Barbell Shrugged - How To Add Mass To Dat Ass

Episode Date: May 27, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about how to add... This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about how to add ass. Three, two, one. This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about how to add mass to that ass. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. The galaxy's a battery. What?

Did you just climax? Are you shaking too? Three, two, one. Those are the best. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe staying here with Chris Moore, Doug Larson, CTP behind the camera

and Charlotte. We are doing the episode you've all been waiting for. Long time coming. How to add mass to that ass. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. What's been on everybody's minds in the beginning

is when are these guys going to talk about how to make my ass ass-tastic. So that's what we're going to be getting into today, seriously. Before we go any further, go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. Also, there are some pretty cool e-books over there that you might want to check out. We actually put together some information that a lot of people don't know that's just out there for free. I talk to people sometimes.

They're like, hey, I'm like, hey, did you get that e-book? And they go, oh, no, you know, I really can't. I don't know if I want to spend any money right now. I'm like, it's free. Just go over there and get it. It's not a big deal. You shout like that at them. It's free. Don't you understand it's free? Yeah, usually I'm

at the peak of frustration and then I just start screaming as well. Alright, so, Doug. You're going to ask me when I'm going to make the ass e-book? That's coming out soon. Master that ass e-book. That's coming out soon. Master that ass e-book. Five magical moves.

So, why do, I mean, who doesn't want an ass, right? That's the first question. Everyone wants an ass. That's why we're doing the episode. Yeah, I mean, it's like a no-brainer. Even if you're, I think this is definitely going to appeal to the women. A lot of people are like, hey, why don't you talk about women more? This is definitely geared towards women from our perspective.

But for the guys too, man, I mean, having an ass is a great thing to have. Once mine kind of filled in, I noticed I got a lot more attention. As a young boy growing up on a farm, once my ass grew in, boy, that made all the difference in the world. I thought it was all about the abs until I got a bigger ass, and then everything just came together in my life. You have underdeveloped, weak, dysfunctional glutes. Can you do anything well in life?

Yeah. You stand there. Everybody wants to squat more. I mean, the ass is pretty important in the squat itself. If you've got a flat ass, you're probably not that good of an athlete. You probably don't run very fast. You probably don't jump very high. You're probably not that strong overall as a person.

You don't see any world-class strongman competitors or powerlifters or sprinters or football players that have flat asses. They all have big asses. Make some good athletes. You can be a good cyclist or a good long-distance runner, but you don't usually think of those butts as being the first butts you crave.

Man, look at that chick. If we were to rank the butts that we crave, what's the top of the list, Chris? Oh, geez. This is already going south. We knew this was going to go south. We just didn't think it was going to go south so fast. Can my wife hear the recording from the kitchen?

She's in there. They're against the door. We don't have to say any names. I can just like... Exhibit A. I was thinking like soccer players crossfitters

weightlifters Oh yeah. Here's the thing I remember watching some amateur MMA fights and Doug and I were talking about you just put money

on the guy with the biggest ass they walk in the ring It's not a bad bet. It's like that guy is probably more athletic than the next guy

the biggest ass normally wins especially in an amateur scenario. That's like the tell in that situation, who's got the biggest ass. Yeah, because that's just going to be the most athletic person in the ring.

It's hard to argue with that. Yeah. I remember Bo Jackson spoke at NSCA one time, and he basically, they asked him why he's so fast, and he basically said, because I got a big ass. Like one of the best football, probably one of the best athletes to ever roam the earth, basically referred to his entire athletic prowess being because he had a big ass.

Yeah. It's pretty much responsible for initiating all the movement that happens in your lower body. So, I mean, and your lower body is where your feet are at. Your feet are on the ground. And it makes you move around. Yeah, we kind of automatically get a whole lot of glute training in our normal everyday routine. But if you do lots of squats, deadlifts and whatnot. But if you have big legs and a flat butt, you probably need to spend a little bit of extra time focusing on doing extra single leg work, extra hip dominant hinging where you're doing RDLs or good mornings or reverse hypers or anything that has a very hip dominant focus to it. Even barbell glute bridges, we did a technique on that a little while back.

We put Jackie Perez on the cover image even though she wasn't in the episode. No one complained about it. You're not stuck with a flat ass forever if you're that person that just wonders will I ever be able to build a booty? You can. Yeah, and if you're one of those people that you're doing a lot of the workouts

and your legs are bigger than your ass and you're trying to... There's a good chance you may not be moving properly. So you start building up those butt muscles and you're probably probably going to start moving your motor pattern is going to clean up things are going to get lighter you're going to be your leverages are going to improve clean snatch better squat better everything and your knees and your back probably hurt less yeah yeah absolutely yeah even even really good athletes like like gymnasts are a great example gymnasts are overall pretty quad dominant athletes like generally gymnasts have very big quads they but they don't have very big glutes for whatever

reason their sport just doesn't really call for it so even when a when a gymnast is coming into like the world of crossfit and they need to get better at weightlifting one of the main things they probably need to do is a lot of hip dominant very glute dominant work to shore up that imbalance yeah i mean uh a lot of them have a lot of like anterior theyinant, very glute-dominant work to shore up that imbalance. Yeah, I mean, a lot of them have a lot of anterior. They're working on anterior. So the front of their body is getting a lot of work, and the posterior of their body isn't getting as much work. So a good way to think about it is just posterior chain.

