Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1667: The Best Exercises You Can Do to Develop the Perfect Butt

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin cover the most effective butt building exercises. Why is the butt a muscle that everyone focuses on? (2:54) The challenges people face in building their butt. (6:44) The reasons why your butt is NOT responding. (9:23) The importance of frequency and emphasizing the RIGHT exercises. (16:40) The Best Exercises You Can Do to Develop the Perfect Butt.  #1 – Barbell Hip Thrust. (24:46) #2 – Barbell Back Squat. (27:33) #3 – Deadlift Variations. (30:28) #4 – Good Mornings. (36:33) #5 – Spilt Stance Variations. (37:52) #6 – Single Leg Variations. (41:23) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Promotion: Build Your Butt Bundle - 50% off! **Promo code - “BUTT50” at checkout**    Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout What To Do About Lagging Body Parts – Mind Pump Blog Sleepy Butt Syndrome is Why Your Butt Won’t Grow – Mind Pump Blog Don't Make These Mistakes When You Squat – Mind Pump TV 3 Best Secrets - How To Make Your Butt Grow (AVOID MISTAKES!) | MIND PUMP TV Stop Working Out And Start Practicing How To Do A Barbell Hip Thrust The RIGHT Way! (FIX THIS!!!) The ONLY Way You Should Be Doing Stiff Legged Deadlifts! - Mind Pump TV The BEST Side Butt Exercise! (SUMO DEADLIFT) - Mind Pump TV Build Your Hamstrings- How to Properly do Good Mornings – Mind Pump TV Split Stance Squat (Lunge) Tips & Tricks to Maximize Your Quad, Hamstring & Glute Development The Only Way You Should Be Doing Bulgarian Split Squats! (BUTT GROWTH) Single Leg Toe Touch- Do These BEFORE You Deadlift to Build Your Glutes & Hamstrings Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Bret Contreras PhD (@bretcontreras1)  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. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, alright? Today's episode, we talked about the best exercises that you can do, or that you should do to develop the perfect butt, but there's much more.

We talk about the main reasons why people don't develop a great butt in their workouts, why people have issues with connecting, and why is it I do these exercises that are supposed to work my butt and my quads develop instead, or why is it that my butt is lagging? Like what can I do? So in today's episode, we break it down for you.

We give you all the answers. Now, if you want, everything spelled out for you. If you want programming, sets, reps, exercises, video demos, everything, we have something called the build your butt bundle in which we've in combined Maps and Obolic, Maps aesthetic, and we've thrown in the Kettlebell for Aesthetics program,

so that's also in there. And then what we did is we programmed the trigger sessions that you find in Maps and Obolic, and the focus sessions that you find in Maps aesthetic. We've programmed them specifically for people who want to develop their butt. Now, this is a bundle that we've offered for a long time. It's already discounted, but because we're doing this episode,

we've cut the price in half in additional 50% off. So it's a huge, huge discount. So if you're interested in getting the Build Your Bump Bundle, which includes again, a Maps and Abolic, Maps aesthetic, the Kettlebell For aesthetics program, and the specific trigger sessions and focus sessions for developing the butt, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com, click on the build your butt bundle,

and then you have to use this code to get 50% off. Use the code but 50. That's BTTT50 with no space. Also, this episode was brought to you by our sponsor, ForSigmatic. Now, ForSigmatic has the the best mushroom based supplements you'll find Anywhere so these are supplements like Cordiseps which are great for stamina now studies are even showing some anti-cancer effects great for recovery to stostorone

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All right, guys, it's time to talk about the butt. Yeah! The butt. Just his favorite. Sorry, I got excited. Everybody's favorite. You know what's interesting about this? If you think about it, because when you talk about like muscles

that people tend to rank near the top in terms of attractiveness, they actually find this with men and with women. So women will even say, I've heard you say that, but is that true? It is. When you look at, dude, baseball pants. Yeah.

What? He notices so many girls. I swear he has like all the baseball pants. Who will use carpenter thing with a shirt off of his wire. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'm from softball practice where it is pants all, you know, six. Hey, honey, it's a thing. You were so quick to answer that right there.

