Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1317: The 8 Best Butt Building Exercises You Are Not Doing

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the advantages of eight highly effective and rarely done butt building exercises. How JLo made big butts great again. (3:02) What separates us from primates. (4:58) The 8 Best Butt Exercises You are NOT Doing. (6:02) #1 – The Sumo Deadlift. (7:26) #2 – Cossack Squat. (12:37) #3 – Single-Leg Deadlift. (16:19) #4 – Single-Leg Stand Up. (20:48) #5 – Single-Leg Hip Thrust. (24:21) #6 – The Sled Drive. (28:50) #7 – The Goblet Squat. (33:36) #8 – The Back-Step Lunge. (35:35) Related Links/Products Mentioned June Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off! **Promo code “HIIT50” at checkout** The Secret To A Great Butt - Mind Pump Media Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** How To Sumo Deadlift (The RIGHT Way) | Jordan Syatt – Mind Pump TV The BEST Side Butt Exercise! (SUMO DEADLIFT) - Mind Pump TV COSSACK SQUAT - Increase Mobility & Leg Strength (TRY THIS SQUAT) - Mind Pump TV GROW Your GLUTES with a SINGLE LEG DEADLIFT! - Mind Pump TV How To Perform The Single Leg Stand Up (TRY THIS) - Mind Pump TV How To Do A Single Leg Hip Thrust (Exercise Demo) - FREE Great Butt Guide – Mind Pump TV How To Do The Sled Push The RIGHT Way! (AVOID MISTAKES!) - Mind Pump TV Power Sled Pull – Mind Pump TV How To Goblet Squat - FREE Squat Like A PRO Guide – Mind Pump TV The ONLY Way You Should Be Doing Lunges! (Build GREAT Legs) - Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Saldas Defano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's top fitness, health, and entertainment podcast, we talk about building the butt. One of the most important muscles in the body is your glutes and of course they look amazing, but did you know that there are eight exercises

that you're probably not doing? We talk all about the best eight exercises. Most people don't do, but they should be doing to build their butt. By the way, we also included more free information. We have a free butt guide that talks about some more stuff that can help you develop your glutes. Like how to trigger the butt muscles for growth,

how to grow your butt and not your thighs. Some of you may be doing lots of butt building exercise and noticing that just your quads are growing. And we also talk about how to isolate the glutes so that you can create that apple shape that people are looking for. You can find that free guide at freebutguide.com. Also this episode is brought to you by our sponsor,

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existing customer, you'll get double rewards points. Also, this entire month, our high intensity interval training program, Maps Hit, is 50% off. This program is excellent for fat burning. It's a high calorie burning program. It's six weeks long. It can be very intense. It's done with dumbbells and barbells. So it is a resistance training based hit routine.

Again, it's half off. Here's a Get The 50% Off. Go to mapshit.com. That's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T dot com and use the code hit50. That's H-I-I-T 50 no space for the discount. You know, we've been doing fitness for so long professionally that it's interesting to see how much trends come in and out of the space. Do you guys remember when it switched from people wanting

to make their butts smaller to people wanting to make their butt bigger? JLo, Lopas. Is that weird? Was it JLo? JLo, dude. JLo made big butts cool. It was. She's definitely one of them.

Okay, could you do me a quick? Kim Kardashian, you know, could take it to later. She came later though. That was after JLo, go back to like when JLo got popular. That had to been at least 10, 15 years ago. It was late 90s. Yeah. It was late 90s.

And that was when like big, at least I remember, right? Sir Mixelot. Sir Mixelot. Yeah. That's all around the same time, right? Sir Mixelot. Sir Mixelot. Yeah, I was just kidding. Wow. That's all around the same time, right? Sir Mixelot, then JLo, like that whole, that became, and then it became a thing where people would come and hire me and say that.

Well, it used to be, the joke used to be that, you know, the wife would tell the husband, honey, do these pants making a butt look big? And the answer, the guy was supposed to say, oh no, no, it doesn't make a look big. You're skinny, huh? All of a sudden, it's the opposite. Does this pants make my butt look big?

And now, you know, it's like, oh yes, it makes a look big. Oh yeah, you're fat, P-H-A-T. It totally changed and switched. And I'm glad it did because the butt, yes, there's, you know, you can store body fat on the laptop. I did, this is me too. No, that's not why. But it's because the, the, the, the, the body is, the glutes are muscles.