You hear people talk about, oh, the posterior chain, and your ass is like the point in which that hinges. There's a few people who couldn't use a little bit more of the work for the muscles you don't see in the mirror. Most people getting into CrossFit who are new to fitness overall probably could stand a little bit more of a focus on everything they don't see when they look in the mirror. Yeah, I remember that.

I remember when I first started getting into weightlifting, that was something that was commonly noted is, yeah, if you want to be a better athlete, work all the muscles you can't see. Yeah, you don't see a whole lot of that in most just typical gyms. You guys don't perk out your ass when you're in front of the mirror? Am I doing this? Yeah, I mean, if you think of the traditional training that a lot of guys,

especially guys our age, grew up doing, it was biceps, chest, abs, and that was the typical beach routine. It was all the stuff that was on the front of you. If you're looking in the mirror, you can see your biceps, you can see your pecs, you can see your biceps you can see your pecs you can see your abs and then your back was kind of neglected your glutes and hamstrings were kind of neglected and then over time as you become more experienced and you become a little more educated on what you need to be doing then you

start doing a whole lot more in the way of pull-ups and and dead lifting and rdls good mornings olympic lifts and all the things that that build your traps down all the way to your calves. I did do some vicious hamstring curls like sessions, man. Brutal. Brutal. Oh, man. The key to performance. Working the rack on the hamstring curls. When we were at Westside Barbell,

Louie saw some girl on the leg curls, walked over to her and said, getting a pump? I can see that. Yeah, he goes, I can see that. We're going to show that now in this episode that's got to come out maybe maybe

I don't know you know a band of hamstring curls is a good exercise maybe we can do a take equal out or something on that one time

and you can't forget either the I mean really the big purpose between between

or for having a much more luscious booty is so that you can star in rap videos. And just for procreation in general. Or make the twerk team. Well, isn't it the butt that makes you, like, they've done some science. Like, if you have a butt, like, I'm more likely to want to, you know, with you. Yeah. Well, it's an attractive feature, for sure.

Do you need science for that, or do you need every man's opinion who has ever lived in the history of the galaxy? No, but I think they put science to it now. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's the main indicator of evolutionary fitness. Well, I forget what the ratio was. It was for guys that are attracted to ladies, there was a certain ratio between the waist and the hips that it was like 0.7 or something like that.

So your waist is smaller than your hips by a ratio of 0.7. I think I'm making the number up. I think it's probably pretty close to accurate. That's inside. Look. He talks about how... The consuming instinct. Just wearing high heels boosts the glute appearance

by a certain percentage because it matches that ratio better. If you just get up on your toes, you have an automatic... Hey, we're not going to advocate you to use steroids. We're not going to advocate you to fucking cheat with your ass. What I'm saying, though,

is you take these tips we're going to give you and you wear high heels. Are you saying that heels is cheating? Oh, it's cheating. Yeah, that's not... That ain't getting in the ass. That's cheating. I was like,

how do we get on steroids for high heels? We got to make it clear, we are not anti-high heel. We got to... No. Well, there's a time and place for everything. Time and place, yes. We're pro-nice booty, and if that's a time and place for everything. Time and place. Yes. Yeah.

We're pro nice booty and if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. That's what it takes. If you have great ankle mobility, that's the time to strap on some heels. If you're having some challenges, you probably want to stay away from them.

My wife, a couple weeks ago, she did, she destroyed her calves during a workout and then decided to wear heels the next day. Guess what?

It took her a whole week to recover. She didn't look that sexy walking those, I guess, too. Like, her cringing and pain. That's right. Trying to look cute and shit. Looking good. Looking good, babe. Yeah, but ladies like guys with nice butts, too.

That's why girls watch football. It's a bunch of dudes with tight pants on with nice butts. That's true. All football players have big asses. I don't want to brag, but my wife seems to think I'm doing all right back there. I got a massive bulbous head, but it's balanced by my massive ass, too.

I passed the gene down to my youngins, too. My Max and May have nice asses from what I can tell. I don't know. What? I'm saying, they're built for athleticism.

I'm not like checking out my kids' ass. I'm saying they're built. They're a good stock. They're a good stock. You know what I'm saying? Should we start this show over again?

Everybody knows what the fuck I'm talking about. Where are we at? You mentioned the rap videos. So what makes a good ass? Tell us, Mike. Oh, man. What makes a good ass? Yeah, what's a good ass look like?

It's very subjective, I feel like. It's super physical qualities. Lots of muscle. Lots of muscle. Not too much other stuff. Nice and firm. Not too much other stuff. Nice and firm. Not too much other stuff. Nice and firm.

You know, I think a lot of, actually, I think a lot of people in trying to be so lean that they never put on enough muscle mass in that area. So I think for me, I'd rather see like if you have abs and no butt, I mean, let's sacrifice the abs a little bit. Get a little ass. A little weight gain cycle. Yeah. A little weight gain cycle

would be good. Put on some ass. Yeah. You got to put on some ass. Especially the butt. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not sure what you're asking.

