The glutes are the largest muscles in your body and are responsible for many of the movements you do every day such as squatting, walking, and climbing stairs. Strong glutes help prevent injuries by strengthening your hips and knees. When your glutes are weak or underdeveloped, they can’t do their job of stabilizing those joints during movement. This makes it more likely that you’ll get injured while doing everyday activities such as walking upstairs or running.
Strong glutes also improve your posture; when your backside isn’t stable and strong, it shifts forward and causes back pain and tightness in the lower back. You might also want to build glute strength and muscle size to get a rounder backside for aesthetic reasons too. All of these are possible through strength training. But to get the most benefits, you need to train properly. Here are some of the most common mistakes people make with glute strength training.
Mistake #1: Not training your glutes hard enough
The glutes are a muscle group composed of three muscles, and they provide some of the most powerful movements in your body. The three muscles are:
- Gluteus maximus – This is the largest muscle in your body, and it helps you to extend your hip and raise your leg behind you. When this muscle contracts, it also internally rotates your femur (upper leg bone).
- Gluteus medius – This is located deep in both gluteal muscles and helps to stabilize them during movements such as walking or running. It plays an important role in maintaining balance while standing on one leg.
- Gluteus minimus – A small muscle that sits on top of both gluteal muscles and aids with rotational movements around this area (when squatting for example).
The glutes can be a tricky muscle group to train. They’re large and powerful muscles and require a lot of tension to fully activate them. Therefore, they respond well to heavy resistance. Still, some don’t heed this advice. Many lifters train their glutes with multiple sets of high reps (15-20+). But if you’re stuck at a plateau and aren’t gaining glute strength size, cut back on volume and add more resistance.
But be careful! When using heavier weights with movements like lunges and squats, it’s easy to lose form and cheat yourself out of a good workout by relying on momentum rather than proper technique.
Mistake #2: Lack of progression
If you’ve been training your glutes for a while and still don’t see gains, it’s likely because you’re not using progressive overload. Progression is how you build strength and muscle over time. That means increasing the intensity of our glute workouts over time so that they become more difficult to complete (and therefore stimulate more strength adaptations).
If you were to do the same glute workout day in and day out with no changes at all, then eventually your glute muscles would adapt to the stimulus you’re placing on them and stop growing or becoming stronger. That’s when using heavier resistance and doing less volume comes in. As mentioned, glutes respond well to training with heavier resistance, but they also have slow-twitch muscle fibers, so there’s a place for both high resistance and high-volume, low-resistance training. You can alternate or periodize the way you train your glutes, so you the benefits of both approaches.
Mistake #3: Not feeling your glutes activating
Another mistake that hinders glute growth is feeling the movements you do in your glutes. When you do hip extension exercises, like squats or deadlifts, you should feel your glutes activating. If your glutes aren’t firing properly during hip extension exercises (like squats), then you’re overusing other muscles like hamstrings and quads instead of your glutes when performing these movements
Mistake #4: Not using full range-of-motion
Many people don’t use a full range of motion with hip extension exercises. If you’re not using enough range of motion, you’ll never fully activate your glutes and won’t get maximum results from your workouts.
In a squat, for example, you should be able to go all the way down until your hips are below your knees. If you can’t get that low, it’s either because your knees are caving in or because your hip flexors are too tight. If you’re having trouble getting that low, try widening the stance of your squats. If you still have problems, you may have poor hip mobility and should work on that.
Mistake #5: Thinking squats are enough
Squats are helpful for building glute strength and size, but they target your quads more than your hamstrings and glutes. You’ll get more glute growth if you use a variety of glute-focused exercises including exercises that isolate your glutes. While it’s smart to do heavy compound lifts like back squats and deadlifts to target your legs, you won’t see the same results if you don’t add in some isolation exercises for your glutes.
Another way to target your glute muscles is to target each side individually. Perform exercises that work only one joint at a time (unilateral). For example, single-leg hip thrusts or Bulgarian split squats target each leg individually. Glute bridge with an isometric hold and hip thrusts work the glute muscles in isolation and can give your glutes the extra stimulus they need to grow.
Glute isolation exercises allow you to isolate each muscle group individually without the influence of other muscles. This allows for better control over the muscle being worked and more targeted training. There’s an exercise you’re probably not doing for your glutes – the step-up. One study found that step-ups elicited the greatest degree of gluteus maximus activation of the exercises they tested. Something to consider if you’re trying to develop stronger, rounder glutes.
Conclusion
To build the glutes you want, train smart. Realize that you can’t build glute size consistently by doing squats alone. Make sure you’re including glute isolation exercises in your routine too and performing exercises through their full range of motion – and make sure you’re feeling the burn in your glutes.
References:
- Neto WK, Soares EG, Vieira TL, Aguiar R, Chola TA, Sampaio VL, Gama EF. Gluteus Maximus Activation during Common Strength and Hypertrophy Exercises: A Systematic Review. J Sports Sci Med. 2020 Feb 24;19(1):195-203. PMID: 32132843; PMCID: PMC7039033.
- Boren K, Conrey C, Le Coguic J, Paprocki L, Voight M, Robinson TK. Electromyographic analysis of gluteus medius and gluteus maximus during rehabilitation exercises. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2011 Sep;6(3):206-23. PMID: 22034614; PMCID: PMC3201064.
- “What Are the Best Glute Exercises? – Bret Contreras.” 24 Aug. 2014, https://bretcontreras.com/best-glute-exercises/.
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