Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1370: The 4 Reasons Your Butt is Not Building

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the four main reasons why people have a hard time building their butt and what they can do about it. The JLo effect. (2:40) The 4 Reasons Why People Struggle to Build Their Butt. (4:00) #1 - Exercise selection. (8:50) Not all exercises are created equal. (10:30) The BEST butt building exercises. (14:10) #2 - Poor muscle recruitment patterns. (19:38) #3 - How your programming is designed. (26:37) Cardio is NOT your friend. (29:43) The value of hiring a good trainer. (31:44) #4 - Poor nutrition. (33:48) Where do I start? (35:23) Related Links/Products Mentioned August Promotion: MAPS Performance ½ off!! **Promo code “GREEN50” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** The Secret To A Great Butt Guide How To Build A Bigger Butt – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump TV - YouTube The BEST Side Butt Exercise! (SUMO DEADLIFT) 3 Best Secrets - How To Make Your Butt Grow (AVOID MISTAKES!) | MIND PUMP Is Warming Up Before A Workout Necessary? - Mind Pump Blog Why You Need to Mix Rep Ranges After Periods of Training – Mind Pump Blog Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1282: The #1 Key To Consistently Building Muscle & Strength (Avoid Plateaus!) MAPS Fitness Products MAPS Macro Calculator Mind Pump Podcast - YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jennifer Lopez (@jlo)  Instagram

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 favorite fitness health and entertainment podcast, we talk about building the butt. In particular, we talk about the four reasons why your butt is not responding or is not building. So we talk about everything from exercise selection, poor muscle recruitment patterns and inability to connect to the

butt muscles, programmed design or poor program design, I should say, and we talk about the wrong kind of nutrition for building the butt. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Legion makes some of the best performance enhancing muscle building fat burning supplements on the market. These are supplements for dedicated people who work out hard and want to see great results. All of Legion's products are not sweetened with artificial sweetener. They have natural sweeteners. All of the products products are not sweetened with artificial sweetener.

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Also, there's only one day left, 24 hours left for the MAPS performance, 50% off sale. MAPS performance is a great workout program that uses both traditional and non-traditional functional exercises to develop your body, build muscle, burn body fat, and get you to move better. This isn't just a gym fitness workout. It's a fitness workout designed to make you look amazing and move amazing. Now, if you have a full home gym setup, follow the program as it's laid out. If you only have dumbbells, that's all you got. There's a mod in the program that allows you to follow the full program with just dumbbells

Here's how to get the 50% off go to maps green.com. That's M-A-P-S-G-R-E-N dot com and use the code green 5-0 that's green 50 with no space for the discount I want to talk about a subject that I think Justin is an expert in It's talking about some ass. Of course. Yeah, that's my specialty. Yeah, that's funny.

Is that for, I remember this too, in the fitness space, I've been doing this for a long time, right? There was like a shift where people wanted to get smaller butts. Yeah, JLo, dude. And then all of a sudden, it became, I wanna grow my butt. JLo, right? Was she the main catalyst for, JLo, dude. And then all of a sudden, it became, I want to grow my butt. JLo, right? Was she the main catalyst for this?

Yes, dude. Really? She was the big first one. She was the big one. I think she was the first one. Yeah, there. And really, I remember, even when people came to me and hired me early on and said that they wanted a smaller butt,

what they meant was they wanted one that was more shapely, firm, sculpted, toned, you know, whatever word you wanna use, but essentially, what those things mean, they didn't mean smaller like they wanted it to look the same, but be smaller, but rather they wanted to be leaner and have good shape to it. And so I'd have these conversations to say, well, the butts of muscle, we can build it,

and then of course, we'll follow a nutrition plan that allows you to get leaner, and that's going to give you the goal. And it's the same thing when people come to me and say, later on, I want my butt to be like J-Loads, or I want a bigger butt, and it's like, well, we're going to build it. We're going to build it the same thing. Now, I want to do this a little bit different, because I think that finding information regarding building a butt is all over the internet. So it's not hard to find or Google search this topic. Yeah, at least days it is.