I'm like, I'm like, man, where am I going with this? This is a touchy, like I could go in the wrong direction real fast.

You know what I mean? It's like when there's this time last week. Okay. We'll switch it up. What is your personal favorite ass exercise? Oh, I thought you were going to say weight class. 58 kilos. 75 plus.

What are we saying now? What was the question? What's the best exercise for growing a big butt? A nice butt. Best exercise. Oh, man. I would say, I think sumo deadlifts are really good. We were talking about this.

This is very underutilized exercise. It is underutilized. My personal favorite, probably sumo deadlifts. Yeah. Okay, Chris, what about you? Man, sumo, that's obviously the best one. You can do also... Don't be silly.

No, I mean, you can do... I think it's better to do them for a little bit lighter rep, but wide stance squats, where the emphasis is pushing your butt back a little further, are also very good. Again, you got to be careful with using too much weight. Some people will see a West Side Style power-up, they're doing wide stance stuff,

and they may load too quickly and that can be a little tough on your hip joint. You can just do wider than you normally would go in a squat with light loads like 10, 15 reps

just to feel how it will light up your hips and you can progress from there but that'd be a good exercise. What about yours, Doug? Two of them. One of them. Oh, come on.

He gave me one option and then he takes two. I might do three. River Elevator Split Squats, that's probably the movement that's guaranteed to make me sore. It's hard to get your glutes sore. And river for elevated split squats, they seem to every time make my glutes sore. And whether that's like the key to growing bigger glutes and actually like getting hypertrophy in the muscle itself, it's up for debate.

Like we talked with Andy before, you don't need soreness to get bigger, but it's a good indication that you're... Working that muscle. Yeah, you've done enough to make that muscle pay attention. And so that's key. The other thing with that movement is you're not going to screw it up

and not activate your glutes. There's a lot of movements people, they get out of position. Even on a sumo deadlift, they can be in a wrong position, and now they've compensated and moved the load somewhere else. With the rear foot elevated split squat, I don't think there's really – I mean, if you do it right, you're going to hammer that ass. That's awesome.

You are going to hammer that ass. You're doing right. There you go. That actually has also really good exercises to-up before you do regular back squats. I did a lot as a way to kind of activate my glutes. Yeah. And your balance gets sort of dialed in, and then you just feel really rock solid and ready to squat. That's a good idea.

I've never done that before I squatted. I also kind of will hop on that foot, too. Squat and get comfortable. Then as I get warm, I'll kind of hop on a one-leg. I do plyo, single-leg plyos before I squat to make sure that everything's firing. Yeah. And then you go into a squat. Like if you don't do that now, ladies and gentlemen, that'd be a great way to automatically

do a little better than a back squat. Yeah. I mean, if you took a brand new person, you brought them in the gym, this is a very conservative thing to do with someone who's brand new, but they're going to get sore glutes and they're going to feel great the next day. And they're going to be like, wow, that really worked. You don't even necessarily have to do rear foot elevators, split squats, even though that's, like I said,

it's one of my favorite movements. You can just have a new person do a bunch of lunges and guaranteed they're probably not going to hurt themselves in the moment, assuming that they're strong enough to do some lunges. And then number two, they're going to come back in a day or two and they're going to be like, man, my butt was so sore.

That shit really worked. And psychologically, I mean, physiologically, you did something great for them, as long as you didn't totally destroy them. But psychologically, they're going to be like, wow, I felt that what I did worked. Whatever that means to them, they felt some soreness. So they knew that the exercises that they did

was going to have an effect somewhere where they actually wanted it. Because if you get a sore muscle from doing something like lunges like you just feel good about what you did i think a lot of people have a hard time making their butt sore too they they'll go on a hike and their quads get sore but if they go in the gym it's such a novel thing to blow up that yeah they'll you've got their attention you gotta believe your butt's getting better for it to get better too you gotta believe i believe it your glutes are going to grow. I believe it's happening. I can feel it happening.

I can feel it getting higher and tighter. Yeah. The other thing that no one ever talks about and I rarely talk about, maybe when I first went from, because I had a very Olympic weightlifting style training growing up. And so I did a lot of vertical torso type movements. I was very quad dominant. I had really good mobility from doing gymnastics. And so I could stay very vertical on front and back squats. And I really hadn't broken into the powerlifting world that much. I really hadn't focused that much on doing good mornings. And I did a lot of RDLs growing up, but I really

hadn't done heavy good mornings. I really hadn't done that much single leg work. I hadn't done reverse hypers. I hadn't done glute bridges. Like I hadn't focused that much on posterior chain stuff specifically. We squatted a lot and whatnot, but I'd never really like seen the other side of it. So this is so when I was pretty new and when I, for the very first time, started doing low bar back squats, kind of like Chris said, wide stance, low bar back squats, that was a big help. And then the other thing was I would take my max on high bar back squats. That was a big help. And then the other thing was I would take my max on high bar back squats and I would do heavy quarter squats for max reps. So I was, I was the opposite of a