Yeah. They're, they're some of the biggest, if not the biggest, I don't know, there's a debate as to what the biggest muscles in the body are, the glutes are the lats. If you look at total surface area or total mass, but the, the, the strongest. Well, we talked about this even, you know, from an athletic perspective. I was always, I was always impressed like the, that had the big ass. You knew he was like one of the best athletes out there. Yeah, you were looking. Wow, bro, you got a real nice dunk a dunk. Yeah. No, well, so when you look at, I'm going to do a little science

stuff here. When you, when you look at primates, a few things really separate us from other primates. The, the, how narrow our hips are, and how massive our glutes are. It's because we walk upright. The glutes are constantly trying to keep us balanced. If you look at an ape, which is a huge muscular animal, they have really small butt muscles in comparison to humans. It's a very human trait. Big, strong glutes signify that you're healthy,

that you can move quickly. Strong. That you're strong. And athletes, just, you know, I know I joked around with you, but that's absolutely true. Yeah. When you see an athlete who's got very powerful posture or your chain, especially the glutes, they typically can sprint really fast. They're so balanced too. Yeah, they're very explosive. They're very balanced centrically. So everything revolves around that in terms of like, if I get that snap off the line if I'm talking about football,

you see somebody that has big glutes like that. Be aware, they're gonna throw a bunch of power at your way. So we know this is a prize thing. It's no longer underground. Everybody wants this. And because of that, this is where marketing has now came in and found all kinds of ways to market to people.

And so I think it would be cool actually to do an episode where we list the things that people are probably not doing that are some of the best exercises that they can be doing. Because everybody's seeing the kickback stuff and we've talked at nauseam, how important things are. Booman, squatting, so we've seen a lot of stuff. I want to talk about the things that remind me of the movements that I was teaching clients

in the gym that I knew a lot of people aren't doing because I still, when I go to the gym, I don't see these movements all the time. Yeah, because when I say, you know, we're at the point now when we talk about exercises that really develop and work the glutes. Most people now in fitness know that your squats and your hip thrust are phenomenal but building exercises, and they are. Those are two of the best exercises you could do for the butt, but those aren't the only ones that are effective.

There's a lot of other exercises that are very, very effective at developing the glutes that a lot of people just don't do on a regular basis. Some of the ones that we'll probably mention people probably might have never done before. And it's too bad because again, there's a lot of compound movements that have a lot of power when it comes to developing the glutes. Now, when I was a trainer, aside from, you know, barbell squats and your hip thrust, there was one exercise that I almost always did for clients when developing that part of the body.

That's the sumo deadlift. And I don't see a whole lot of people sumo deadlifting for this purpose. And it's too bad. When you do a sumo deadlift and you really press the knees out, stand up right, it is, in my opinion, it's like one of the top three or four overall, but building exercises you could possibly.

This is a favorite of mine for that reason. So you at first you have to understand that the glute is made up of three major muscles, right? And it's really common that people's, that feet collapse and pronate, which internally rotates the femur. So the knee's kind of cave in or turning. Exactly. And what that does is it shuts the glute

mead off, so the side butt. And so I refer to it as that, because it's easier for people to understand, but that's what gives that look, where you can actually see someone's butt from looking forward at them. And so because of this, when they do a lot of exercises like squats, they become very quad dominant and they don't get a lot of the glute meat activated, the sumo deadlift because of the wide stance

and opening the knees up like you're saying so. It forces you to light that part of the butt up while you do it. And then we already know that hip hinge movements are one of the best things that we could possibly do for the butt. So you're combining one of the best mechanically movements that you could do for the butt plus you're opening up the stance like that to like that. Plus you can have you load it. That's it. Yes. So that's one of the best benefits of these compound lifts is just the amount of load that you can add to this lift, which your body has to respond to that, which sends a very loud signal for growth. And so that's why this is one of those, you know, real powerful exercises. You know, it's funny in the olden days of bodybuilding, the early days of bodybuilding,

exercises like the sumo deadlift were actually discouraged because in those days, it was thought to have to, if you developed your glutes too much, they said that it took away from your aesthetics because their idea was the V-taper and they thought the glutes would contribute to that. So in fact, old-school bodybuilders, there were some of them, Vince Garonda being one of them,

that would say don't do certain exercises because he used to say builds the hips too much when he was referring to was the glutes. Sumo deadlifts was one of the exercises that he said that. He's also told people not to barbell squat deep because his idea of aesthetics was narrow all the way down big legs, big upper body. And he would he would write about he would say now Vince Garanda brilliant in many other aspects. But in this particular aspect, I disagree with him because of course, like we said earlier, the glutes are an extremely important muscle, and thankfully these days

we appreciate well-developed glutes. He would actually tell bodybuilders and people in his gyms don't do this exercise. It's going to thicken your hips, and really, again, he's referring to the glutes. It's a very effective butt building exercise. Now, when you do this, if you've never done it before, start light, press your knees out, and push almost like you're trying to spread your feet out against the floor.

