How To Grow Your Glutes
“How can I grow my glutes” has been one of the most popular questions I have received since becoming a coach back in 2014. And while the context of the information provided in this episode can be applied to any muscle group, we are simply going to use the glutes as an example of how to build lagging body parts.
So why are glutes so hard to grow?
Some of it is genetics, other reasons may be the exercise selection or often how hard you are training.
We will spend some time today going over some common mistakes people tend to make as an attempt to build their glutes. We will also discuss the main drivers to promote and maximize hypertrophy aka muscle growth.
Although glutes are the largest muscle on the body and supposedly the most powerful, people are fairly sedentary nowadays. So many are sitting on their butts for most of the day at work, then they get an hour workout in and come in and sit on their butts all evening, causing the glutes to go silent and resistant to activating efficiently when we are trying to train them. If this lifestyle sounds familiar, some extra attention may be required when you are training the glutes. Conscious neuromuscular recruitment, aka mind-muscle connection, is extremely important for building glutes. This can be accomplished by doing a warmup or two with light weight, then increase the weight to challenge yourself but keep the glutes firing throughout the range of motion and set.
Now, let’s look at some common mistakes people are often making that are holding them back from maximizing glute hypertrophy.
There are three common mistakes that people make when they are trying to grow their glutes
1. Exercise selection
2. Lack of training stimulus
3. Constantly being in a calorie deficit
In order to understand efficient exercises, you should be selecting to train the glutes, we have to understand the function of the three glute muscles, which are the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. The three muscles originate from the ilium and sacrum and insert on the femur.
The glute max is the largest out of the three glute muscles and makes up a large part of the shape and appearance of the hips. The gluteus medius is a broad, thick, radiating muscle, situated on the outer surface of the pelvis. And the gluteus minimus is the smallest of the three gluteal muscles and is situated immediately beneath the gluteus medius.
The functions of the muscles include extension, abduction, external rotation, and internal rotation of the hip joint. Some examples of some exercises that include these types of movement patterns targeting the glutes are hip thrusts, squats, lunges, deadlifts, hip abductions, sumo walks and cable kickbacks.
Now that we understand which movement patterns are efficient for targeting the glutes, let’s dive in a little bit deeper to see which variations may not be as efficient as you may think.
The first one is wide stance variations such as sumo deadlifts and wide stance leg press. Even though your hips are extending, and the glutes are still being targeted, these variations mainly target the adductors, also known as the thigh gap. If your goal is to maximize glute growth, conventional deadlifts or RDL’s probably makes more sense than sumo deadlifts. However, if you want to target your adductors and glutes then stick to sumo deadlifts, it’s a great two birds with one stone exercise.
Mini bands around your knees for every single exercise. Doing 1,000’s of reps with a mini band around your knees is just not a productive way to target the glutes efficiently because of the lack of training stimulus. We will elaborate on this more shortly. But when it comes to mini bands, I find they aren’t a great staple as your primary go to source of resistance if glute hypertrophy is your main goal.
They can, however, be a great tool for those who train at home, for warming up, waking up or even burning out the glutes. They can also be very handy to bring with you when you are traveling.
Does this mean you should never do these movement patterns? Of course not. They all serve a purpose depending on your goals. For example, when I ruptured my Achilles tendon, I couldn’t put any weight on my injured side and doing a closed chain movement like barbell hip thrusts was out of the question.
So, what could I do instead? Kneeling hip thrusts for the win. This was a great variation for me in this scenario.
Did it load my glutes as good as regular hip thrusts? Definitely not. And the reason being, gravity works in our favor for regular hip thrusts, as it loads the glutes more on the way down, whereas this is not the cause for knelling hip thrusts. The range of motion is also a lot smaller. This is not to label kneeling hip thrusts as a bad exercise, but in situations where you can choose, yea regular hip thrusts are probably better for glute hypertrophy.
But it was a valuable tool for me when I needed to use it. So, remember, it’s never black and white and always depends on your goals and your situation.
The next common mistake people make is the lack of training stimulus. And this is where relying on just mini band circuit workouts comes into play. Why is doing 1,000’s of reps of band hip thrusts, sumo walks and squats not enough training stimulus? Does this mean you have to do 2,000 reps?
No. Definitely not.