lot of people. I never did quarter squats growing up. Like I had a good coach from the beginning. I always did full depth squats. And so I'd never actually done quarter squats. And so taking a hundred percent of your max and doing sets of 12 or 15, where all you're doing is, is kind of pushing your butt back. You're keeping that vertical shin. It's like your ass is like uncramping and then cramping on the way up. And all you're doing is terminal hip extension where you can just feel your glutes. I've never done contracting and then contracting again. You'll get an awesome glute pump and you'll be able to actually feel what it's like to work your glutes so if you've never done that it's pretty conservative you can just take the pins you know these pins and put

them like right here where you can just unrack the weight where you only have you know a foot foot and a half maybe two feet at the absolute most right we're doing a very short range of motion keeping that vertical shin the whole time and just doing that terminal hip extension you'll it'll feel fantastic and you'll you'll really be able to feel your glutes work. It'll be a lot of confidence too. I do that now before I go to the beach. Your squat will go up. Get some blood flowing in the butt, go to the beach, put on the booty shorts.

Yeah, and then every time you go to hit a heavy weight, even if it's 90%, it doesn't feel that heavy because you always have 100%. Your back's at 400 pounds and you do sets of 12 for quarter squats, you're just used to having that heavy weight on your back. And then if you go to do 360, which is 90% of 400, then it doesn't feel that heavy because you're used to having that big heavy bar on your back.

So psychologically, it has an effect as well. So now you're sexier and you're stronger. Win-win. Win-win. Solving the world's problems, man. Solving the world's problems. Yeah. And quite literally, when I did that, I had a couple of

interesting changes that I made to my training back then, but these were two of the big ones, was doing those low bar back squats and doing those heavy quarter squats, and I PR'd everything. I maxed every four weeks, and for 12 weeks in a row, every four weeks, this was off-season for football back when I was like a freshman. Did you PR on picking up chicks?

No. What about dudes? In all fairness, I didn't quantify it. I didn't quantify it. I mean, I could have had? No. What about dudes? In all fairness, I didn't quantify it. I didn't quantify it. I mean, I could have had a record semester, but I didn't measure it. I didn't write it all down. I was so peaked at the time. It was hard to beat my record. The thing is, he immediately said no. There was no hesitation. He was like, no, I was too busy doing squats. I was too busy training.

But yeah, I mean, I quite literally PR'd pretty much everything. I PR'd my clean and jerk, my snatch, my front squat, my back squat, my low bar back squat, my deadlift. I PR'd pretty much everything. I PR'd my clean and jerk, my snatch, my front squat, my back squat, my low bar back squat, my deadlift. I PR'd everything in part because I got stronger everywhere, but in part because I really felt like for the first time I was able to really use my hips, really use my glutes.

Probably jumping hard, running faster and everything. So how do you know if your butt's working or not? You can feel it working. That's a big part of it. If you can actually feel your glutes contracting on the way up on a heavy set, then you know they're working because you can feel them contracting. Oh. Oh.

I see what he's getting at here. There's time for a demonstration on this. You want to lay down there first, Chris? You want me to try squeezing anything? We're going to do what we call the barbell butt test. Hashtag barbell butt test. Hashtag barbell butt test. I'm about to demonstrate the barbell butt test.

And after we demo this, we're going to take a break. Demo? Let's see how they would do it at home. And what we want you to do at home, ladies and gentlemen. If you're on iTunes, you've got to come over to the video version. And what we want you to do is we want you to also do the barbell butt test. And hashtag barbell butt test. And we'll check them out. Maybe we'll do a prize.

But we're going to do some booty shorts, right? We're thinking about doing Instagram hashtag barbell butt test. I don't want to promise that because we're not going to do it. I said thinking. I want to promise it so that it forces us to do it. That's probably not a good look at that. All right. All right. Yeah, right. All right, well, no promise.

You might get. I'll get a Sharpie and write Barbell Struggles on some booty shorts. Along with your phone number. All right, come on, Mike. Show them what the test is. There he goes. Talk them through it, Doug. All right, here's what we're going to do.

Mike's going to lay on his stomach with one plate on the bar. Actually, Chris, you want to help out with this? I will. So I'm going to mosey on over. Look at that ass. Chris is going to give the bar a little push, and we're going to see if it makes it over the hump that is Mike's ass. Oh!

Stopped it. This is a passing score? This is a pass, but it's like a C. So this could be better, right? Hold on, let's get it again. That's a good question, Doug. Can you flex during this or no?

I'm going to go with no. So standard is you get no flex. You get no flex. If you want to repeat with a flex, you can see how you fare. You're eating those shorts. That flex. If you want to repeat with a flex, you can see how you fare. You're eating those shorts. That's really what you want to see. You want to bounce off.

One more time. We'll go with flexed. Boom. There you go. If it bounces back, you got to go on. I like flexed better because I can't just push

your ass out of the way. That's right. How big is it? Like, was it heart or what? So what do you think, Doug? Ladies and gentlemen. Would you or wouldn't you? What is his score?

You passed the test. What is his score, his glute score? 6.7. That's all right for a dude. Well, for everybody who doesn't pass the test, go try it during the break. We're going to have a technique quad on something, right? We're going to have a technique WOD on something, right? We're going to do a technique WOD on glute training and glute activation. I'll write a six-week program.