That's the force that you're generating. So, yes, you're pushing down with the feet to do this deadlift, but also create this outward pressure with your feet as if you're spreading the floor apart and bringing your knees apart when you're doing this. And then, Justin, you hit the nail on the head. One of the reasons why this is such an effective, just overall, but mass builder, which, look, if you're somebody who wants to develop your butt, you know how hard it could be to just

add good quality lean muscle because you can load this so much, it's exceptional at building mass and muscle for the glutes. And I'll tell you something right now, for women, in my experience, training women, the most weight that they'll ever lift free weights is with the sumo deadlift. If they get good at sumo deadlifting, they'll be able to sumo deadlift more

than they could squat or conventional deadlift. They can lift a lot. I've trained women who are 130 pounds who could sumo deadlift, 300 pounds, or almost 300 pounds. You can't tell me that's not gonna develop. All our body responds like crazy, especially after all this nonsense marketing out there

that has you doing donkey kickbacks for a thousand reps and thinking that that's gonna keep, it's gonna build this lean muscle out of nowhere where really building muscle is about building muscle. Yeah, that's a good point because remember, you know, bigger muscle fibers contract harder. Muscle fibers that need lots of stamina and endurance tend to be smaller because they need to be efficient with energy. So if you do 100 reps of an exercise, especially a light exercise, or the ones that tend to be advertised to women, you're not gonna build significant muscle.

You'll build lots of stamina, you'll build lots of endurance in that muscle, but you're just not gonna build lots of muscle. The muscle comes from strength, that's the adaptation that comes from strength. So you wanna do heavy loaded exercises, you can go as low as one or two reps, and maybe as high as 20 reps, but above

that, then you start to lose some of the muscle building benefit. The sweet range tends to be around 8 to 12, although if you stay in that range too long, it doesn't work. So make sure you kind of cycle in an atom. Now the next one, I like quite a bit, you know, called the caustic squat, but you can also refer to it as a side lunge. I like this one because when you step into the movement, when you do a real caustic squat, okay, if you're especially if you're stepping in and out of it, when you're stepping into that sideways lunge, the side glutes, the muscle that Adam was talking about, the medial glute

or whatever, glute meed, has to slow you down because it's that lateral force. Then to push yourself out of it, again, not only you're pushing your body up, but you're also pushing your body laterally, which activates that glute me, that side butt area, which is so underdeveloped. And again, this targets kind of movement that we don't replicate enough, like throughout the day.

And I think that's the main reason why I wanted to put this one up there is because it addresses something that is commonly neglected in somebody's training program. Is they just don't account for anything moving side to side. It's always in front or in back of me. And so this is something where people might not even realize the potential,

you know, in terms of like building muscle by just moving in a different direction. And so this provides that specifically. Now, this is one that you have to really pay attention to the form because real quick, it could turn into a more quad dominant exercise if not done properly. Yeah, to get the real benefits of this, you wanna be able to keep your chest upright and you wanna be able to get really deep. I wanna be able to get to, when I step out and do that side lunge or caustic squat,

I wanna be able to get my butt all the way back down, almost to back down on my ankle and then come out of it. That's where the glute is really gonna drive you out of it. I've seen people watch a video or try and emulate what they see someone else doing, and they do this kind of sidestep lunge, and they just kind of hinge back, they let the chest fall all the way over,

and they don't even break 90 degrees. So you gotta be careful, and when you do this, if you want it to be more of your glute and not your quads, you wanna be able to break that 90 degrees and get nice and deep so the glute has to drive you out of there and you don't wanna have so much forward lean that your chest is hanging over your knee.