Yeah, it's one of the number one search topics that's related to fitness or building muscle is how to build a butt. I think we should talk about the four reasons why people struggle to build a butt and lead into that. In fact, our number one most downloaded free guide is on building the butt. And you can find that at what's the URL for that

at at minepumpfree.com. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have a bunch of free guides on there. It's just free information to like short books on different topics. And the building the butt one is by far our most popular one. But yeah, I think what we should do is talk about the most common mistakes, because it's one thing to not work out,

not do anything, and then be frustrated over your butt. That's frustrating. But what's way more frustrating is when you're spending time and energy trying to develop a butt, trying to sculpt it, trying to shape it, and nothing is happening. And there's no shortage of misinformation out there, kind of steering you in all kinds of different directions

of how to achieve this desired celebrity big butt. And so to be able to navigate through all that is the most important thing, like things to look out for. Yeah, because again, it's the most frustrating thing in the world is when you're genuinely trying, you're genuinely working hard, you're following advice that you've seen, you're consistent, you're doing it, and nothing.

Nothing is happening, you do it for months, you look in the mirror, why isn't this working? I'm putting all this effort, all this time into, trying to develop my butt. Nothing is happening. That is by far one of the most frustrating feelings of all. Well, there's so much misinformation regarding this. And I think it's led by a lot of females that have the great genetics to start with that

are promoting some of these exercises and routines to build their butt that are terrible, and they were already, but everyone's, everyone has got a friend or girlfriend that has got that butt that had a butt before she even started to exercise. And there's, there is a genetic role in this also, right? There's, if somebody has a really long origin insertion, you're gonna have, what you start with

is gonna have this kind of longer flatter butt. Okay, so if you're just like a guy who has a long origin insertion for a bicep, and he's always trying to reach that peak or that bubbly look for his bicep, he's at a starting point, he's at a disadvantage of attaining that, but it doesn't mean that he can't build his biceps

just like the girl who starts off with a flatter butt does not mean that she can't create this bubbly or looking butt. You just have to understand that her starting point may be different than that girl that has that great bubble butt before she even lifted anything. And here's the beauty of resistance training. We're dealing with a muscle, right? We're not dealing with body fat.

So like if you were trying to get more body fat on your butt, that's largely determined by your genetics. Where do you store body fat? Is largely determined by genetics? Of course, your health can change fat storage, patterns a little bit, hormones can change a little bit, but you know, your butt is a muscle. Here's the beauty of resistance training. You can target muscles and you can shape them, you can build them, you can sculpt them. Resistance training done properly is like, it's like a sculptor. You take a piece of clay and you can literally build some areas to make them look the way you want. And so that's the beauty of what we're talking about right now. Although genetics play a role, you can get around genetics because we're dealing with a muscle.

Much more easy with the glutes because, you know, before this, it was the chest and how big your boobs could be and all that. And so, of course, that's largely determined to genetics at that point, or getting surgery or things, you know, to enhance that area, but like you said, is we could build and develop this to its full potential because it is one of the major muscles of your body.

Oh, the glutes are one of the biggest muscles in the body, the prime movers and many, many movements that you do. In fact, it's one of the muscles that separates us from other primates. We have really big glute muscles, it's because we stand up right, it balances us out. Our bodies are designed or evolved

to be able to develop good glutes. So if you're struggling and you're putting in a lot of work and you're not developing glutes and you're getting zero results, it's probably because you're doing one of the next four things wrong. There's a problem with these four common areas that we have all seen time and time again with people who have trouble developing the glutes. Number one, for sure, has to be exercise selection. You want to have to be the top one. I see the wrong exercises being done all the time.

And again, I think this is perpetuated by, you know, things like Instagram models that get super famous, that have millions of followers because they've got their blessed with these incredible genetics. They have an awesome butt or they paid for it. Some of the most famous ones have got a fake butt and then they're promoting programs to build their butt and they have no real science to support the exercises that they're telling people to do.

And remember just because you feel it in your butt from exercise, you could sit down and you could do kickbacks and dog piece all day and make your butt burn. It is not necessarily going to build the butt that you want just because you feel the exercise either. It's a very tiny signal and I think that's the one that's perpetuated out the most is the booty man's and those very the most is the booty bands and those very simple exercises because it is misleading because you feel the effect of it. So you do feel that bit of a sensation of a burn. You feel connected to it, but it's just

not achieving that large signal to grow a larger muscle there. No, there's a lot of exercises. A lot of exercises that qualifies resistance training, but they're not all equal. Some are just far more effective at building muscle. And by the way, that's what you wanna do here. If you wanna shape, sculpt, tone, whatever, the word you wanna use, it's all building.