No, but it's true. When they do polls, women will rank the butt up there, men rank the butt. No, I believe that. I always thought that for women, it was arms. That's why arms is up there too, but so the butt. Okay. And people don't think that, right?

They don't think women are into. I would say it's the top top three things I was hired for. I would say that's one when you fat loss obviously number one right. Most people come in and say they want to lose. But I would say but is there a close two or three as far as industries now. Devoted. Of course. Yeah. I mean a lot of this and you know we might say people might think oh this is driven by marketing and advertising but reality it's evolution and biology drives marketing and advertising so you got to ask yourself why is the butt a muscle that everybody focuses on but and also by the way if you look at like ancient sculptures primitive statues and

sculptures they tend to place an emphasis on the butt, the glutes. Look at Greek sculptures, develop muscular backs, hips, and glutes. So you think, well, what the hell is going on? When you look at primates, there's a few differences between humans and primates structurally speaking. One of the greatest ones is the size of our glutes. We have massive butt muscles compared to other primates, and it's because we walk on two legs, we balance, and we run, and we run better than any primate that there is. It's also very involved in throwing and generating power. You have to have powerful

glutes to do. Do you think we've lost our ass in the last 100 years? No, I'm serious. Because we don't sit in the squatted position as much, like we're more sedentary, we're not throwing like you're alluding to right now, like we're not doing a lot of these things. So do you think that we've lost our ass? Or what?

I think we're turned into shrimps. We're basically curled forward. We have no butt and our shoulders are super protracted. Well, it's a big reason why we have a lot of back pain. Like people don't realize that that stability, a lot of it comes also from the glutes. It's the lumbar pelvic hip area, right? So it's not just the core,

it's not just your abs, your obliques, and your low back. It's also, actually believe it or not, some of the lower lats. And then the glutes, which really weak glutes cause a lot of problems in people. And so evolutionarily speaking, when we see healthy, strong looking glutes, we can't help but find them attractive because that probably meant that he could run fast

and he could throw with a lot of power or she was very stable and strong and had good, you know, even women with developed glutes or when they store body fat in that area have better fatty acid profiles for offspring. So it's just one of those things, That's like a big deal. So this is why there's so much that surrounds, you know, butt training and butt development and what it means. Even today, if you look at athletes, like especially explosive athletes,

that you could tell a lot by looking at an athlete's hip area. You really can. Yeah, 100%. Like how powerful or how fast or how high they can jump by the way their hips look for sure. Oh yeah. Glutes. Yeah, look at sprinters. They've got these huge glutes because they can generate, you know, tremendous speed. So it's a muscle that that is very important and of course, very attractive and developing it. If you do things right, you should be able to develop it pretty

well. The problem is that there's a lot of challenges that people have along the way to developing big glutes and some of it has to do with just poor advertising and poor exercise programming, but there's more. Yeah, no, I think a lot of it has to do with going back to my point of how sedentary we are. You know, understanding anatomy and like when you sit in a chair like we are all right now, you shorten the hip flexors,

and when you go to stand up, if you have really shortened hip flexors, it kind of puts you in this kind of forward position. Now, I'd be exact, this is exaggerating it, right, but when we stand up, you have this short hip flex and you're leaned over at this. And so you're putting all this weight on the front of your quads, and then you go and you go to train exercises for your glutes, and you can leaned over at this. And so you're putting all this weight on the front of your quads.

And then you go and you go to train exercises for your glutes and you can't help but the quads take over. That has to be the number one issue that I had to deal with with helping somebody out. It was just simply, they were doing all the butt exercises that they read in the magazines or they heard from people that they're supposed to be doing, but the problem was their glutes just weren't firing properly and it has a lot to do, I think, with posture

more than you know. And then we all wear elevated heel shoes, even men, that we don't wear heels like women do, but I mean, running shoes, tennis shoes, all of them, the heel is slightly elevated, that brings your center of gravity forward a little bit and that places more emphasis on the quads. In fact, if you're doing squats and you wanna hit your quads, one of the things you do is you elevate your heels.

