“I like to get people to lean away from aesthetics and lean into function,” says Lisa Folden, DPT, a physical therapist and health coach. “The glutes are majorly important. As someone who’s worked with clients as they age or after accidents and injuries, when you don’t have strong glutes, your mobility is severely limited.”
The glutes are key to doing every day activities like rising from sitting to standing or getting out of bed. They stabilize your pelvis, support your spine, and enable you to move about the world.
So strengthening your glutes is incredibly worthwhile. But if your goal is to simply grow your glutes to make your butt look bigger, don’t expect to squat your way to a badonkadonk.
“We are genetically built differently, our bodies are different, we carry weight in different places, our bone structure is different, so one person’s strong glutes does not look like the next person’s strong glutes,” Dr. Folden says.
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Social media can be misleading in this regard. Genetics, photoshop, or surgical enhancement can be the true reason a person’s butt looks a certain way.
“It is very frustrating to see people who have surgically altered their bodies posting ‘10 exercises to get a booty like mine,’” Dr. Folden says. “The reality is you can build your own booty and make your own booty stronger and increase the size a little bit [with exercises], but there’s a small window. If you’re a person with not a lot of fatty tissue in the butt area, your booty can only get so big without a surgical procedure. So I just want people to be realistic and try to be more comfortable in the skin that they’re in.”
“I just want people to be realistic and try to be more comfortable in the skin that they’re in.”—Dr. Lisa Folden
So how can exercises impact backside size? To understand that, let’s dive into some butt basics.
What are the glutes?
Your butt muscles, or glutes, are actually made up of three muscles: The gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. The gluteus maximus enables movement, the medius allows for stability and balance in your hips (it’s the muscle you’ll engage if you’re balancing on one leg), and the minimus stabilizes the pelvis. All together, they coordinate movement between your upper body and lower body, and form the base of your core.
“Your core is your entire trunk,” Dr. Folden says. “The top is the shoulders and the bottom are the hips and the glutes. Those muscles in that area are vital for holding your pelvis together, which is important to move through the world. They support your weight above your legs and then give you the core stability to move and stabilize [your body].”
The benefits of strengthening your glutes
You need strong glutes to do everyday activities like rising from sitting in a chair as well as explode into a sprint or jump into the air. Glutes also help to maintain lifelong health by enabling proper posture and mobility, which can ward off back and joint pain.
“When the glutes are strong, you have better functional mobility,” Dr. Folden says. “You can support yourself in an upright position pretty well. It will take some of the load and stress off of your low back.”
How to grow your glutes
If you want to both strengthen and physically enlarge your backside, you’ll need to focus on a few targeted strategies.
Work the correct muscles
If your goal is to grow your glutes through exercise, you’ll focus most of your energy on moves that target the gluteus maximus.
“That is typically the muscle we notice and see with regard to glutes size, especially when we’re looking at someone from a side view and looking at that curve, that back to butt to thigh curve situation,” Dr. Folden says. “That is going to be primarily supported by the girth and the strength and the size of the gluteus maximus.”
Your gluteus minimus is crucial for stability and balance, but it is too deep inside your anatomy to physically impact size. The gluteus medius, however, can impact butt shape.
“It does play into the structure and form along the side of the butt,” Dr. Folden says. “It is the muscle that if you are standing on one leg, and your hips do not shift or drop to the side, that is the muscle that is holding you up in that position. It is the stabilizer and it’s really important. It does play some of the role in the [size] or the strength that you might see on the outer or the side of the glute, too.”
And just as the glutes support the back, the hamstrings support the butt, which can impact its shape.
“When the hamstrings are strong, that’s sort of the shelf that the glutes fit on, so that definitely can impact the lift,” Dr. Folden says.
Work the right muscle fibers
Your muscles are made up of different types of fibers that spring into action depending on how you’re using them. All of the fibers contribute to overall strength and fitness, but some fibers impact size more than others.
