the area of the butt get bigger and lift the body up.