You wanna build your butt, the more you build it, the rounder it is, the more sculpt it is is the harder and more firm it is, right? Not all exercises are created equal. Some are exceptional at building muscles. Others are terrible at building muscle. That doesn't mean they don't have other value. They're just not really good at building muscle. If I were to give an exercise, like let's say a barbell squat, let's start with that

one for example, if I were to give a barbell squat a number between one and ten, one being terrible ten being awesome the best for building the butt, it's going to be close to a ten. If I were to talk about, let's say dog peas, like Adam said, or donkey kickbacks, okay, those are all exercises that target the glutes But if I were to give those a number for building the butt It would be closer to a two or a three. That's literally the difference that you see between Some exercises unfortunately First of all the market that we're likely talking to although there are guys that want to build

You know their butt as well We're largely talking about, although there are guys that want to build their butt as well, we're largely talking about the female market. The female market, largely women are really interested in building the butt. Now, here's the problem with the fitness space. It's been a problem for a long time. It still is a problem. They advertise to women and show them programs and exercises that are just not effective.

They treat them totally different. As if our bodies were so different that, these exercises work for women, these exercises work for men. Not true, the exercises that build the most muscle are the same ones that build the most muscle for men as they are for women. And the way that they market for women oftentimes

is of course there's a female model presenting the exercise, nothing wrong with that. But it's all the way, nothing wrong with that, but it's always, it's never heavyweight, it's never strength, it's never barbell exercises and dumbbell exercises, usually bands, it's usually small dumbbells or bodyweight stuff, on lots and lots and lots of high reps. Times of reps.

And in all of those things, they have their place, but when it comes to building muscle, there's no comparison. I don't want to lose our guys on this conversation either, though, I've never met a guy I want who says he wants a flat butt. Okay, so there's no guys out there that are trying to achieve. Maybe they may not be as obsessed about building a butt as some of your female clients,

but they certainly don't want to have a flat butt. And then there's another thing that's important, too, if you're a guy who doesn't care so much about that is the performance aspect. The glutes are the most powerful muscle that you have in your body. So learning how to activate them and work them can do tons of work for your deadlift and for your squat if you want to improve in performance. So think of it like that too. Yeah, we used to joke about that all the time because the most, I guess the athletes that stood out the most were always the ones that had the biggest butt. And really it was like in baseball, it was in football, you just noticed that a lot of the power that they

could derive really was centered around the hips in general. And so you'd see just from doing these compound lifts and training and and everything else in terms of fast twitch movement, you know, really resided around how much power they could drive through their hips and their glutes. Oh, the butt is, believe it. I mean, you know, Adam, he talked about men. It's what the top, it's always top three or top four of the areas that a woman will judge a man. If she looks at them just physically, glutes are at the top, and a lot of guys don't know that. But why?

Because of what you guys are talking about, there's a primal aspect of it. Well-developed glutes means you can run well, you can support yourself, you're stable, you're strong, your testosterone levels are probably healthy. So yeah, building your butt is important for men too. But let's go back to the exercise selection, okay? Let's list the best butt building exercises you could do. And if you're not doing these, you're not maximizing your potential. And in fact, after we list these exercises, they should be in regular rotation in your workouts.

And you should aim towards getting stronger at these exercises. Now, number one, I already mentioned it, barbell squats. Barbell squats done properly are excellent posture-to-your-chain developing exercises. It's excellent for building the butt. It was always my number one go-to exercise

for anybody who wanted to build a good butt. It's extremely functional and it still is. My number one exercise for building the butt. Yeah, well, especially to take it through, it's full range of motion. I think is important to add just in terms of people that will barbell squat and then maybe not go down quite low enough might not feel the activation

from their glutes. And so that's just something to consider if you've been doing barbell squats and you're still not seeing change in the size of your glutes, that may be something to address. I would definitely agree that the barbell squat is, especially if you are able to take it

through its full range of motion. Because then I think nothing does that as well as the barbell squat. There is a case in an argument to be made for a hip thrust as the number one. So because that is the weight is directly opposing the glutes, it's easier for more people to activate their glutes in a movement like that. It's good load it substantially. You can load it quite a bit.