Namely, increasing the amount of type 2 muscle fibers, also known as fast-twitch fibers, will grow your glutes more than working on type 1, or slow-twitch muscle fibers. Slow twitch are responsible for endurance, while fast twitch are the muscle fibers that enable powerful bursts.
“They are the fibers that produce more [size],” says Dr. Folden.
Do resistance training—consistently
A meta-analysis of studies that investigated the best strategies for strength training found that lifting weights for at least two sets at least twice a week was the most reliable and effective way to grow your muscles. To get stronger muscles, a strategy of progressively increasing the amount of weight you lift was the ticket. To get bigger muscles—or work toward hypertrophy—lifting weight more frequently mattered.
In either case, you have to engage in the process of muscle growth through resistance training, either through body weight or added weight.
“When you are loading the muscle group with exercise activity, weights, or body weight, you are contracting and relaxing the muscle over time, building its endurance and its resilience, micro tearing the fibers and building more muscle fibers,” Dr. Folden says. “That is how muscles grow.”
Support muscle growth with the right nutrition
It’s no secret that different activities require different fuel sources: Endurance athletes want to make sure they’re getting plenty of carbs, while muscle growth primarily needs protein. But that’s not the only piece of the puzzle.
“The most important nutrient needed for muscle growth is protein,” Umo Callins, RD/LD, CPT, a sports dietitian and personal trainer with with 180Physique Nutrition and Fitness, previously told Well+Good about the ideal nutrition for muscle growth. During that micro tear and repair growth process, amino acids from protein get turned into muscle fibers.
“However, for muscle growth to happen, enough calories (caloric surplus) have to come not only from protein but also from carbohydrates and fat. These factors paired with strength training contribute to hypertrophy.”
Exercises for glutes strengthening
Workout moves that hit the glutes abound. But how to grow your glutes requires some targeting.
“I am into activities that are going to incorporate the rest of the core while strengthening the glutes,” says Dr. Folden. “I really like to do compound movements. It’s just a better bang for your buck, and in this case, a better bang for your time.”
Additionally, studies show what exercises are most demanding on the gluteus maximus specifically. We’re talkin’ step ups, followed by squat variations, dead lifts, and barbell hip thrusts.
Here are some great moves that target both the core and the butt for glutes strengthening.
1. Fire hydrant and donkey kick
Done in a tabletop/quadruped position, combining the fire hydrant and donkey kick into one is a go-to glutes-growing move because it “really works all of the quadrants of the glutes,” says Dr. Lisa.
- Start in a tabletop position on your hands and knees
- Keeping both your knees in a 90 degree bend, lift one of them out to the side, attempting to bring that knee in line with your hip, so the bottom of your foot is facing behind you (this is the fire hydrant).
- Keeping your leg elevated, rotate your hip so that your leg is behind you, your knee is still bent, and the bottom of your foot is facing the ceiling.
- Lower the leg back down to the starting position, but keep your weight in your arms and non-lifting leg (don’t put your weight back into the lifted leg when it returns to the floor).
- Repeat, alternating the order each rep.
2. Deadlift
Deadlifts will take care of your hamstrings and your gluteus maximus in one go. Just remember to squeeze your butt at the top! Pro tip: Practice the move without a weight first to make sure you’ve got it down.
- Begin in a standing position.
- With a soft bend in your knees, engage your hamstrings as you push your hips back behind you, as if you are going to sit in a chair.
- This should cause you to shift your chest forward, keeping your torso in a straight line as you engage your core.
- If you are using a weight, let the weight in your hands slide down toward the floor.
- Engage your hamstrings and using your legs, lift back up to standing.
- Squeeze your glutes as you get to the top.
3. Clamshell
Another move where form is paramount, the clamshell can help you build the gluteus medius.
“The key with clamshells is to not allow your trunk to roll backward when you’re in that posture,” Dr. Folden says. “Keep your trunk forward. You’ll see your knee is not gonna lift super high, and that’s that’s fine.” Try it with a resistance band around the lower part of your thighs for an extra challenge.
