the primal butt

so this pic came up in a discussion in a truly fab facebook group i belong to. nothing wrong with that whatsoever - everything right actually. what got me thinking were a couple of responses: one claimed that such a derriere would be impossible to attain at a certain age and the other claimed that no amount of squatting heavy has given her such results. id like to pick these two things appart.


wrong.
lets start with weighttraining: your muscles will respond to training no matter your age or genetics. the usual problem with glute training is that there are a few very typical mistakes made which result in such problems as mentioned above.
if you want to train your glutes you need to:
use your glutes :
this is what happens typically - a woman comes to the gym, she is wellinformed in a way and gos heavy on her squats, deads and lunges. she feels like she is giving her all, but for some reason, she cant get her bum to respond. her quads grow and she might see a curve to her hams but the glutes just will not grow. whats up with that? the problem is that our glutes have evolved to perform a certain job:

your bum is made for walking, sprinting, jumping and climbing. in our sedentary lives we rarely sprint or climb any more or even walk really, so our glutes have been dormant for a long time probably. when you hit the gym with these dormant glutes and hit them with the traditional deadlifts and squatvariations you can go as heavy and deep as you can and still get mediocre results at best. you get discouraged. you think its your age, genetics, whatever. before you give up on your glutes try to activate them. yes im talking about getting started with all the odd-looking sissymovements. like starting with practicing flexing your glutes when you sit at your desk to doing the hamraises and hipraises at the gym before even touching the barbell. most individual's glutes contract harder during bodyweight glute activation exercises than from one-rep max squats and deadlifts. you must possess adequate hip flexor flexibility in order to open up the hips and maximally activate the glutes. furthermore, you must be able to control your own bodyweight and learn how to contract the glutes properly before you begin adding weight because if you dont sensitize your glutes, your quades will do the squats and your hams and lower back will do the deads - and a dead butt is still there. in addition to getting your butt to wake up from years or decades of slumber, what always helps is to understand the way it actually works: as the picture above illustrates, we have 3 musclegroups in out bums- maximus, medius and minimus. they all have a function and they are all important in giving you the look you want to achieve.

your glutes are involved in the following motions: hip extension, hip abduction and hip external rotation.

the best way to work on these is to include sprinting, leaping and also sidewise leaps in your routines. hip hyperextension occurs naturally during walking, running, sprinting, throwing, lunging, and hip flexor stretching. an additional problem occurs because maximum glute activation can be achieved ONLY when your muscle is at resting length. that means that tight hip flexors prevent hip extension and therefore that also prevents maximum glute activation.

our glutes have evolved to give maximum explosive strenght in two planes of motion - the vertical (jump) and the horizontal (sprint/leap).

in the gym you can see two types of hip extension exercises - those that mimic  jumping  (squats, deadlifts, and static lunges) and those that mimic sprinting (reverse hypers, back extensions, hip thrusts).

as you already see, the jumping movements use mostly glutes and the sprinting motions are based on ham/glute activation. in order to maximise glute activation you need to: 1) use maximum range of motion (ROM) (asstothegrass), heelpush-technique and glutesqueeze in vertical (jumping) exercises 2) perform the hip hyperextension exercises with bent knees in order to lessen the hamstring domination and recruit maximum gluteal effort.

the hip extension exercises with the highest glute activation are the kneeling squat (67%), deadlift (55%), sumo deadlift (52%) and Zercher squat (45%). 

the hip hyperextension exercises with the highest glute activation are the single leg bent leg reverse hyper (122%), hip thrust (119%), pendulum quadruped hip extension (112%), bent leg reverse hyper (111%). 

even such sissymovements as hip abduction, external rotation and hip adduction (yes the girlygirl machines) recruit the upper gluteus maximus muscles to a greater degree than your traditional squats and lunges.

i by no means mean to say that you should quit on these basic heavy movements - no way. they are a basis of a good LEGroutine - and that is how they should be viewed. what i am saying is google a few glute/hip/adductor movements : (glute bridge, single-leg glute bridge, weighted glute bridge, hip extension, bird dog, weighted bird dog,  hip thrust, lying abduction, band abduction, external rotations with bodyweight or band etc etc) and build from bodyweight glutesensitizing to weighted work. choose 3-4 movements and use a basic periodization with them going from bodyweight sets of  3x15 (with a hold in the top position) going to weighted sets of 5 x 5 over a period of 6 - 8 weeks. do that twice a week in addition to or included in your normal workouts. it will not take much time. but it will give results. i promise. and before working your legs with heavy squats and deads, warm up your glutes with a couple of glute-sensitizing movements and pre-exhaust them with a couple of weighted ones. it will be worth your wile.

in my next post id like to cover some issues about nutrition that could help with getting rid of the stubborn fat that covers up even the most fab glutes.