So there is a case to be made on is barbell squatting or hip thrusting, you know, number one, it doesn't, they both belong in your routine. If you're trying to build your butt and you're missing either one of those, you're missing out on a ton of gains that you could be making. Yeah, barbell hip thrusts have got to be up there. It's one of the top exercises for building the butt. So, our dead lifts, deadlifts and deadlift variations. So traditional conventional deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, both excellent butt building exercises. You have to have strong glutes.

Yeah, trap bar deadlifts are good. Any kind of a deadlift, but in particular, the straight bar ones, conventional sumo are really going to get the butt to develop really well. I'm going to make the case for the sumo being one of the best. And the reason why I'm going to make the case for that is because there's other things that the butt is responsible for besides just hip-pinging. There's also external rotation of the femur, which is where you turn your feet outward. So if somebody is deadlifting and they only do conventional and they never really do sumo and you also want to build your butt That's one of the best things that I've ever done as far as teaching clients a movement and getting them to develop their butt

That's I did a video a while back. It's actually one of the more viral YouTube videos that we've ever done and it's on Building the side butt, right? So yeah, so your glute meat, right? The butt is broken up in three different parts, and the meat gives you that kind of like, look where you can see the side of the butt, where you can see, some people have this develop, these develop glutes, so developed that you can see their glutes looking at them from the front. And a lot of times that a great glute meat

has been developed, and doing something like a sumo deadlift, I think you get the same benefits that you're getting from the conventional plus you get that external rotation. So you get more of the glute meat involved. And it's just an area that we just tend to lack, especially as we age. Well, and two to add to the deadlift

and the importance of it, there's really not a lot of exercises that better target your entire post to your chain. So to get everything to respond behind you, you know, just create such a loud signal for your back, your glutes, your hamstrings, everything to benefit from. Yeah, I also like Romanian deadlifts.

I like good mornings. Good mornings, great. It's a sleeper one that a lot of people do. It is, now you gotta do them right, right? You gotta have good posture, tight core. You gotta be able to hinge at the hips. Great. And then squeeze at the top.

That's where sometimes people mess up. They just stand up from the exercise and don't actually squeeze the glutes. But if you do them properly, they are exceptional but building exercises. And then you have your split stance exercises, your lunges and lunges variations. Those are also great but building exercises. And that kind of, I mean, that kind of rounds it out. I can't think of any other sort of thing. No, those are the, those are also great but building exercises. And that kind of, I mean, that kind of rounds it out. I can't think of any other. No, those are the, those are the great ones, but I do want to, there's, there's ways to do some

of those exercises. For example, I talk about the deadlift for sumo versus conventional to get more glued activation in an area that someone may not be working that often. Same thing goes for like a lunge, like you can do a lunge where you step out close, you know, you take a small step forward or you're in a stationary position and your feet aren't that far apart from each other and do a lunge and it's more quad than it is glued. If you take a longer stride or you take a big step or you do a split stance, you know, lunge

where you're in stationary position and you do a big long stride, you'll get more glute activation. The same thing goes for like a Bulgarian split squat. So if you're doing movements like that for the glutes, by putting your feet further out away from you, you'll get more glute activation than you would if your feet are closer to you

where you'll get more quad action. Right. So if you're trying to build your butt and you're not practicing those exercises on a consistent regular basis, in other words, you're not trying to consistently get stronger at the exercises that we just listed. Or one of them, one of the fundamental ones is missing out of your routine.

That may be one of the main reasons why your butt is not building. Now the next one, this one's a tough one because it's hard for people to identify. This one is really frustrating because people will do all the right exercises, but it's still not working and to make it matter's worse

than we can feel their butt working that well. Then it has to do with poor recruitment patterns. Let's talk about the barbell squat for a second. There are different ways to do a barbell squat. There's ways to squat where the glutes are very active and then the squat, ways to squat where the quads are more active. And to the untrained eye, they might not even be able to tell the difference. Now, I could see it right away. If I watch someone squat, I can tell that's

all quad, that's more glute. But for a lot of people, they don't see that. Now, here's the big frustration with it. If you've been doing it in a way for a long time that really isn't activating the glutes well, then it's gonna be really hard to go back and change the way you squat, because now that's your pattern, that's the way you squat, that's the way you move, it's almost like you have to relearn the exercise. Now we talked just now about the best exercises

and we talked about how some exercises just don't build great muscle like donkey kickbacks and dog peas and that kind of stuff. Well, those exercises now have value when we're talking about poor recruitment patterns. One way to learn how to activate the glutes with those great exercises we just listed was to do a few sets of those isolation exercises that aren't great at building muscle, but they can't help you connect.