So that chest needs to be high. You wanna get nice and deep for this to be a great glute. And so add a little more depth. I know a lot of people in functional coaches out there will kind of teach you a little bit different technique with the Cossack Squad II to be able to kind of get a little more rotation out of The hip and externally rotates will bring in the toe up off the ground and then like pivoting off of the heel will allow you to actually drop in a little more depth in that

Oh, you jump up the the not the lead leg, but the leg that's left behind. Yes, you're stretching out So when you're squatting down your your leg that's left behind. Yes, when you're stretching out. So when you're squatting down, your leg that's staying straight, it's actually on your heel with your toes up. I like that version, but it is important when you're in the bottom position of this, not just to come up, but to come up and push yourself as if you're stepping your feet together or actually step your feet back together. That lateral force is really helpful with the activating of the glute. And then what Adam said about going lower,

whenever it comes with glued exercises in particular, most glue decks, not all, but most glued exercises, deep reps are going to activate the glutes more than shallow reps. This is true for squats, this is true for lunges or any other glued exercise, lower is going to activate the glutes more. The problem sometimes with this is

people don't have the mobility. So you're going to hear us say a lot in this episode, good, full range of motion. If you lack mobility, work on your mobility so that you can get deeper with these exercises. It'll help you activate the glutes a little bit better. Now the next movement, this one I, for whatever reason, the first time I did this, I didn't think it would light my glutes up like it did. I was just thinking that I needed to balance out my deadlift. I love deadlifting. It's my favorite exercise.

I tend to pull conventional. And I was noticing a little bit of a discrepancy between my right and left side. And so I thought, let me do some unilateral stuff. Let me do this one leg at a time, see if I can build that strength up and then see how it translates. And the first time I did it,

I was blown away by how much glute activation I got from it. I'm talking about a single leg deadlift. I could not believe how I felt most everything from that exercise in the glute. I didn't feel my back activated as much as it normally did, or neither even my hamstring. It was my butt that caught fire from that exercise in the glue. I don't feel my back activate as much as it normally did or neither of my hamstring. It was my butt that caught fire from that movement.

And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm balancing. Yeah. When you're doing this hip-hing single leg deadlift, you and you're on one leg, your glute has to stay activated on the prime stabilizer. Yeah, it's the main stabilizer in a movement like that.

Not to mention, you also have to get down a little deeper to pull like a pair of dumbbells up off the floor. So you also get a little bit more of that glute activation to the point that you made just a second ago about, you know, most of these exercises that we talk about, the deeper, fuller range of motion is gonna get more glute activation. So deadlift is already, we know is already a great movement

for the glutes, but when you have to do a. So deadlift is already, we know is already a great movement for the glutes, but when you have to do a single leg deadlift, you have to get even deeper into that position. And then you throw in the fact that you're having to stabilize. I absolutely love this. And you know, I know that we picked a couple exercises in here. I think three exercises that we picked are all unilateral, so single leg type stuff, which I think is a must. Like I think that when you do a lot of leg pressing and even squatting and a lot of things with both feet all the time, when you're talking about the big muscles

and the legs and the glute, there's a lot of cheating that can go on that you're not even aware of. So you can really easily favor one side. Now, now how you know this is a glaring obvious thing with you is if you notice like low back pain on one side or the other, or you can see a visual difference in your leg or your glute on one side or the other, then this is an absolute must to spend more time on the unilateral work. But even if you don't notice those discrepancies, it's still

there's a tremendous amount of value of doing single leg movements. You're going to see a few single leg movements in this list, and mainly because of that fact that stabilizing, any rotation especially, which you'll find in a single leg deadlift especially your hips are gonna wanna rotate towards the side that your leg is off. And that's just a counterbalance issue thing. And so to be able to really focus in

on keeping those hip square and everything operating the way it should and it requires a lot of extra stabilization to glutes. Here's one way you know that you need to work on the single leg type of stuff or unilateral stuff in general just for your whole body. You know, let's say I could deadlift 500 pounds. That's a weight that I can pull for one or maybe two reps. But I struggle doing a single leg deadlift with 100 pounds. That's a that's a weight that I can pull for one or maybe two reps, but I struggle doing a single leg deadlift with 100 pounds. I mean that is that's a I should be able to single leg deadlift at least 150, 160 pounds. That's not even half of what I can do with both legs