And you've brought this up before, evolutionary speaking that that's ideal, like that's where the whole heel thing comes from, right? Six your butt out and it creates the solution, but it actually creates muscle recruitment patterns that deactivates your- That's what's ironic about it is that you talk about that this whole idea that you know We're we're naturally attracted to more pronounced glutes

But the high heels actually give you that like a almost like false advertising. It's not really official Yeah, they're not really as as pronounced and it ends up kind of shooting you in the foot if you're somebody who walks around and high heels all day There's the glutes are so important in balance. You know, when I was training towards the end of my career, I trained a lot of people in advance age. And you see very, very underdeveloped glutes in aging populations and weak. And like Justin said, they get that,

they start to develop that shrimp posture. And like if I would strengthen their glutes a little bit, their balance would improve tremendously. Well, isn't that like one of the top injuries is you fall and break your hip from an advanced age? I mean, and that's, I think that's just a lack of good hip stability and hip stability comes from those muscles that support and keep that stable.

And if you don't train it, you lose it. You do. So I'd say, okay, so one of the number one reasons that I ran into and I'd love you guys' feedback for clients who just had issues developing their butt. Besides not working out, so these are people who now have done some exercise, and they're just like, yeah, it doesn't seem to respond. My butt doesn't seem to respond.

I'd say probably the top reason is just they're not really connecting and firing their glutes really well when they're doing certain exercises. That would probably be the number one thing I can think of. And what people oftentimes don't realize is that just because you're doing a movement doesn't mean you're really using the your target muscles or the muscles trying to work to their max capacity or at least efficiently or effectively. All your body is doing is it's moving in the motion that you're asking it to do.

So if your butt is weak, it'll just ask other muscles to do the job. So you can be doing the movement and not really firing the glutes. Well, I think too, like, and I blame some bit of the high rep advertisement that's out there with women especially too, but just getting through the movements and workouts a lot of times, you know, people think that they just need to get through the workout to be able to get the growth and the development of muscle instead of really focusing

on the intent of the exercise. So, you know, one thing is to really kind of reduce the amount of reps, you know, and add load, but also like before all that is to get that kind of connection like you're saying. And so to, you know, adjust the hips and to make sure that you're really firing and activating glutes by, you know, making sure your hips are in the proper position to even be able to fire properly is step number one, and then to address those things in your programming is vital.

Yeah, I think you're talking about the second most common, when you talk about heavy lifting, right? The first one is poor connection, 100%. It's rare that I would get somebody who I didn't have to address posture issues first before being all the developed their glutes. It's just rare. I would say one out of 10 has got great posture, already fires the glutes.

We can get straight to just good programming and I can develop their glutes. Most people we have to address the connection first. Then the most common in just in my female clients is what. Especially female. Yeah, is what Justin's talking about, which is, you know, especially early on in the career. I mean, I think that's changing. I think CrossFit, we've talked about this before.

I think they're a big part of that movement of getting women to lift heavy. But before CrossFit, when we were all still young trainers, man, it would, you get, I'd get a female client that wanted to develop their glutes and they never seen anything less than 15 reps before. Everything was 15, 20, 30, supersetting, low rest periods, jazzy-sized classes, body pump classes, circuit training, no one was doing deadlift squats, good mornings, hip

thrust for five reps that was just unheard of for like any female club. I think it's just like, that's that led into a lot of the problem of the poor connection that I saw like with clients committing because they were doing a lot of the work, but they just weren't feeling their glutes being involved. So yeah, it is like, it's important for you to understand like how to actually place

and roll your hips into a good position to even get that kind of activation first, but the majority of the problem I've seen is because of just all these wraps with it based off momentum and not the intent. Yeah, you know what it really dawned on me? This was, I don't know, maybe six years in my career. And I kept noticing with brand new clients when I would have them do an overhead press, a lot of people have trouble with full extension. So they'll come up and then it's hard for them

to really straighten their arm out and get this nice tall overhead press. And so I tell people, straighten your arms up, tall or get the weight up there. And then they'd get stuck here and they'd come up on their toes. They'd go up on their toes. And I remember thinking,

what the hell does your calves have to do with extending your arms? Like I'm telling you to extend your arms and then it dawn on me Their body Understands get the weight higher because that's what you're telling your arms Essentially what you're what you're thinking is I got to get the weight higher my trainer Sal told me to so your body thinks These muscles up here aren't doing it come up on your toes That's what happens when you have a poor connection to your glutes.