They can help you feel it. They're great at priming the glutes, right? So we talk a lot about priming. We also, you mentioned the free butt guide that we did. I also shot a YouTube video that is related to the free guide that is the number one viral video that we have and it's addressing exactly this. And this is one of the most common things

that I would get with a client that would, they would hire me for their butt, they would say, oh Adam, I do the squats, I do the deadlifts, I do all these things that you're saying, but it just still won't build, I have a hard time feeling it there. That's so common because we're so sedentary as humans. We sit down, we drive, we sit at computers, and what you got to understand when you're in that seated position like that, your hip flexors are shortened and they're contracted and they're tight.

And so then when you go to stand up, it's hard for you to open it all the way up. And I give the analogy, I would, I was actually just talking about this this last weekend too. My sister is like, when you are, if I were to ask somebody to flex their bicep, as hard as they possibly can for like two minutes straight without letting it up. And then I ask you to open up your arm, you would feel it like, oh, it's like hard for you to extend your elbow all the way out. That's what's going on with your hips when you're in a seated position all day long.

When you ask yourself to fully stand all the way up, it's hard to fully come all the way up because your hip flexors are short and tight. So what does that do? That ends up carrying your weight over in the anterior in the front on your quads. And then your quads take over a lot of the movement that you'd be wanting your glutes to activate.

And then you go over and you load your backup for a barbell squat or you pick up a heavy barbell to do deadlifts because your trainer tells you that's what you want to do for glutes. And what ends up happening is you're so quad dominant because of the shortened hip flexors, your quads take over the movement and the glutes do very little bit. Yes, so do priming, if you're, this is you, if this is you,

if you do some of those other exercises, barbell squats and dead lifts and split stance exercises, and you're like, man, I feel a lot of my quads, I even feel some of my hamstrings, I don't really get anything in my butt, I don't get a pump in my glutes. Start your workouts with isolation, priming exercises. Go ahead.

Do one or two rounds or three sets of one or two exercises that are isolating that help you feel, connect to the glutes, get a glute burn. Then go and do those big exercises that we talked about earlier. And then while you're doing them, try to continue to feel the glutes fire throughout the whole movement. If that means you need to change your form, that's not a bad thing. That's probably a good thing. So be it, change your form. And now that you've connected to the glutes, it's easier for you to feel the glutes through that whole movement. And then you'll find those exercises to be truly effective. Yeah, and I also feel like people get so hung up on wraps

and like whatever is on their chart and sheet to accomplish for these workouts, to where it might just be beneficial for you to really hold an isometric pose with a hip bridge and really like squeeze and do it for a longer period of time even until you really get connected even further to that specific muscle group. I think that people don't allow for their body really the time to get to that point where they do feel connected to those glutes.

And to kind of come back to the barbell squat, There's a couple things too that I would look at in terms of like subtleties of things you could adjust. And so if you notice that you're very much more prone to feeling it in your quads and being front loaded, I would look at the bar position on your back too, to bring it maybe a little bit lower. Kind of obviously is going to take a little more shoulder mobility to accomplish this. So that's something to consider.

But you know, the lower the position of the bar on your back, it tends to help then to fold your body a little bit more and help to provide a little more depth in the posterior chain. Well, back to your point, you just made Justin with the like the isometric hold in that video, the YouTube video I'm referring to right now, I teach floor bridges. And the idea, it's really slow, controlled, and at the top of the bridge,

the idea is that you squeeze, hold, and concentrate on the glutes. You're not trying to do 15, 20 reps. You're not doing five, six sets. You're not trying to fatigue the muscle. You're just trying to really squeeze, activate, and I love isometric holds, like from a floor bridge position,

to get people to really connect to the butt, and you just wanna do enough that you're like, okay, I feel this, and so typically, I'm only asking a client to do five to 10 reps, really slow in control with isometric holds in it, and then we go right into the barbell squat or deadlift, and there's nothing wrong with you doing that between everyone in the big lift. So let's say you're going to do squats today and hip thrust and maybe like a lunge.