But I can't even do 100 pounds, right? That's telling me that there's something going on I need to work on and here's what happens. You do these single leg exercises or this unilateral exercise and get good at them. Your double leg or both side exercises, your strength goes through the roof. So single leg deadlift, one of my absolute favorite. Well, that's why these are a must

and they have to be in this list. It's because we are trying to develop a muscle. Okay, no matter how you look, look at it. We're trying to build your butt, just like someone who's trying to build their arms or build their chest or building the other muscle in their body. And you getting really good at single leg movements, it's only going to contribute to you using both legs

later on, which will then allow you to do more load and build even more. So that's why I think this belongs and everybody's routine, no matter if you have a discrepancy or not, but that's a great point. So if you can't lift close to half of what you can do on both, which is most people,

then there's a lot of room for growth in that area. Totally. And keep this in mind when you do the single leg deadlift, maintain your spine position. I think when people do a single leg deadlift, sometimes around the back even more, try to hip hinge like you would with a traditional deadlift and then see how it feels. Now the next movement, I love this one.

I did this as part of how I would train people to get them to be able to do a squat. And then later on, I realized that I could load this and get people's glutes to really catch fire. This is a single leg stand up. This is a great movement just in general. And there's a lot of different ways to do it, but we're talking specifically about sitting on a bench,

you put your feet out in front of you, like you're sitting your legs right 90 degrees, put one foot up, so now you're gonna do this with one leg and then try to stand up with just one leg. It's basically a box squat, but with just one leg being the driving force there. And this is one of those exercises that my clients used to hate me because it's just, it's hard.

It looks so simple and so like basic to do, but it is very challenging. And especially if you put them in a position where it's a really low seat and they have to dig their way out, like it requires all the amount of recruitment that you could provide for you to get up out of that position. And that's why it's so beneficial. So I love this as like a teaching exercise. I think this was, when we talk about all the movements that we're talking about today, when I think of probably the one that I use the most

for all age ranges, all levels of fitness, I like this a lot. It's one of those exercises that you just can't cheat, and I can regress it and progress it really easy. In other words, if I have like a eight-year-old client who is very deconditioned, and I want to teach in this, I might put like a foam pad underneath the bench so they're elevated a little higher, or even allow them to use their hands on my hands so they can kind of assist themselves to get up to start to teach that good hip-hinge movement. And really easily, like you alluded to Justin, I could put him on a lower box that's really

low or add, you know, 10 pounds in their hand or on their back and it becomes a really challenging exercise. So the ability for you to progress and regress this exercise based off the client or where you're currently in your fitness, I love this movement for all levels. Now a couple of things with this though in terms of the form, what I tried to really reiterate is really trying to stand up tall without leaning forward. And now this takes that exercise to a whole new level because now you're eliminating a lot of the momentum of leaning forward and using your body's weight to throw forward to get you up.

No, it's all about standing straight up and really activating that glute. So cues that I remember queuing to make sure you do that. One of those is to keep your abs tight and don't let your abs collapse when you sit down. It'd be really common for someone to stand up. And then when they go down, and then they plop down, and when they plop down, their abs are collapsed, and they roll forward, like you're saying, Justin.

So I would tell a client, as they sit back, is to sit down slowly, keep the chest high, and the abs tight, don't let your abs collapse, is what I would cue when they do this movement. I also used to have them raise their foot off the ground for me and almost stop their foot down. So just emphasize the fact that they really needed to, you know, like recruit powerfully, you know, enough to get up.

I used to say sit down and barely touch the bench and then sit down fully rather than, you know, sitting down super hard or whatever. Pay attention to this too. When you're doing these, the single leg exercise, watch your knee. Sometimes when people do the single leg stand up, clops in. Yeah, then the knee will just go towards the midline of their body.

Keep the knee straight or even slightly push it out a little bit as you stand up to get more glute activation. Now the next movement, very different from a very popular glute exercise, although it sounds and looks similar, it's the single leg hip thrust. You may be really, really good at a double leg hip thrust. Try this with one leg and try preventing your knee from caving in.

And you can load this just like you did with your double leg hip thrust. Put a dumbbell on your hip, right on the side of the leg that's doing this. Watch what happens. By the way, if you notice one side stronger than the other, start with the weak side. Let the weak side dictate how many reps you need to do for the strong side so you can catch them up. Oftentimes a person's body won't develop more muscle because there's too much of a difference

between the two sides. Simply balancing them out allows the body to feel comfortable, because remember, your body has, just like when you drive a car and your car has a speed limit, right? They put those on cars nowadays. So the car could go 160 miles an hour. Like a governing.