You go to do a squat or a hip thrust or a lunge, and your glutes aren't really strong. Well, that's all right. We got the hamstrings and quads, and they'll take over. And so if you don't teach your body to connect well, then you can't fire the glutes really well, and it's hard to develop them. And then back to what you guys are talking about

with heavy weight, like, and when I say heavy weight, what I mean is training in a muscle building rep range. And that's a relatively wide range, right? I would say five to six reps up to as high as 20 with high intensity and load. A lot of people, especially women, when they go to workout, they follow these online glute workout programs.

They're doing 50 reps, 60 reps. They're doing, you know, burn. There's no load and they're, and they're feeling the muscle burn and yeah, they feel their glutes, but there's no muscle building going on because they're afraid of loading. So you got to train heavy too? I think a lot of that too is just a marketing strategy. Because if you're, if you're training someone who's a beginner client who doesn't necessarily know about programming, getting them to feel it is like a big deal, right? So if I write a program for someone who doesn't know any better,

and I write, you know, a glute kickbacks and fire hydrants and floor bridges, bodyweight floor bridges, like in these frog pumpers, and like I got all these kind of, I have their plays. I actually needed the exercise. Right, they have value. I'm not saying, and if I get someone,

then I have, that's program one, okay? And then I write a program that is, Good Mornings, Deadlift, Squat Lift, squatting. Those are like the main exercises. The one problem that I know that, is let's say this is a virtual Program the program that's got all these bullshit little exercises in there the clients going to feel that They're gonna feel in their butt because it's easy when you're doing these little will glue kickbacks and stuff because they're small Isolation exercises that help target that and they're gonna feel oh I feel the burn in my butt

Then I they're they're not familiar with good mornings, they're not familiar with dead lives, they're not familiar with squats, and they have all the posture issues that we were talking about. Although this program will build way more of an ass than this program, the client who has no experience does this one and doesn't feel anything in their butt

because it's not fireproof. So then they just right away discount that as, oh, that's not a good program. This is a good program because I feel it in my ass all the time, but the truth is, this is the more superior program as far as what is going to build their butt, but because they don't feel it. So that's part of the hurdle for good coaches and trainers

to get over is that you've got people that have tried these little pumping type exercises and that it's easy for them. They can have pretty bad form and still fill it in their glutes. So they think that that's a better program for building their butt. When in reality, if we can get them

to train their glutes probably in fire then probably this program is far more superior in doing that. I think that's part of the hurdle. Yeah, and here's a thing too with those exercises that you mentioned, the little pumping ones or whatever. They have value and a lot of the value of those is being able to add frequency to your training. They shouldn't be the core of your workouts, but they're great for

adding frequency, which is the other big issue, which is people aren't training with the optimal amount of frequency to build their butt. You probably want to hit your butt with good lifts, two or three days a week. Then on the other days in between, especially if your butt is a focus for you, then you throw in the exercises that you just talked about. Your frog, pumper, your body weight, hip thrust, your fire hydrants and kickbacks.

