If you’re anything like me, growing some nice glutes is a major source of your gym motivation. And as a girl who started off with a pancake booty, I’m here to make the process a whole lot easier for you.
In this post, I’ll explain how to structure your glute day, the best exercises to grow your glutes, plus form, diet, and training advice.
How Often Should You Train Your Glutes Each Week?
Figuring out how many times to train glutes per week for best glute growth can be really confusing, because there are a few things to consider. It’s great to try and train your glutes 2 – 3 times a week. However, make sure you’re resting enough to ensure your muscles have enough time to recover.
Muscle recovery is just as important as the actual workout when it comes to growing your glutes. This is because in order to grow, muscles need two main processes, tearing and repair.
- Muscle Tearing: achieved by weight lifting and progressive overload (gradually increasing your weight as you build strength and muscle)
- Muscle Repair and Recovery: your muscles need time to recover from the tears, which means you need to rest. However, your diet is also important to help the recovery process. This is where protein comes into the equation.
Experiment with your workout split to find the right glute recovery time for you. However, I do work my glutes every three days, so just over twice a week. I’ve found that any more would be too much for me.
And of course, I’m definitely not too strict on this routine. Especially when I’m on my period, or even just really busy, I’ll have a break from the gym. It’s all about balance, so train what you want when you feel recovered and ready.
How Much Protein do I Need to Eat?
Protein is an essential macronutrient for muscle growth, including your glute growth goals.
To grow muscle, you should aim to eat around 1.6 – 2.2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight everyday.
If you’re new to tracking your protein, you can google how many grams of protein are in certain foods, or check the nutrition label. Even just aiming for 100 grams of protein a day is a good baseline to simplify it for you.
What Are the Best Exercises to Grow Your Glutes and How to Structure a Glute Day?
I love to have two glute isolation days a week, because I’ve found this gives me the best results. To structure a glute day, there are four types of exercises you should include.
You can pick one from each category to build your personalised glute day routine. (P.S., I’ve added a heart next to the exercises I personally do.)
1. Shortened Position Exercises (Hip Thrust Variation):
- Hip Thrusts
- KAS Glute Bridges
Form tip: Take these slow and focus on squeezing your glutes at the top. Make sure you are making a 90 degree angle at the top of the movement (with your legs)
2. Lengthened Position Exercises (Hinging Movements):
- Romanian Deadlifts (RDLs)
- Good Mornings
Form tip: make sure this is a hinging motion at the hips, like you are pushing a door closed behind you with your glutes.
3. Unilateral Exercises (Single Leg):
- Bulgarian Split Squats
- Step-Ups
- Reverse Lunges
Form tip: focus on leaning forward to really isolate your glutes rather than your quads.
4. Glute Medius Exercises (Side Glutes):
- Cable Kickbacks
- Hip Abduction Machine
Form tip: Focus on slow and controlled movements, and follow your body’s natural range of motion rather than overextending and possibly injuring yourself.
How Many Sets and Reps for Each Exercise?
When you are working out, you want to repeat the movement multiple times. You should typically aim for 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps.
- Reps: A single repetition of a movement. Say you perform a hip thrust 8 times.
- Sets: A group of reps. So you would want to repeat those 8 hip thrust reps 3-4 times, with a break in between.
It doesn’t really matter how many sets or reps you choose to do, as long as they are between the above ranges and you are challenging yourself enough to feel progress. If you can hit failure by your last few reps, it’s usually a good sign that you are challenging yourself enough. However, don’t be afraid to up the weight if you can complete yourself too comfortably. This is where we see progressive overloading, which is essential for muscle growth.
What is Progressive Overloading and Why Does it Matter?
Progressive overloading is just gradually increasing your weight as you get stronger. It’s essential for muscle growth because your muscles will adapt and become stronger to lift the weights as you work out. So increasing the weight makes sure you are challenging yourself enough to see results.
This is because your muscles will tear and then repair when you continuously increase the weight. It’s this process that grows the muscle since the muscle fibres grow back thicker in between tears.
You don’t need to increase your weight everyday, just as you feel necessary based on how competent you feel with the weights.
Does the Order of my Routine Matter?
The order of your gym exercises does matter, but it’s still individual to you. It’s all about how much energy you have, so you usually want to start with your most effective, or difficult exercises.
- 1st: Your most effective exercise while you have the most energy. Usually, this is your hip thrust variant.
- 2nd: The next most effective movement. Personally, I put my single leg exercise here since I do step-ups, which are quite exhausting. However, a lot of people put their hinging movements here, since the form is particularly important for you to focus on.
- 3rd: Since you want to have your least effective exercise last, just your next priority movement here. Personally, I do my hinging movements here since you want to put a lot of energy into your form.
- 4th: I leave my glute medius exercises last given I find them the least effective. However, still focus on your form and progressive overloading overtime.
Although you are essentially ranking the importance or effectiveness of your glute exercises, all four movement types are important to effectively grow your glues. You’re just ranking them because your muscles will become more and more fatigued throughout the workout, so you want to prioritise your most effective exercises.
Do I need to Warm Up & Down to Grow Muscle?
Warming up before your workouts is essential to ensure glute activation and prevent injury. Warming up your muscles with lighter movements primes your muscles for exercise, which is important to maximise results. Basically, your muscles will be more prepared for the heavy lifting and therefore work better. Additionally, you can get injured by jumping straight into weightlifting.
The same goes for warming down. You want to gradually decrease your heart rate at the end of your gym session to prevent injury and help your muscles recover.
Stretching is not enough of a warm up for proper glute activation, so ensure you are focusing on dynamic warmups.
What Should You Eat to Support Glute Growth?
Your diet fuels both your workouts and recovery, so ensuring you are eating the right macronutrients is important for glute growth.
As well as hitting your daily protein goal, make sure you’re eating an enough before workouts. Carbs are vital for your pre workout meal since you’ll need the energy for weightlifting.
Additionally if you take any vitamins like iron supplements or B vitamins, make sure you’re taking them before you head off.
I am iron deficient to be fair, but I can even get dizzy when I’m lifting without taking my supplements or having a proper meal. On glute days, when I lift the most, I like to try and have a steak with chips and vegetables as a nice big pre workout meal.
Of course, you do also need to be eating enough calories everyday to grow muscle. A calorie surplus is great for muscle growth, or even just keeping your calories at maintenance. You can definitely still grow your glutes in a calorie deficit, however it may not be as effective.
Should I be Taking Supplements to Help Glute Growth?
Look, supplements can definitely help promote glute growth. However, I do like to keep it simple. I don’t take pre workouts just because I think that would be way too much for me. I don’t even drink coffee so that much caffeine just isn’t for me. However, it is totally normal. I would just recommend buying from reputable companies if you are interested. However, I do take creatine, oxyshred, and I also have protein powders.
- Creatine: Creatine is a supplement mostly used for muscle growth. I would recommend creatine to every woman. It’s very well researched and effective for muscle growth, performance, and even brain health. Just make sure you are getting unflavoured monohydrate creatine because it’s the most beneficial and researched.
- Oxyshred: Oxyshred is totally optional, and is used for weight loss. I like to take this instead of a pre workout and mix it with my creatine.
- Protein Powders: Protein powders are just that, powdered protein. Whey protein is the most common, but you can also get vegan options. I try not to have more than one serve a day, which for me is usually in my Ninja Creami’s. But they really are just an easy way to help you hit your protein goal.
Growing your glutes does take consistency. But enjoy the process! Create a great gym playlist and make time for your workouts. Try creating your own routine with my above guide and focus on progressive overload. You’ll see great results in time.