Even though higher reps can be an effective range for promoting hypertrophy, we still need to apply the rule of progressive overload to promote muscle growth, meaning we need to actually lift some weights to provide the working muscle with the overload (aka stimulus) it needs to grow.
Muscle growth is accomplished through three processes:
1. Mechanical tension
2. Metabolic stress
3. Muscle damage
The main driver for muscle growth is known as mechanical tension. Mechanical tension is created by using a heavy load through a full range of motion. The time the muscle spends under tension provided by the external load (so the dumbbells for example) creates mechanical tension in the muscle. Basically, you want to perform exercises that are challenging to your muscles by overloading the working muscle so your body can respond, adapt and increase the size and strength of the tissues.
When it comes to metabolic stress, it’s important to note that muscle growth can occur with heavy weights and with light weights. When we are using lighter weights, it’s important to make sure you take those sets close to failure in order to trigger the appropriate hormonal responses to promote muscle growth.
If one week we are performing 1,000 reps, is it realistic to overload things again the following week by doing 2,000 reps? Probably not. I would argue most people are performing the same load and reps week after week, which is not accomplishing the overall goal of overloading the working muscle. I know this rep count is an extreme example, but hopefully you get the point I am trying to make with how this is not realistic or effective.
Lastly, we have muscle damage. A lot of people confuse muscle damage with soreness achieved after a workout. You can accomplish muscle damage without feeling sore. You don’t need to feel muscle damage in order for it to take place. A good workout will create small disruptions in the muscle fibers, which will promote hypertrophy.
Now hearing these different drivers for promoting muscle growth can be confusing to some. How can you implement this into your own training routine? How can you ensure you are actually accomplishing this? And I think the key here is just to focus on progressive overload because mechanical tension is the key driver for hypertrophy.
If you focus on overloading the muscle overtime, the remaining processes of metabolic stress and muscle damage will fall into place. So don’t overcomplicate it. This is just meant to give you an understanding as to how muscle growth works so you can make better decisions when it comes to optimizing your training program and training decisions.
So how can we ensure we actually achieve progressive overload?
As a reminder, this is the process of lifting more overtime. We need to increase the demands being placed on our bodies by gradually getting stronger over time. This can be accomplished in many ways, such as lifting more weight, doing more sets or reps, increasing your time under tension or even simply improving your form technique by increasing your range of motion for instance. And the best way to do this is to track your workouts. Bust out a training journal and keep track of your progress so you can ensure you are overloading as best as you can week after week.
And one final note regarding progressive overload, in order for us to get better and achieve progressive overload with our workouts, we need to practice and maintain consistency with performing the same movement patterns, so we get better and better over time.
For example, if we want to improve our squat technique or our squat strength, how can we do that when we squat one week and then swap them out for a different exercise the following week and we don’t squat again for another month? Practice makes perfect.
Onto the final mistake people often make when it comes to maximizing muscle growth and that is constantly being in a calorie deficit.
This is not to say it’s impossible to build muscle in a calorie deficit. However, this typically applies to those who are a novice lifter, those who experienced a detraining period due to an injury for example and those consuming performance enhancing drugs. If you are natural and have a few years of lifting under your belt, yea building muscle while you are dieting is going to feel like it’s next to impossible.
This isn’t meant to discourage you. Instead encourage you to set some realistic expectations for yourself. What are your main goals? Is it to lose fat? Or build muscle? You can still try to accomplish both if you wish. But a hunter trying to catch two rabbits, often ends up with none. Not to use too many cruelty to animal analogies this episode… Wow. Let’s use another one in this scenario. My personal favourite. You can’t suck and blow at the same time.
So, if you want to try both, go for it. But I would argue that focusing on one and then the other later is probably going to be best for optimizing your results.
I get a lot of push back when I encourage people to let go of dieting for a period of time. But it’s not forever. Sometimes taking a break from dieting and putting yourself in a slight calorie surplus may be just what you need to change your body composition, especially if your training program is also on point.
Muscle growth can be challenging for a lot of people because it requires accumulated consistent effort. It’s a lot of the same exercises, movement patterns and just trying to push a little bit more weight each week, maybe one more rep and the most annoying reason of all, patience. But if you can look past all of that, it can be a lot of fun. Muscle growth is like art or painting a sculpture and at the end of the end, great things take time, right?
Hope this was helpful!
Coach Krysten