If you fail, we'll give you a six-week program to a bigger ass. No, we won't. So if you fail, go try the test during the break while watching technique WOD. We'll come back and tell you how you can pass the test. That sounds good. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com.

Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. All right, here we go. In three, two, booty, booty, booty, booty rockin'. And we're back to talk about how to

add an ass to that ass. I feel like this is going to be a spinoff podcast. That's going to be the new show. Weekly segments. The Ass Master Podcast. That's right. This Week in Booty News. Chris, if you were to plan a training cycle for somebody

and their goal was to grow the butt but nothing else. The butt and nothing else? What would that look like? Say they're like, my legs are just, they're plenty big enough. You're a quadzilla type person. Yeah. You're like, my butt's kind of like. There's plenty of ladies that don't want bigger legs.

They just want a bigger butt. Again, I mean, the first thing, just giving my background, the first thing I'm going to drift towards is doing things with a little bit wider stance that don't require so much. They just want a bigger butt. Again, I mean, the first thing, just giving my background, the first thing I'm going to drift towards is doing things with a little bit wider stance that don't require so much emphasis on the quads. So that could be like a really good one is like we said sumo deadlifts earlier, like things like stiff legs, sumo deadlifts even.

Wide stance, wide order stance squats, good mornings, wide stance box squats, anything with a little bit wider stance where I'm shifting the load down to the hips is what I would probably skew my programming towards. Yeah, to that point. For the main strength lifts. I was like, if you have a vertical shin, then the load,

and so you're not bending the knees forward, a lot of the load is just going to go to the hips. Just to get down there, if you're not going to bend the knee a lot, which you wouldn't do in these lifts, then just to get the load down and to get your thigh, apparently you got to bend a lot at the hip hip then so you're going to shift the burden back so anytime you lack a hip extension strength just doing that for a little while will help even if that's just as your assistance movement you do some wider stance hip dominant things

but then after that i'd probably follow that up with what doug was talking about a lot of single leg work where i was getting deeper than usual on one leg. That would probably be a nice one-two punch for glutes, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah, good mornings, RDLs. One-two glute punch. Good mornings and RDLs are fantastic. You're going to get hamstrings, glutes, and virtually no quad.

If you do a wider stance squat, like a wide stance box squat or a wide stance powerlifting squat with a vertical shin, you're definitely going to still be bending at the knee so you'll still be using your quad which you probably won't get a lot of quad growth out of that necessarily it's not it's not going to be direct uh a direct quad focused movement but that's actually a good thing you still want to actually you know bend your knee and straighten your knee during training that way you don't you don't lose any strength and you're not losing muscle mass in your quad. So, you know, you might do that at least once a week

where you're doing a big movement like that. That way you keep that strength and you keep some amount of balance there. But then maybe two days a week or three days a week, you're doing the more hip dominant type stuff like your RDLs, your reverse hyper, barbell glute bridges, good mornings, all the things that really aren't going

to be very quad focused at all that lifts with a kettlebell i like you put your feet up on a box uh the kettlebell is a little bit safer sometimes you're not focused on the load you're just doing more reps with it so you can take like a hundred pound kettlebell if you're a pretty strong guy if you're a girl or whatever and you slide yourself to kind of dip a little bit long deeper than you normally would let the kettlebell pull you down it puts a lot of intense stress on your glutes you do have like 20 reps with a hundred pound kettle would with the kettlebell pull you down. It puts a lot of intense stress on your glutes. You do have like 20 reps with a 100 pound kettlebell with the kettlebell

singing between your feet all the way. You're going to feel that in your ass. I think just from like an overall programming perspective, you may not even have to like change general programming

up a lot. So if you're in a gym and you're just doing the workouts, I think a great way to put more emphasis on the ass muscles is, or what some people may call glutes, is to like.

Scientists. Is to do a lot of those, do some accessory work or accessory work ahead of time. Accessory. Accessory. Is before you work out, like kind of pre-fatigue your glutes a bit make sure they're all getting activated

your glute med glute max I'm like I'm getting the board like I where's the signs again you know all of them all the

me max men I know if you go to if you go to Westside Bar that's what they do always pre-fatigueued a little bit you see people do it you see people do it

with a slingshot Mark Bell has them doing it a lot of people do that they pull out the slingshot put it on their knees I have like five of those things over there they're doing things

to get their glute med fired up they're doing things to kind of activate so like before you do maybe you don't want to shift all your programming around just that

but you want to kind of do an ass blast what you do is people are just going to roll on this whole show. So, uh, is pre-fatigue the glutes, do your workout and then afterwards hit them again with some more accessory work. Basically, if you're, if you're emphasizing, if you're paying attention to, if you're a

program, there's a few things that help address the weakness. If you give this a month, you'll start seeing pretty good improvement. Just being aware that you lack it and adding a little bit here and there will be a lot at first to address these weaknesses. And if you are one of those hip-dominant people, you may do some, like, glute activation prior to, say, a squat session. You may find that you're stronger immediately. Oh, yeah.