Those are going to be your three major lower body movers that you're doing today. Nothing wrong with you doing one to two little isometric floor bridge holds right before you go into each one of those exercises to get reconnected and to practice that, to practice the neurological connection from your brain telling your glutes to fire. That's one of those things that you can practice this all the time before you go into these big lifts that will help promote you firing the glutes. Yes, and another thing is you can do those priming movements on days you don't even work

out just to practice connecting to the glutes just throughout the day. So you can start to feel what they feel like to squeeze and contract. Then when you go to your exercises, it's gonna target the glutes much more. The next one has a lot to do with just how your workout is programmed out and designed.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in butt building exercises is they don't have a heavy phase. Everything is super high reps. 20 reps, 25 reps. That's the most common. Yeah, 30, 40 repetitions. Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with high reps, but if that's all you ever do,

you're not gonna build much muscle. And most of these programs focus on just that. It would be great to go through a phase where you're doing four or five reps with heavy weight or you're grinding through the set, you're feeling the squeeze, you're going and it's heavy. And you're not getting this crazy burn, but you are building a tremendous amount of strength. That's all about program design. In fact, what you should do with your program is you should do anywhere between two to four weeks within a particular rep range. So I like to pick something like three to five reps

for one phase, another one might be eight to 12 reps and then another one might be something like 15 to 20. Stay in that rep range for two to four weeks, get good at that rep range, get understand how it feels, the benefits of that particular rep range, then move to a new rep range, and then now get used to that rep range. Those changing of rep ranges does help the

body avoid plateaus. That's the big thing here. Your body plateaus much faster when everything is kept the same all the time. Well, one of the reasons why the 15 to 20 rep range and a lot of these exercise programs online don't work for someone trying to build their butt. It's because most of my female clients already gravitated towards that way of training as it is. It was very rare. I mean, I could probably count on one hand how many times I had a female client who was constantly training in the strength phase and I needed to move them out of that because that's all they gravitated towards.

Unless they were like a power lifter. Other than that, most all the marketing has been geared around high reps for women because we want to tone the muscle. We don't want to get big and bulky. And so because they've been marketed to like that for so long, most of them are already doing 15 to 20 reps, superset, jump lunges, things like that

that are high intensity and lots of repetition. So doing that could be one of the most crippling things for you to try and build your butt. Your body is already so adapted to that rep range. One of the best things you could do to design a program is to build it around a strength phase. A majority of your time should be actually spitting that and you're only intermittently coming out of that phase to go back into the 15 to 20 rep range because your body is probably so used to that signal. Yeah, I love that too because then you have the opportunity to load a bit more weight,

which then will help to promote that louder signal for the glutes to respond to. And also, you know, you can really kind of mess with your tempo with that a bit too. And maybe not necessarily add a lot of the low, but now we're going to mess with the tempo, where we're going to hold for a bit longer in the most challenging part of the squat, which is at the bottom. And so to do less reps,

but really concentrate on now having the recruitment process to be able to get yourself out of the hole is another strategy. So when I think about program design, the obvious thing is like what we would sell a little to you already, which is, you know, you stay in a rep range, you know,

set in rep range for, you know, three to six weeks, and then you move out of it for three to six weeks, then you move into another one, three to six weeks, and you cycle through just like every one of our, our programs are designed. Now the other thing that I think it's important too, is understanding too how bad cardio could be hurting you when you're trying to do this.

So, again, one of the things that I used to get a lot is the, you know, Adam, I want to lose five or ten pounds and I also want to build my butt. And so, they're doing all this cardio and then they're asking me for the best butt exercises. Well, if you are running on a treadmill or are hitting away at the stairmaster like crazy, you are sending a signal to the are hitting away at the stairmaster like crazy, you are sending a signal to the body that it is not advantageous for you to have a bunch of muscle, much less build a bunch more muscle. And that's exactly what we're trying to accomplish when we're trying to build a butt.