Those are great exercises to add volume and not too much damage, but what they do is they maintain this really loud muscle building signal. And then you see, this is especially for people who see development in other parts of the body, but the glutes seem to be lagging. Like this is one way to really get the glutes to catch up is to increase the frequency,

but you can't just do heavy lifts every single day. You can't be back barbell squatting three times a week. You could, but the likely of you hood of overtraining that way is more likely. No, but that reinforces that it's a priority. And the body responds accordingly. And so to be able to do that properly and have that kind of low to moderate intensity in between, it just keeps that signal alive. It keeps that a priority for your body to build and develop that area. So, you know, that's something to definitely want to focus on. If this is

your goal is to build, you know, substantial glutes. I mean, I see two applications there, right? I see them as great exercises for frequency builders like you're talking about, and then also great for priming. Right, so they're great if I find all those in like trigger sessions with our program apps and a more focused sessions. Yeah. You're fine those exercises, but they have to be used. Yeah, and we put them in the butt builder guide for that exact reason. The idea is that okay, I'm helping this person get that connection, that mind muscle connection to the glutes by doing

these very basic, easy exercises to fire the glutes so that when I go over and do the exercise that really build the glutes, they will fire properly. That's kind of the idea behind that. What you see most common in the gym is you see people doing those exercises all the time and neglecting the big barbell movements that are really going to move the needle in your pursuit of building your place. You're so right. I would say this was more true in the past than it is now, but still pretty true.

And that is that people are just emphasizing the wrong exercises when they want to build a bunch. Like, like, barbell squat, and this was very true when I was a trainer years ago. Barbell squats are one of the best but building exercises you could do. And yet, when people would go to build their butt, you wouldn't see barbell squats. In fact, I mean, geez, when I first became a trainer, nobody did barbell squats. Like dead lifts. Dead lifts are an incredible

but building exercise. You rarely would see anybody doing dead lifts or dead lift variations to build their butts. So it was a wrong emphasis on the wrong exercises. And you know, just like it's true for building your chest or your shoulders or your back, the compound lifts with good load is what's gonna give you the best results.

I remember specifically one client, I had this woman that I trained who she wanted, like her goal was to get a nice, you know, in her words bikini-looking type body, right? And she showed me her routine. She was advanced in the sense that she'd been working out for a long time. And I looked at her workout and I said, why, I saw no barbell squats and no deadlifts. And I'm like, well, why don't you barbell squat and deadlifts? Well, I don't want to get big. I'm not trying to get huge.

I'm like, well, you're not going to get big or huge. But you want to build your butt. This is, these are some exercises you should probably do. So literally, this is, I mean, no joke. And luckily, I can be very convincing because I had to sell around this. I cut out 80% of her exercises, and we got really good at deadlifting and squatting.

And her butt grew like she should never developed it before. She had this, and she's like, oh my God, my butt is so round. I can't believe these two exercises are so much better than those other 15 ones that I was doing before. And it's like, yeah, you know, exercises are not all created equal. Some are way better for correctional purposes. Some are way better for balance and function.

And some just build muscle. And they build muscle very, very well. And like a barbell squat, for example, it is at the top of lower body, just in general, building exercises. And you see a bit of hesitancy here, mainly because it does require good technique. It requires you to understand how to hold your body throughout this movement.

And so there's a bit of an education there, but it's so worth it. It's so worth it to go through that process, hire a coach or really study through some videos and master the form of it because, you know, your body's gonna be able to generate a lot more force throughout this exercise, which in turn, you know, your glutes are gonna get a lot more of that demand, which it's not gonna get from these little tiny exercises. Well, I think it goes back to the feeling thing,

I think that's the main problem here. I think that clients feel these little isolation exercises. So then they just make you think, I think about it. If you didn't have your knowledge that you have an experience that you have, and you did something, and you really felt one exercise in the area you want to develop, and then another exercise you do, you don't feel it as much, well, what would you think as a non-experienced, non-trainer? What would you say?

And I ask you, I quiz you, which one of these exercises does your butt more? You would say isolation, the keeps back. Here's an example, I used to give to people when we have this discussion. Sometimes people would debate me and it's okay. Because it's funny, when you talk about other muscles everybody understands.

Yeah, right, use the quad. Use the quad. You would lay extensions, you feel lay extensions like crazy in your quad. They're not gonna do anything to your quads like a squat with. Yeah, like a Bulgarian split stance or like a traditional squat.