Just because more muscles are getting involved than might have not been getting activated otherwise. You know, a good activation exercise I like is if you tie a band around the bottom of a power rack or anything stationary and you face away and you put a band

between your legs so you're standing over it. You do a good morning exercise so you put it over your head and you don't have it so tight to where it's uncomfortable but you step away. Chris's favorite exercise

involves wrapping bands around his neck and head. So far I haven't, like, auto... What did the NXS say? Autorotic asphyxiation. Kill yourself jerking off with a band around your neck. Don't do that. That's bad form.

What I'm saying is, if you do a bandit before you do a deadlift... Try this. I have a feeling, like, we're going to be able to look at the YouTube stats and just people are going to start watching and just kind of, like like plummet the whole time. Checking out.

No, this will make you deadlift or squat more now. So if you do like a couple sets, like five to ten reps of a banded, put the band over your head, step away. Just so you can feel it in your hips, do a couple sets of banded good mornings. Really overemphasize the contraction of your glutes at the top. If you then go in to warm up for your deadlift or your clean or your squat, if you have a dysfunction problem, that'll be a good way of really noticeably right then you'll see yourself perform better. I'm a big fan of chains and bands for RDLs and good mornings.

It's so much easier. Down here, it's so much harder than compared to the top having more weight at the top just seems to to match that that glaring strength curve the strength curve is is enormous on rdls and good mornings because when you're bent over your leverage is so much poorer than when you're just barely bent over and it feels like nothing yeah so having having chains and bands really helps match that strength reinvents the exercise i like doing reverse hypers too out of a little band because instead of momentum getting the best of it, at the top I have to really contract my ass

in my lower back. Right. In that case, it's the exact opposite. When you're bent on a reverse hyper, that means like your weight, the weight is right below you and there's almost your weight list basically. There's no tension where on an RDL or good morning,

this is the hardest part. On a reverse hyper, that's the easiest part. So it's the exact opposite in that case. So in that case, I actually don't think you need chains and bands quite as much because you don't need to take the hardest part of the movement and make it even heavier. Like just add more weight because it's already the hardest part of the movement. The strength curve is the opposite in that case. So for a reverse hyper, you could just make it a little heavier.

For RDLs and good mornings, I really think chains and bands really are the key because especially in this conversation, if we're talking about glutes, since your glutes really are kind of the, the terminal hip extensors, that's really when you're going to get the best leverage to, um, to use your glutes,

which is why we talked about a minute ago, the quarter squats. I was just saying, just kind of get to hear my hips a little bit. And it's just that, that terminal hip extension where your glutes are really firing hard and completing the movement. In the case of an RDL and a good morning, when you're all the way bent over,

it's way more a hamstring thing than it is a glute thing. And when you get up here and it's really light, your glutes, they don't have a problem finishing the lift. It's not that heavy at the top. Right. If you don't change their bands, your glutes in that case are not really under max tension at all. It's not that heavy at the top. Right. If you don't change your bands, your glutes in that case are not really under max tension at all. It's pretty easy. So your glutes are being under-trained in that case while your hamstrings and your low back are getting the highest tension or the highest load they can handle.

That also allows you to save some unnecessary loading where you're not really weak. You don't have to load at the bottom. So you could do a heavy squat, and instead of doing just heavy good mornings too, you can take part of that and emphasize it with chains and bands and then unload the part where you don't need the extra work. So you don't beat yourself down unnecessarily.

So that's another benefit of using chains and bands. You can load just what you kind of want. If you just need a top-end load, then just go for that. Because you've got your full loading with a back squat. Another thing I've played around with a little bit lately is the Compex unit. You guys have seen that.

It's a little computer and then an e-stem unit, really. There's a lot of e-stem. So it's got the electrodes that come off. You smack them on your ass. You smack them? You smack them on your ass. Get yourself a cocktail and play some romantic music? That's right.

The Compex unit is kind of cool because there's a lot of different options on there. One is an actual resistance training session. But what I've played around with is going and training instead of doing a lot of spending a lot of time doing accessory movements for my lower body. How good is you wearing it? Like while you're jogging on the beach? I do it after I train. After I lift, I go home, put them on the muscles that I want to activate.

So I know that I have a little bit of dysfunction on my right side for external rotation. So what I do is I can actually target the very specific muscle. And you can do that with training a lot, but especially for maybe newer people, it won't fire for whatever reason. For me, I've been training for a long time. I do a lot of accessory movements, but for some reason there's still dysfunction. That's one way to do it. Another thing, too, is for people who have a long training history

and a lot of training volume under their belt, who may be prone to injury by doing more training volume, it's a good way to get those muscles firing without exactly having to put your tendons and stuff under a lot more stress. I know John Wellborn's working on a lot of that stuff, too, and I've been trying to catch up with him about that. I've talked to the Compex guys about that a little bit. But I find that to be pretty useful.

Funny story is right after I got that unit, I'm wearing nothing like, but I went and trained. I'm wearing nothing but black tights. So I'm standing in my living room and I've got a lot of windows in my house. I got my tights around my knees. And I got my wife putting E-stem units on my ass cheeks.