But it's got a speed limiter. It's got a governor that goes up to maybe 130. Now when I was a kid and I drove like an asshole, I figured this out. I was on the freeway, seeing a fast thing go and I hit 120 all of a sudden you hear the engine go, and it wouldn't go any faster. It's like, what the hell is going on? Your body actually has these limiter's. And most of these limiter's exist to prevent you from hurting yourself.

So if you're building muscle, building strength, or trying to move fast, or do anything that involves performance, if your body senses there's too much instability, or there's too much of a high risk, it will actually like the governor on your car, it'll prevent you from exerting more force, it'll prevent you from exerting more force, it'll prevent you from building more muscle. One of those things is an imbalance between the right and left side. And if you always, always, always do your hip thrust, both legs on the floor with a barbell, try doing them with a dumbbell.

You might be surprised just how much your knee moves, you'll watch your knee cave in, and you might be surprised how weak you are when you do it that way But if you balance it out you get that governor actually moves up a little bit now you can push a little harder Well, I love this movement too because the other thing that's great about all the single leg movements that we're talking about is It doesn't take a lot of weight to really load one side, right? You know a hip thrust it takes a little I mean of all, you have to have access to a barbell, and you need to have access to probably quite a bit of weight. Even most of my female clients could do, you know, 100, 200, 300 pounds in a hip thrust. So they really, really strong with both feeling. So if you don't have access to all that or it had the means

to get over to an area in the gym that you can lightly, you know, get on the ground and do this, this big old hip thrust with a barbell. You know, just taking it like you said, it's a single dumbbell on one side. It's extremely challenging and you can load it really well because you're only doing one lay. And I like that for risk reasons too. Like, as great as squats are, hip thrust, all these movements that we are promoting for low, heavy weight, heavy weight movements that we are promoting for low, heavy weight,

heavy weight, that also increases the risk. What they're greater reward in those, but there's also higher risk as we sort of do that. I love also using movements like this for teaching purposes. I can challenge a client with a 20-pound dumbbell on a single-lake hip thrust. The risk from that is very, very low in comparison to taking some client who maybe is only a month into training with me and loading a barbell with 100 something pounds, and they're going to get equal amount of benefit if not more from the single leg with a lot less risk.

This translates well into going back into that loaded position where I could do a hip thrust heavy still, but now I'm even more, like, have more stability. And so, like, again, the risk factor goes down because now I put the work into, you know, reinforce that stability in the hips. So it is a great valuable exercise. When I get DMs, because obviously, you know, gyms have been closed for a while. Some of them are reopening, but a lot of people don't want to go back to the gym still. And so I've been recommending to people that they do single leg and unilateral type exercise. Now I'm getting feedback, right?

Because we're talking about now two months ago, I've been telling people to do this. I'm getting feedback now and people love the results that they're getting from doing movements this way. So if you're at home and all you have are dumbbells that go up to 30 or 40 pounds or whatever, single leg hip thrust, that's a good way for a lot of people, especially if you're squeezing really hard at the top. All right, the next movement, I didn't really do these a lot until we started the podcast,

mine pump, but it really was Justin's influence that got me to look closer. I love these. I thought this movement really, athletes, I thought this was valuable for athletes, really no other value for anybody else. I'm not going to build lots of muscle and strength when I get a lot of carryover unless I'm a sprinter or runner, not that big of a deal. We all got together early days of mind pump and we all did a workout together and it turned into a

bit of a who's stronger than who type of thing which tends to happen when you get a bunch of guys together. And I remember each of us picked an exercise and when it got to Justin's turn, he picked the sled drive. Now I never really did them as part of a routine, I messed with them a little bit, but really didn't. I was surprised at how effective they were at activating my muscles. And then the next day, the primary place I felt these was in my glutes.