Here's the example I used to give. I would tell people, okay, what's one of the best exercises develop good strong shoulders? They'd be like, oh, standing overhead press or military press. I'd say awesome. So, what are you gonna feel more of a burn? Five sets of five reps with an overhead press,

or if I take your arms and extend them out to your sides and you do shoulder circles for three minutes straight. The shoulder, I'm gonna burn the shit out of your shoulders. But you're not gonna develop any muscle really doing it that way. So, but is there value in those movements and learning how to feel the muscle so that when you do the big lifts, you can do them right. Absolutely.

You know, back to what Justin was saying about your technique and form, this is why we talk so much about practicing exercises versus just training for fatigue. Your technique and skill really determines how much you get out of the exercise. So to use another example, so if we stick with, for example, a barbell squat,

and was okay, the goal of the squat in this particular context is to develop the butt. So we do squats because we want to develop the butt. All right, let's use another example, right? My goal with throwing is to get the baseball to go as far as possible. A big part of what determines how far the baseball goes is definitely how much power I generate. But there's also my technique, like a bodybuilder's way more powerful than a baseball player, but the baseball player will throw far further, right? Why is that?

They know how to express the movement much more and generate more force to get the ball to move faster through their technique. If you squat or do any other exercise with really good technique and skill, you're gonna essentially throw the ball further. You're gonna get more out of that particular lift. So it's very important that you do the following exercises.

And I say, following, because I think we should list some of the best butt building exercises that you should do. And these exercises should be in your routine in one way, shape, or another if your goal is to develop your butt. So let's start with some of the ones that we know to be some of the most effective. I think one of the more obvious ones,

which you hear a lot of people talking about nowadays, is the barbell hip thrust. This could be labeled as a compound lift, although the knee joint doesn't have a lot of activation. It's the compound lift, you could go pretty heavy on it, and it does focus on the butt, and it does build the butt. So hip thrust should be in your routine if you're trying to focus on the butt and it does build the butt. So hip thrust should be in your routine if you're trying to build around.

I think this one is king in this area because it almost, it is a compound lift that almost acts like an isolation exercise. Yeah, good point. It's maybe that's a very rare combination. Right. Yeah. A compound lift that actually moves like an isolation exercise. So it's, I mean, everything that's pretty stable and the weight is directly opposing gravity with the glutes.

And it's easy for even somebody who doesn't have a great connection of glutes to fill it in their glutes. That's why I think this, this has got to be in the routine and it's probably, well, it's basically the bench press for glutes. Yeah, right. No, it really is. And I think it should be in every routine and it's probably, well, it's basically the bench press for glue. Yeah, right? No, it really is. And I think it should be in every program if you're doing that. And it's one of the best ways,

one, to load really well, safely without somebody getting hurt who doesn't have really good technique yet in barbell squatting or deadlift. That's a thank you. I'm so glad you said that because there's always this debate, what's better to build the butt, barbell squats or hip thrust. I think if you have a poor connection, hip thrusts are extremely valuable.

Once you get a good connection though, and you can get the glutes, the fire, and you've got good technique, barbell squats are hard to beat. They're hard to beat, especially a good full squat. And studies will show this by the way. If you do a half squat, it's mostly quad. But if you're doing a good full squat, you've will show this by the way. If you do a half squat, it's mostly quad. But if you're doing a good full squat, you've got good stability, mobility, you're gonna activate your glutes a lot,

especially at the bottom of the squat. And a barbell squat is very functional. Like the carryover from barbell squats into any other lift or real life or performance or balance or stability or health is just tremendous. And remember, we talked about why we like looking at the glutes so much. There's the evolutionary aspect of it that it's functional, right? Barbell squats are very functional.

So when you can do barbell squats right and you do them and you're good at them, you're not going to have a part of your lower body that's really not well developed. And that includes the prime hip movers which are the glutes. Well, and to that point of getting proper depth, like a lot of times you see with, as you age, like you lose certain ranges of motion, and this is where all the problems start to arise. And so to be able to keep ahead of that and stay strong with depth with your hips down that position, will help

tremendously going forward in terms of longevity of, you know, the health of your joints and the strength to support your body from the lower half. I also think that that squats are better because there's a little bit more emphasis on the eccentric portion of the exercise. There is. If you watch somebody do a hip thrust, it's mainly just the thrusting portion. You rarely ever see someone hip thrust and really focus on the way it's a short range of motion.