There you go. I'm just like naked, just standing there and then my neighbor who never comes over decides, I've only been there two days at this point

but like since then no one's ever come over. He never comes over. I've only lived there for two days. But since then nobody's come over. I've been there

for a couple months and like, it's like no one ever comes over but that day he decides to come over in that moment to accuse me of knocking his fence over. Yeah.

But this guy comes over and he's like knocking on the window, looking through the window. And there I am with my pants around my ankles and my life. Brand new neighbor. Brand new neighbor. And there's like my wife's putting electrodes on my ass. And I got this computer and I'm like, well,

you know, I put my pants up and I'm like, I just turn it on, start the workout. And then he, he pulls me outside to accuse me of things that I did not do. Allegedly. But it's kind of a funny scenario. I'm innocent.

I'm like the new guy in the neighborhood, tattooed beard, wearing nothing but black tights. And I got like this computer coming out of my ass and it's just jiggling. For you, it's completely normal normal day in my life the week we average tuesday all right when we come back from a break do you want to talk about programming sets reps and all that i'm going with yes yes all right all right thanks ctp i like when people agree with me i felt like we already had a break we did we already had a break all right did. We already had a break. All right, we're back from break number two.

Which I thought was break number one. That's what happens when we record too many episodes in one day. Doug pushes for a break. I was like, what is he doing? He's like, why does he look so confused? I've got a poo-poo. Doug is the king of public shits. That's right.

He's like, where did Doug go? We happen to be walking by a 7-eleven i'm gonna wreck that place i'll be right back all right we're gonna talk about programming for that ass so that's gonna be the name of the e-book that's gracious people either love us or hate us right now you know what we got like 178 other shows. Go watch one of those. The only one who loves us right now is Alex Macklin. That dude eats his shorts every time he trains.

Yeah, we should have had him on for the booty test. We should have. He'd do really well. It would do his calves. All right, Doug. So from a big picture programming perspective, what should people do? Sets and reps and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I found with me and a lot of other people that I've trained is that glutes tend to respond size-wise, hypertrophy-wise, they tend to respond very well to volume. So you don't have to only do heavy training for your glutes. A lot of times – Turn it up to 11. Sorry. Really pound those glutes.

That just popped in my head. had to come out sorry like you you definitely should do your your heavy squats and deadlifts and whatnot you know so if you built up to a you know heavy double or did you know five sets of five or something like that that's still great and you should definitely do that stuff but you know doing something like rear for elevated split squats for for five sets of 12 to 15 you know where you're getting getting into the teens with your rep ranges, heavy to failure is a great way to spur some growth, especially in your glutes. Glute ham raises, and that's more of a hamstring thing, but reverse hypers rather, same thing. You're not going to do super low reps on something like a reverse hyper. You're probably going to do something between 10 and 20, maybe even more want you need volume to get a good growth response out of your glutes

glute bridges same deal like in the teens is probably where you're going to get your best response so i've been doing wrong man i've been doing too many too many small steps especially if you're new especially if you're new and or you're a person that just doesn't have very good glute activation overall like if you're a person that just doesn't have very good glute activation overall. Like if you're a person that just can't ever feel your glutes working, getting more reps and actually training the muscle, more bodybuilding style where you can actually feel the muscle contracting. You're getting that, that quote unquote mind muscle connection where you can feel each contraction. You can feel the glutes working where you're like, you're getting a pump.

That's going to, that's going to go a long way towards building that muscle group specifically. Chris, booty food. What is it? That's a short. Funny you asked that because I didn't actually know what that was supposed to mean. Booty food. Bacon? I don't know.

Lots of ham. What kind of food should we be eating to grow that booty? I think you should eat the same exact thing you would grow any other muscle with. Does that make sense? That sounds reasonable. Well, the fact of the matter is if you don't have an ass and you're trying to grow an ass, and you're trying to make a muscle bigger, you are trying to gain weight right now. You need to follow all the other hypertrophy rules that work good for other athletes.

That's right. And so now you're more or less on a weight gain plan. That doesn't mean you have to gain 30 pounds of body weight necessarily, but if you want to have a bigger butt. But that'd be sweet if you did. Unless you lack 30 pounds worth of ass, which could be. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, but you might need to put, you know,

three to five pounds just on your glutes. And to do that, you're probably going to have to put, you know, how many other pounds on the rest of your body because it's going to be hard to grow just one muscle group yeah like your whole body's gonna grow collectively and so if you want to double the size of your glutes then you might have to add an extra 10 or 15 pounds to the rest of your body so you might actually need to to add a total amount of body weight of 15 maybe 20 pounds and then you can go lean back down and then you can actually see the glutes that you built. You need protein. You need carbs. That's right.

What's the other, what's the other macronutrient? I always forget about alcohol for making bad decisions later on. We just did a post-workout episode, episode one 78, one 78 was on post-workout nutrition. And in many ways that post-workout talk was talk was referencing people that wanted to aggressively gain muscle mass. So if you haven't listened to 178, that's a good episode to go listen to in addition to this one.