I want to take any extra calories that your body consumes and I want to prioritize that straight to the glutes and build the butt. But if you are getting on the stairmaster every single day and burning away calories all the time, you're sending a conflicting signal to the body and it makes it very difficult to get the butt to grow for that. You're not gonna build an amazing butt with cardio. It's just not gonna happen.

Now, sprints might build some muscle, still not nearly as effective as resistance training, but regular traditional cardio doesn't build muscle. It just doesn't do that. It's not the signal that you're sending your body adapts to get better at cardio, which means you lose muscle. Your body pairs muscle down to slow down its calorie burn. If you're trying to build your butt and you're picking cardio machines to do that, huge, huge, huge mistake, waste your time. I see this all the time, right? Yeah. Where people will get on a stair master, although use the elliptical in a particular way.

And I can see what they're doing. They're like, oh, if I kick back, if I do it this way, it's gonna work. And they feel the burn in the butt. Not gonna build the muscle. In fact, doing that may actually make the butt muscle shrink because it's becoming more efficient at that particular thing. Now, program design is also about exercise selection,

exercise order, tempo, just-and-mentioned tempo. You should definitely go through phases where you're slower with your repetition. You should go through phases where you're a little faster with your repetition. Now here's a deal. Program of all the things that we're talking about, program design is the most complicated. This is where a really, really good trainer or coach can put all the pieces together. Think about it like you're programming a video game. There's lots of ones and zeros and all that stuff. And a programmer knows how to put it all together so that the game works. A good trainer knows how to take all these variables, exercises, tempo, reps, sets, how

they look in the day, how they look during the week, how the phases all work together, based, and then of course what the person's goals are. They know how to piece that together to design a good program. If you want that all, all the guests work taken out for you, you can hire a trainer, that's the best thing you could possibly do. A good trainer is worth their weight and gold, or you can enroll in like one of our maps, workout programs, and they're all program well because of course we wrote them all. Maps performance is actually a really good but building exercise because it is a athletically minded

program. And like we mentioned earlier athletes always have well developed butts because we have mods and programs specific for building the butt. I mean maps aesthetic is geared around picking one or two muscle groups that you want to develop. You can pick glutes. It comes with a butt mod, want it? Butt mod with it. We also did strong. Strong was one of the surprising ones. That wasn't, we didn't write that with the intention of, oh, let's build butts,

but that was one of the number one things that ended up happening because it was so post-tiered chain focused because a strongman athlete needs, and there are athletes that are ladies that went through that program ended up developing glutes from that. So any of those three programs are great for that. But the main takeaway from that is they're following all the principles

that we're talking about. So that paired with everything else we're talking about in this episode is what really is going to make the glutes develop. Right. Now, here's the last one. And this one is tough for people who want to build and shape their butt, but also want to stay lean or get lean. And it's nutrition. I worked with many, many people who've come to me. We've put together a good workout, good routine, form looks good on their exercises. Everything's looking good, work out, good routine, form looks good on their exercises, everything's looking good, but I look at their calories and it's not enough.

Their protein intake, just not optimal. Here's the deal. If you don't feed your body enough to build, it just won't, it won't have the building blocks to do so. It's like giving a bunch of workers blueprints to put up a house and giving them no lumber, no nails, and no concrete. They can't build anything because they don't have those building blocks. Your nutrition needs to be on point. new prints to put up a house and giving them no lumber, no nails, and no concrete. They're figured out. They can't build anything because they don't have those building blocks.

Your nutrition needs to be on point. If you want to build muscle, you need to eat at a surplus, meaning you need to eat a little bit more calories in your burning because those extra calories then will go to developing your button. If you're trying to figure that out, you don't know what that number is for you, you can go to mapsmacro.com, input your information. It'll give you a pretty damn good estimate in terms of how many calories you should eat.

But if you're not eating enough, it's just not gonna happen. And if your protein intake is inoptimal, it's gonna be very difficult. It's conclusive beyond the shadow of a doubt, higher protein diets just build more muscle than lower protein diets. And yes, some people can get away with eating less protein, but even they would build more muscle

with a little bit more protein. You need the right materials for the job. Right. And so you gotta consider that when you're consuming, you have to be just in a surplus enough to provide those nutrients that the body needs to be able to produce this muscle tissue. So what would the conversation look like to this client?