Yeah, it's a short range of motion. It's primarily focused on the concentric portion of the exercise. Most people thrust up the top squeeze and then let it drop down. Thrust up squeeze let it drop down. And we know that one of the best portions of an exercise for building is the eccentric portion. And so I think squats do that. And then I also think that the stability component, even though it's bilateral, I still think that the stability component in squatting is much greater than in a hip thrust. It's a longer range of motion. At the bottom of the squat,

the hips have to stabilize. The glute meat is one of the main muscles that's responsible for stabilizing the hips, which gives you that heart shaped butt that everybody wants. I think you get more of that with the squat. Even though I know Brett Contreras has done some really good studies and research to show that there's more glute activation in a hip thrust, but there's other components that it's it's not just about, you know, an EastM activation.

There's also more going on when you do a barbell squat versus a hip thrust. Yeah, I mean, hip thrust. So it's got to be up there. Yeah, hip thrusts are up there, but barbell squats give you more than just developing your glutes. So they have to be in, they have to be in your routine if you want well-developed glutes and a lower body

that communicates well and good stability all the way around. But yeah, you talk about range of motion. Compare the range of motion of a hip thrust to the range of motion of a full squat. I mean, a full squat is one of the biggest, I'd say, I'm not, I'm thinking, what exercise would have a larger range of motion than a squat? For the glutes? For any part of the body. I think it's one of the largest range of motion exercises, right? It involves the knee joint, the hip joint. I mean, you go all the way down, all the way up,

especially with a full squat. That's a very, very long range of motion type exercises. Probably one of the reasons why it's so functional and why when you do them right, it's so important for overall lower body and lower back. And that's why it can't be discounted, because again, I know that there's been a lot of stuff. And Brett Contreras has definitely been like the leader

in this, right? Because he's the one who really brought the hip thrust to the forefront for people. And 100% thinks it's king and it's one of the best exercise you can do. Because I think again, for the simplicity of it, right? You could take somebody who's a pretty new lifter and get them to start loading a barbell thrust.

A lot sooner than you can get a client who's new to probably load a barbell back squat really well. But all things equal if you have advanced lifters who can squat really well, obviously not a hip thrust really well, I think that in that case, that's where I would say that the squat becomes superior to the hip thrust, but it's a very close call when you're, and they both belong in the routine.

Yeah. The next exercise would be a deadlift. And it could be a conventional deadlift. It could be deadlifts in their variations. Like my favorite would be the Romanian deadlift, where the knees are bent but fixed. And so it's all hip. And what's interesting, by the way,

of a Romanian deadlift, technically, it's an isolation movement or a single joint exercise, you would say, right? Because the knees are supposed to stay locked, but it definitely performs like a compound lift. You can get really strong and develop tremendous hamstrings and glutes from doing that exercise.

But even a conventional deadlift, if you do a good conventional deadlift, the prime movers are the hips. Now, we typically refer to the deadlift as a back exercise, and I still think it's an excellent back exercise, but the prime movers, by all mechanically speaking, are the hips. That's what's getting the weight to come up,

and it's the butt, it's the glutes. This exercise, especially in the beginning of my career, when hip thrust were nowhere near popular, it was deadlifts. Deadlifts was like my prime way of getting people's butts to build and it was super effective, you know, sumo style, conventional style, just the great exercise, also extremely functional. I mean, if you could deadlift well with good form and technique and stability and you get strong,

you're getting close to developing a low back that is bulletproof in everyday life. I mean, you could deadlift your body weight or more with good form and stability. Like, you're gonna feel like your low back is impervious. And I wanna be careful when I say that. Of course, there's always risk of injury, but I mean, I fixed more backs with good deadlifts

than almost anything else. I assume, deadlifts than almost anything else. I assume O deadlifts like one of my favorite exercises to teach for this One in the sumo stance it puts you a little bit more in the squatted position So you naturally get a little more glute than hamstring activation I think then you would on a conventional deadlift so I like that plus because your feet are externally rotated It turns that glute meat on right so you gotta push out right? Yeah, and so that's and and and I just it turns that glute meat on, right? So, I mean, you gotta push out, right? Remember that.