Combine these two shows and you too can have a great ass. I would say the great thing about these exercises, you can do these pretty frequently all the time. If you really need to work on your butt, you can do this every day, potentially. You could do some kind of one-legged squat every day. You could do light good mornings pretty frequently because the reps are a little higher and you're going for the pump, achieving a righteous pump in the rear quarters. So you could probably work on this a little bit every day and not be too, it's not too heavy of a recovery demand. So Chris, or CTP actually, is there any such thing

as an ass that's too big? I've seen them. I've seen them. I hate to be the first to say that, that there is such a thing. But it's a lot more rare than what people think, I believe. Oh, for sure, for sure.

You should, if the other things... I've never seen him have such a hard time talking he's all hot and bothered thinking are you getting visuals right now

yeah I was maybe the wrong time you're talking about the biggest booty you've ever seen I rarely see a nice ass that's too big like if you're super lean

I rarely see women that are like 12% body fat that have an ass that's too big that doesn't happen very often usually if someone's saying their ass is too big, it means that the muscle is not too

big. It's the rest of the ass. Something else is too big. The whole body's too big. So to address that question, if you're eating well and training hard, this is not a concern that your ass will somehow just bubble at some exceedingly fast rate out of control if you're just squatting heavy. That's not

going to happen. You don't have to fear gaining too much ass meat. Like, if you're a person that you don't want your ass to be seen from the front, that means that it's not your glutes that you're worried about. Because your glutes, you can't see from the front, no matter what. Even if your glutes are enormous, from the front, you're not going to be able to see your glutes.

Most def would not agree with this, though, because he swore he saw a chick whose booty was so big you could see it from the front. I don't want to say he's a liar. Tag us on Twitter with that guy. Last thing we need to talk about is pancake ass. And I think we actually addressed this with Jill Miller when she was on,

but she was talking about how when people see it, I can't see it. I was about to say seat, and then I was like, but she was talking about how when people see it, I can't see it. I was about to say seat, and then I was like, shit, don't say that. That's the wrong word. See it. But when people sit too much, the ass muscles get pushed out and down and up. Like a flabby pancake. They're not where they're supposed to be.

So if you're spending most of your time sitting and not squatting then that's a recipe for ass disaster. Could that be like mostly a lifestyle factor? I'm just trying too hard now. But Michael, that was Jill Miller

rubbing off on me with all the puns. It's impossible that pancake is just a pancake acid is a genetic disease. No matter what I do

I've tried it all I can't seem to grow this pancake acid. There's definitely some shape. Some people are shaped differently than others, no doubt about that. You're only going to be able to take it as far as your genetics are going to let you. But if you do spend a lot of time sitting, I think over time you do notice that people sit a lot, their ass is extremely flat. I mean, those muscles can be pushed off the bones, but I think you can reverse that.

Some people are just born with flatter asses than others, like whether they sit or not. And like a lot of those people, they don't feel like they have any power to grow a nice butt. And that's really unfortunate. They feel like that because it's not really necessarily true. They'll have to work a little harder than some other people. But even if you listen to like Brett Contreras, who's kind of known as like the, and his nickname is the glute guy.

Like he specializes in glute training, especially for women. Like in a lot of cases, he says that, that ladies should be able to do glute training like four or five days per week hard, especially if they're doing, um, you know, things like, uh, like lots of glute bridges and more hip dominant movements. Like they can, they can tolerate that volume, you know, four or five days per week and, and be just fine where they're not over training and it's not beating their joints up.

So if you're, if you're a woman and you're not doing, you know, like a real glute session or hip dominant session, at least three days per week, then your frequency probably isn't high enough. Like ladies can do three, four or five days.

I mean, you have to do that, but if you're complaining that you can't do it and you're not doing this, you're missing out. Why did we start this stupid-ass podcast when we could have just been the glue guy? That dude, he figured it out. Yeah, wrong demographic.

Yeah. All right, let's wrap this show up. Props to that guy. Oh, should we go to Instagram for some questions? We had some questions. Oh, yeah, the Instagram questions. questions We had some questions Oh yeah The Instagram questions Forgot Let's see here

You asked for G rated questions I don't know if you No it was PG-13 I don't know if you got PG-13 I don't know if I can get that in focus Y'all see Mike's Beautiful butt there

Alright some of the questions We know how to get attention Around here What a striking physique How do you activate your glute Well we're gonna answer that In technique wide So There we go We kinda already did here around here. What a striking physique. How do you activate your glute? Well, we're going to answer that in technique-wise. We kind of already did here.

We listed about a dozen exercises that you could do. We did that on the first break. The first fifth break. Shit. Fit ate everywhere. I feel like we answered, we're just so damn good. We answered all these during the show. Yeah. There's not at least one on there that could be tackled.

That happens. It's mostly comments on Mike's sweet Lululemon booty shorts. People be loving that. And no actual questions. Yeah. We, we, we answered most of these cause we're just high five everybody. All right.

High five. Sometimes this happens when we thoroughly address a topic. The one topic we finally thoroughly address. All right. Make sure to go to barbellstrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, check out some of the e-books we have out there, one of which is about how to add more muscle mass.

So if you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy that e-book. Check it out. It's at muscle.barbellstrug.com. Boom. Go get it.