- Lay on your side with your knees bent, one leg on top of the other.
- Lay with your head on your arm, or propped up on forearm.
- With your knees in front of you and your feet in line with your hips, lift your top leg while keeping your feet touching.
- Lower the leg back down and repeat.
4. Step up
Step ups are science’s most effective glutes workout. This is an easy move to get sloppy with. If you’re finding yourself slouching, putting your weight on your quads, or using gravity or momentum, you know it’s time to dial back.
- Stand facing a sturdy plyo box, bench, or step that’s at about knee height.
- Lift your right foot and place it on top of the box directly in front of your right hip, making sure it’s a few inches away from the edge and your toes are pointing straight forward.
- Keeping your torso upright, press your weight into your right foot and push through your quads and glutes to straighten your right leg and stand on it on top of the box.
- At the same time, drive your left knee up to hip height, so your left thigh is parallel to the ground.
- Reverse the move, lowering your left foot to the floor with control. Step your right foot down to the floor next to your left.
- Do 12 to 15 reps, then repeat on the other side.
5. Hip thrust
There’s something about doing a hip thrust that just feels like you’re making your butt cheeks specifically lift weights. You can do hip thrusts with a barbell across your lap, resting in the crease of your hips. Or try it first with body weight. Either way, you’ll need a bench for this exercise. If you’re using a weight, make sure to put it in position while you’re seated, before you move down onto your shoulders.
- Place your shoulders and upper back on a bench with your knees bent and butt and feet on the floor.
- Squeezing your butt, use that squeeze to power your hips up, lifting them up from the ground until they’re aligned with your shoulders.
- Slowly lower back down without putting your weight back on your butt until you’re done with the set.
If you don’t have access to a bench, try doing this move from the ground, AKA a glutes bridge.
A 15-minute glutes workout
Check out this pilates exercises for glutes workout for an easy-to-follow way to blast that backside.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I tell if my glutes are growing?
We all know soreness doesn’t necessarily mean you’re building muscle. So how can you tell if your booty is morphing? First of all, note how you’re feeling. Is it easier to get up and down? Those kind of motions recruit the glutes, so if rising up from bed or a chair is second nature, your glutes might be growing (or at least getting stronger!). But you can also take other physical cues.
“You might find that clothes fit a little tighter,” Dr. Folden says. “Because you’re building more muscle tissue back there, you might even find that your weight goes up a little bit, if that’s something that you track or pay attention to.”
How long does it take to grow glutes?
You can grow your glutes in a relatively short amount of time as long as you’re incorporating glute-building exercises into your workouts multiple times per week.
“If you’re doing it consistently—and I like to say consistently is three, maybe four days a week—you can see changes in your strength within two to three weeks,” Dr. Folden says. The way a muscle looks physically may vary from person to person, based on how much flesh or tissue you have back there. “So it’s hard to say when you’ll physically see the differences, but you can feel the differences in your strength within two to three weeks if you have some consistency with with the movements.”
Why aren’t my glutes growing?
If you’re wondering why your glutes aren’t growing, first and foremost, you might just not be genetically predisposed to having a bigger butt. But if you are not seeing improvements in the amount of weight/resistance you can handle in glutes exercises, or how many reps you can do, or how difficult exercises feel, there’s a chance you’re not executing the exercises right. Namely, you may not actually be engaging your glutes.
“You can certainly pull up an exercise, like a deadlift, and you can see someone doing it, and you can mimic that movement—and feel nothing,” Dr. Folden says. “A lot of times, when we’re trying to do an exercise, to target a muscle group or area, we have to actively be thinking to engage that area, because we have other muscles and joints and things in our body that will just take over and do it for us. So if we’re not engaging the core, stabilizing the pelvis, squeezing the glutes, then yeah, you might not even be working your glutes.”