Since this is, I think, one of the most common things, or at least I remember getting, which is the, I want to lose five or 10 pounds or I want to flat tummy, but I also want to build my butt. How do you guys start that conversation with that client? Oh, easy. We're going to start with a building first.

Here's why. Okay. If we start with the building first, first of all, we're going to build muscle, we're going to build and shape the butt, but simultaneously we'll speed up your metabolism. Now the second part is easier, right? You wanna lose into the five or 10 pounds of body fat?

Now we're dealing with a faster metabolism, which means you can eat more food and burn body fat. Now let's reverse that. Let's say the person comes and says the same exact thing, I wanna build my butt, but I wanna lose 10 pounds. We start with weight loss first. Through the weight loss process, we're probably going to lose a little bit of muscle

because the body is trying to adapt by slowing its metabolism down. Now that you've lost weight, now we're dealing with the slower metabolism, now we're going to try and work in the opposite direction that makes it more difficult. It's more beneficial to start with the building. By the way, I do this way if someone wants to lose 10 pounds

or if they want to lose 30 pounds, I start with the building. By the way, I do this if someone wants to lose 10 pounds or if they want to lose 30 pounds, I start with the building first. It makes the second part much easier. It's a much easier process to work through. So I would say start with the building first and then move to focusing on fat loss. If you have a lot of body fat to lose, then start with a very small surplus.

It's literally look at your maintenance, see how many calories you're burning. You can use the website maps macro.com, figure that out, and you can add like 100, 150 calories above that. That's all, just enough to give you a little bit of extra building blocks to build muscle. And here's what it might actually end up happening by doing that.

Through the muscle building process, you might actually simultaneously get a little bit leaner at the same time. The other piece of advice I'm giving this client, because I'm thinking of the mental hurdles that I would had to overcome with someone like this. It's really hard to tell male or female client that comes in and says,

I wanna lose 30 pounds of body fat, and then in addition to that, I wanna build a certain body part. Whether it be a male asking me to build his arms simultaneously or female asking me to build her butt simultaneously, it's really hard to convince that person who feels quote unquote fat, okay, to get them to add calories. And so the first point is one, you don't have to add that much. We start with a little bit. And then the second thing is, let's take it away from your weight and let's just focus on

building strength. Let's concentrate on where you're at right now, how much basing and we're really going to look at the big lifts that we talked about. When you looked at the very first point we made about the right exercise, exercise selection, we're going to look at all those exercises, we're going to look at their base where they're starting at right now, strength-wise. And then our goal is to add a little bit of calories and add strength to all of those movements. You get strong at those exercises. You add 10, 15, 20, 30 pounds to your squat, your deadlift, your hip thrust, your split stance exercise, your good mornings, your Romanian deadlift.

You're going to build more muscle. That's just the bottom line. It's a great point. It's a great point. That's a great point, Adam. It's like, that was the number one thing that I'll focus on for someone who want to build their butt. It's a no problem.

We're gonna get strong if these exercise. Yeah, and when you're stronger, you have more energy. You know, a lot of times, it's just a healthier mentally to approach it that way. And it's more sustainable as well. Because, you know, in early on as a trainer, I've tried both approaches, and, you know, it is much, much more difficult to go from a cut then to come back to a building phase, just because of those, the fact that strength wasn't the foundation of what we were starting

from. Right. So if you're somebody who's been training and just frustrated with the results or the lack of results you're getting for your butt development, it's probably one of the four things that we just mentioned. Find the ones that are the biggest defenders, tackle them, and then watch what happens to your gains. And if you want more detailed information, if you want more information on building a butt that's going to complement this particular podcast to really help you out, go to the website

minepumpfree.com, find the build your butt guide, it's a guide all about developing better glutes or bigger glutes or rounder glutes, and get it, it's free, read the whole thing, apply it to your training, Apply it to your lifestyle. And your butt will grow. Look, MindPump is recorded on videos as well as audio. Come find us on YouTube, MindPump podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram. That's where we're at the most on social media. You can find Doug at MindPump Doug. He's our producer. You can find Justin at MindPump Justin. You can find 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 dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers,

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