A lot of people lift weights to get a bigger butt. To make it happen, you’ve probably incorporated a lot glute exercises and machines you’ve seen online. Popular ones include the donkey kickback, fire hydrants, cable kickbacks, etc. However, do you actually feel your glutes working during your glute workout? If not, your workouts could be doing nothing to develop your glutes. It’s important to connect to any muscle you’re trying to develop, so below will discuss why you’re lacking that connection and how to fix it.
You likely can’t feel your glutes because you either have bad hip posture or you aren’t using enough load. Bad posture will prevent the glutes from fully stretching and squeezing during the workout. Additionally, inadequate load (or weight) makes it so the glutes aren’t being worked to their full potential. Use the videos and information below to solve these issues and get connected to your glutes.
Reason #1: Poor Hip Posture
Bad posture makes any workout less effective. In this case, “posture” refers to how well you can keep your body in an ideal position while resting or exercising. Since proper form is crucial for exercise, having bad posture will not let you fully express your muscles, reducing work your muscles can do. The most common form of bad hip posture is lower-crossed syndrome (discussed below).
Another common form of bad posture is upper crossed syndrome; when the head and shoulders naturally round forward. This is common in desk-job workers and makes your chest/back workout far less effective. To find out if you have upper crossed syndrome, see the article here.
Lower Crossed-Syndrome
Lower Crossed-Syndrome (also called Anterior Pelvic Tilt) describes the excessive rounding of the back due to the hips tilting too far forward. Imagine the pelvis (hip bone) like a bowl of water. Ideally, this bowl should be flat to keep all the water inside. If you have lower crossed-syndrome, the bowl is tilting forward and spilling water in front of you. This gives an idea of how the hips look and why they also cause the back to arch.
What Causes Lower Crossed Syndrome?
In general, poor posture is caused by “muscle imbalance.” This means having muscles that are too tight and others that are too weak. Below is a table describing what muscles are responsible for lower-crossed syndrome:
| Muscle That Are Too Tight | Muscles That Are Too Weak |
| Gastrocnemius (calf muscles) | Anterior/Posterior Tibialis (Shin Muscle) |
| Hip Flexors (Front of the Hips) | Gluteus Maximus (“Butt muscle”) |
| Adductors (Inner Thighs) | Gluteus Medius (Side-butt) |
To correct this, you simply have to stretch what’s tight, strengthen what’s weak, and create healthy habits to prevent this posture from coming back.
1) Stretching Tight Muscles
All three stretches below have the same guidlines:
- Get into the position shown and hold for at least 30-60 seconds
- You should feel a slightly painful “pulling” on the target muscle. That’s how you know you’re doing it right
- As you’re holding the stretch, relax your breathing. Every time you exhale, you should feel the target muscle relax slightly. Try to keep the rest of your body relaxed as well.
- After holding for 30-60 seconds on each side, move on to the next stretch
Calf Stretch
The “Couch Stretch” For Hip Flexors
Adductor Stretch
2) Strengthening Weak Muscles
Here are the guidelines for each strengthening exercise below:
- You should feel the target muscle working hard during the movement. If the muscle “burns,” you’re doing it right.
- Take your time doing each rep. Rushing through the exercises will make them ineffective. How many reps we recommend is shown below each video
Combat Stretch for shin muscles
Glute Bridge
Single Leg Toe Touch For Side-Butt
3) How to Apply These Stretches/Exercises To Your Workout
Using all 6 of the videos in order will make for the perfect warmup. Expect to spend about 10-15 minutes doing this, which is time well spent since it’ll make your glute workouts far more effective. However, to permanently fix bad hip posture, you’ll have to do these much more often.
It’s recommended to do these stretches/exercises at least once a day if not multiple times a day to really fix your hip posture. The frequency is crucial for improving hip posture because most people’s jobs are what causes the poor posture in the first place. If you’re spending 8 hours a day sitting, which is what causes the bad posture, you can expect a single 15 minute stretching session to fix the entire problem. Although this does not mean you have to stretch 8 hours a day, it does mean you should stretch and strengthen as often as possible.
Reason #2: Not Enough Load
If you’ve been following the above advice but still don’t feel your glutes, you may not be doing the right exercises during your workout. Most people, especially females, trying to grow their glutes use super light loads for very high reps. The belief is that light weight and high rep will “tone” the muscle without looking bulky. This is not true; this myth is a marketing gimmick used to sell workouts to women. In reality, most people would see great aesthetic benefits from heavier loads with compound hip exercises.
What Does Load Mean?
Load basically refers to how much weight you’re using for an exercise. Again, since most people use light weight for a lot of reps, they’re not loading their glutes as much as they should.
Adequate load is crucial for developing any muscle because that’s what signals the body to grow that muscle. Your body won’t grow it’s butt because you “feel the burn.” It’ll grow because you’re lifting something really heavy, so the body needs bigger glutes to handle that weight.
This is also why exercise selection is important. A common mistake with glute training is the overuse of isolation exercises. Instead, most of your glute training should use compound exercises since those exercise can handle much more load
What are Compound Exercises?
Compound exercises simply mean exercise that move more than one joint at the same time. Although this sounds like a simply requirement, the effect is different muscles can synergize and work together to handle more weight.
For example, a common glute exercise is the donkey kickback. This is an example of an isolation exercise because you’re only bending your knee. On the other hand, think of a step-up; placing one foot on a 12″ box, then trying to bring your body on top of that box like you’re walking up stairs. This is a compound movement because both your knee and hips are bending.
We’ll assign hypothetical numbers to showcase the difference. Let’s say your glutes produce 200 units of energy during the kickback, even when you’re going as heavy and as hard as you can. During the step-up, the glute by itself would produce 300 units or more because more muscles are involved, so the glute has to work harder to handle a bigger load (weight).
Best Glute Exercises for Maximum Load
The three exercises that work the glutes the most include the hip thrust, squat, and deadlift. Adding these three exercises into your routine should make it easier to feel your glutes. Just be sure to use progressive overload to keep the results coming.
Also keep in mind there are many different squat and deadlift variations. Most of them will effectively load the glutes, so if you’re new to these exercises, the videos below show some of the easier variations to start with.