Glute Workout

OK, so I asked and people answered. I wanted ideas for a workout to post on my site, lots of ideas came through but one that always gets asked for is glutes, mainly by the ladies. So here’s the deal I’ll do a workout for the girls this week and get one up for the boys next week.

If you want to target any particular muscle group successfully you need to make sure they are switched on, activated. The best way to do this is to perform activation exercises, they are designed to enhance the communication between your brain and muscles (neuromuscular activation). Basically, this means that the right muscles are turned on, so when you require them they fire optimally. For example, with a lot of my clients before we squat I’ll get them to switch on the muscles that we need: glutes; hip flexors; hamstrings; abs etc. We do this by performing certain exercises like reverse hypers, hanging leg raises, rope crunches – to get that neural pathway fired up and working.

The reason I’m telling you all this is quite simple, women are very quad dominant so really need to activate those glutes if they want to build that perfect booty, amongst other muscles in the posterior chain but let’s just focus on the glutes for now.

I have a really good glute activation routine that I do with clients who are weaker in their glutes but don’t have the time to write that out for you. So just try some of these exercises to switch them on: Glute Bridge; Single Leg Bridge; Bird Dog. Use a very slow tempo and really focus on contracting the glute hard with each of the exercises.
Anyway, you’ve switched on your glutes, stretched your hip flexors and are ready to go. Here’s what I want you to do, this workout will really hammer your glutes and legs but also cause some real metabolic damage too.

A1) Smith Machine Lunges 5 sets 1111 8 reps (EL) 0 secs Rest – Perform a Step Back Lunge
A2) Smith Machine Squats 5 sets 1111 10 reps 90 secs Rest – Ass to Grass
B1) DB Step Ups 3 20X0 15 Reps 0 Secs Rest
B2) SLDL 3 4010 12 Reps 0 Secs Rest
B3) Bulgarian Split Squats 3 2010 15 Reps(EL) 0 Secs Rest 
B4) KB Courtsey 3 2010 15 Reps(EL) 180 secs Rest

A1 and A2 are a Superset, after performing 5 sets of those you will perform 3 sets of the Gian Set.
Good luck and let me know how you get on.

You may be wondering what the four numbers at the end of each exercise are, these are the tempo. The first number refers to the lowering (eccentric) phase of the lift; the second number refers to the amount of time spent at the bottom of the lift; the third number represents the lifting (concentric) phase of the lift – X indicates an explosive lift; the fourth number is how long you hold the weight at the top of the lift.