Slade drives are amazing for glute development, pushing forward, getting low, getting taking big steps and driving forward, really getting that hip extension feeling the glute's catching up. You can get heavy load, you can get like maximal activation like you're talking about, but also the risk factor goes way down because all you have to do is let go. All I do is stop. And so I used to use these with any of my clients. It didn't matter if it was an eight year old lady,

I got, we're doing sled push-as, we're doing sled drags. It's just one of those exercises that not a lot of people realize that the potential it could provide in terms of muscle activation and development. So I went on a kick for a while, doing all kinds of stuff, and I had done a little bit more than you, Sal,

not quite as much as Justin though, and hanging out with Justin just kind of reignited that for me to where I started using it more and more in my routine when I was competing. And one of the things that I loved messing with was when I was, because there's little things, there's little cues that you can do when you're doing drives or pulls with a sled

to get activation more in specific areas. What I mean by that, give you an example. So, if I'm trying to work my glutes more here and I'm doing a sled drive, I'm actually doing a, as I take steps forward and I drive, I'm gonna keep my heel flat. So the tendency to do a drive

when you have to stay on the toes. If you like it just like you will when you run like we run on the balls of our feet right. So when you go to drive a sled you're going to be pushing off the toes normally. That's what you will naturally will gravitate towards. But if I want to get more post-ear chain and I want to get those glutes more activated I'll actually keep my heel flat. Big step forward. Yes, big step forward, keep the heel flat and then drive and watch how much that lights up that backside. So there's cool things that you can do by manipulating just a little thing like that

and really put the emphasis back on the butt by doing that. So stay low, big steps, keep the heel flat while you drive. It's not about speed, it's about grinding your way through that. That's why the load is something that you need to mess with to get that. So, it actually takes you a while to push it across. Now, another thing I like about the sled drive is that it's all concentric movement.

It's all positive reps. In other words, you're not doing the negative. So, when you lift the weight, let's say I do a curl, curling the weight up is the positive portion of the rep, lowering the weight is the negative. Now why is this a good thing to have an exercise where it's mostly positive? Because it doesn't cause as much muscle damage. That means I can add this slag drive to my routine, add way more volume, not a ton of damage. This is a great volume builder. If you're normal leg exercise or leg workout and glute workout, it's got lots of great exercises, but you want to throw one more thing in,

but you're not sure if it's going to tip you over the, you know, over training, whatever. Do a sled drive. You don't get as much muscle damage, but you get that real good activation. Well, now when you bring up points like that, I love to share like we did on the other episode where we talked about how things pair really well together so knowing that and keeping that in mind

I love to pair this exercise with like the sumo deadlift with emphasis on the negative Yeah, so I might go and I might sumo deadlift heavy load for just like three to five reps But really put emphasis on slow on the way down and really putting the emphasis on the eccentric portion of the exercise. So I'm loading heavy, I'm focused on the eccentric on that exercise. And then I go over to a heavy load sled drive where it's all concentric and I'm loaded in heavy.

Man, you pair those together in a workout, watch how much you're back side. Perfect. Now, if you don't have a sled and you're working at home, push a car, no joke. Have somebody in the car if you've got a workout partner, put're working at home, push a car, no joke. Have somebody in the car if you've got a workout partner, put it in neutral, have them regulate with the brakes or whatever, open the windows, they can hear you and push that car down

the street. You got yourself now a nice sled. Now the next movement, a lot of fun, I love this one and now I'm seeing more men do this exercise, which is great because it's a front loaded movement, the goblet squat. I love this exercise for the glutes, helps keep the body upright, and people who tend to have issues with going deep with a traditional squat,

tend to be able to go deeper with front loaded exercises like a goblet squat. This is great with, and you do this with dumbbells, right? You hold it in front of your body, sit nice and tall, squat down nice and low, come up, and at the top, I really want you to squeeze the glutes. When you get up to the top, fire the glutes real hard at the top for about three seconds, relax for a second, go back down. This reminds me of like the old trainer tricks, right? So if I had a client that I'm teaching

how to squat and I can't get them to break 90 degrees and we've done mobility work and they just, they've trained themselves to be stop at that 90 degree mark and I can't get them to go any lower. Doing a goblets caught is one of the easiest ways to make that happen because it does. It forces them to keep their chest upright. It allows them to be able to get much deeper in the squat and so I love to teach the goblets squat when I'm trying to get people and encourage people to go deeper into a squat because Naturally, you'll just do that with the butt with the weight loaded in the front And so it's a great movement as a trainer to get someone to really activate and learn how to engage the glutes more in a Squat-a-position barif.

If you have access to heavy kettlebells, I highly suggest this exercise specifically with a kettlebell, just because of the way that it loads and the way that it forms in centric to your body. All that heavy load is in one place that I could kind of place there in my chest and go through that movement and keep everything nice and tight in centric. Well, it's also easier to like front rack 250 pound

catabels than it is the hold 100 pound catabel. I mean, it's more and better to this exercise. 100%. Totally. Now, the next movement is a version of a lunge that places more emphasis on the glutes. It's a back step lunge. So we all know what a lunge looks like, right?

You got a split stance, one leg in front, one leg in back, up and down. Most people know walking lunges, which believe we're not a walking lunge is actually like a back step lunge. It's actually quite similar, even though they look very different. But why the back step lunge? Why are we doing that for the glutes?

Because when I'm stepping back, going down, and then pushing myself up and stepping forward, that gives me that hip extension. That forward propulsion from that front leg is what's getting the glute to fire. Opposed to a front step lunge, a front step lunge, when I'm stepping forward going down

and kicking myself out of that front position to go back into my feet together, that's knee extension, now I'm working more quads. And if you look at a back step lunge and how you propel yourself out of it, that's exactly what a walking lunge does. But the back step lunge required doesn't require to walk around anywhere. Yeah, like a decelerating, right? So like which, which, you know, part of my body, what muscle is responsible for slowing down this momentum. And so if I'm stepping behind

myself, you know, my glutes going to make sure that I'm going to slow my body and control and then explosively bring myself back out versus stepping in front. My quad is going to be a little more dominant. Well, yeah, we're working with momentum to favor it, working in the glutes more versus the quads. So when you're doing a walking lunge, which can also be a good glute exercise, because you're walking forward, you have a propensity to want a lean forward a little bit. And the opposite is true when you step backwards.

When you step backwards, you have a propensity to want to sit upright with your chest. Just that little bit of a difference forces more of the weight back into the glute versus over in the quad. Like what you do when you walk in lunge. Walking lunge, you're going to naturally lean forward. That's going to make your weight distribute over the quads and the quads to activate a little bit more in the quad, like what you do when you walk in, walking lunge, you're gonna naturally lean forward, that's gonna make your weight distribute over the quads

and the quads to activate a little bit more in the glutes, just simply by stepping backwards, you're taking momentum, the opposite direction, which forces the chest upright, puts more of the load back in the glutes, and then like your guys this point, the glute is what's gotta drive you out of that position. I love this, X-Tress,

and you never see people do back step lunges. I do these every single week. This is such a, it's one of those forgotten basic movements, and I never see people over in the squat racks loading the barbell up, because that's another thing too about this. You could load a back step lunge pretty good, man. So you could load that up on the squat rack,

take a step back and then step forward, and load where you're doing five to eight reps. So you could load that up on the squat rack, take a step back and then step forward, and load to where you're doing five to eight reps. You don't wanna be doing, you don't need to be doing 15, 20, a ton of these, load it up and challenge that. This is a great, great move. Yeah, the other way is, would be with dumbbells.

You could do this with dumbbells as well, but I love doing it with a barbell. In fact, this is an exercise that I do every single week now. I've been doing it now for months, and it's had tremendous impact on my barbell squat and just the way my glutes and my legs develop and it's balanced me out. I had a little bit of a different discrepancy

between the right and left. One of my favorite exercises, so definitely belongs. You can do this with dumbbells too, but I do encourage clients to do this with the barbell. Even if you can't load a lot of it at first with the barbell because as you get stronger and stronger, the limiting factor on you loading more will be your arms. There are. One point, I've trained female clients in mind that could backstep lunge 180 pounds,

200 pounds. They could do some serious weight on a backstep lunge with a barbell in their back, but they sure a shit can't hold on to 100 pound dumbbells and do that. So the limiting factor will be your grip strength when you're using dumbbells. So starting off with a barbell on your back, and even if you're just starting with a bar with 45 pounds at first, but working like that and then loading it each time huge. Now if you do only have access to dumbbells and you do find your hands start to fatigue faster

than your legs, this is one of those few places where I could recommend wrist straps. You can actually use wrist straps quite effectively for leg exercises because you have to hold the dumbbells to work your legs. And wrist straps, you can find them anywhere, all over Amazon, they're super, super cheap. This is one place that I would use those.

Look, we record the podcast on video as well as audio. Check us out on YouTube. You can go to the Mind Pump podcast and you can watch and listen to the whole podcast. They're very easy to share as well. Also look, we have a lot of guides that are free. We wrote guides on developing different parts of your body, on working on your diet, burning body fat, we have a personal trainer guide. You can find all of those at mindpumpfree.com, go there, check those out. Also, you can look at us on Instagram, you can talk to us on Instagram,

you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming

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