And so, that's, and I just think that the glute meat is one of those muscles that is just underdeveloped on most people. We just don't do a lot of hip stability work and that muscle, if you train it, it'll definitely make the shape of your butt way, way more round or pronounced. And I think the sumo deadlifts, especially if you're

somebody who conventional deadlifts all the time. If you, that's the main way you deadlift, if you ever deadlift is conventional and you don't do sumo a lot, what a great exercise to do for building the butt for somebody. Yeah, and there's contention, you know, of course, with that kind of mix about all this kind of stuff, but it's really like when we're talking about compound lifts, the value of them, we can load them some substantially. And it's going to affect so many muscles in your posterior chain, so all the way up. And to be able to put more demand on those muscles is, you know, how we're going to actually

achieve the growth. And so to be able to incorporate lifts like this, even though it's not an isolation, you're not going to feel this specifically all the time, just in not an isolation, you're not gonna feel this specifically all the time just in the glutes, you're gonna feel this all over your backside, so much value there, in combination with these other ones we're mentioning. By the way, this is what we didn't list this on any of our stuff, and we should address this

because I know somebody's gonna be thinking about one of the most popular things you've seen in the gym in the last decade is the banded knees in all of these exercises. Yeah, I'm trying. And that's to the point that I'm talking about about the external rotation in the feet, right? And the kind of pushing the,

so my feet are externally rotated. And what, obviously, when you do a sumo deadlift, what you're trying to keep from happening is the knees collapsing. Yeah, so you have to push out. So intrinsically, I have to push out. The band just gives you that feedback. And it's developing the muscle that I was talking about that is so underdeveloped on so

many people. So that's why you see so many people doing it because it's worked for them. And they don't necessarily realize what they're doing, but that's exactly what's happening. And I would intrinsically teach a client to do that versus having to do it without the band. Yeah, well, I mean, let's be honest, the band in position that you hold really isn't building much muscle. What's building the muscle is the fact that you now have

feedback and you know how to intrinsically activate certain muscles. So, and we understood this as trainers. I would do, look, I'll give you an example. I had a client once who, I don't remember what sport it was that he played, but he developed this really bad imbalance between his right and left side. And when we would squat, if we squat with any load, his left knee would start to travel in a little bit.

And so what I did is I attached a band to his left knee and anchored it on the squat rack. So we had to push out as we squatted. Now why did I do that? Band distraction. Yeah, it's just I'm getting him to feel something pushing in so he knows to push out. Now can I do that without a band? Absolutely. I would just tell him push out. But sometimes people need that outside, you know, feedback. And we would do this with trainers with our hands here, push against my hand or squeeze right here where I'm touching and this will help people. So, educational tools.

Yeah, so when you're doing a sumo deadlift, you don't just get in the position and lift. In fact, if you talk, by the way, if you listen to power lifters on how to sumo deadlift properly, what do they always say? Spread the floor with your feet and your knees, right? They're really saying is push out, activate those side butt muscles, which make you more stable

and stronger. That's when the sumo deadlift becomes an incredible butt building, you know, exercise. And by the way, the band around the knees is a great tool, but if you're somebody who does that all the time, the idea of that is to teach you to do that intrinsically yourself. So, yeah, nothing wrong with someone using that as a tool But it's become so popular that you see people doing it all the time non-stop and all their later sizes because again They feel it right they're pushing out on a band squad and all of a sudden they feel the side butt light up I've never had before and they attribute that oh, it must be the band that's doing that Well, no, that's you forcing your knees out. Now that you grasp that and you understand that,

you can feel that, now you can do it without the band. So now get rid of the training wheels and actually get rid of the band and try and do that intrinsically. Well, you know what I mean? By the way, we said deadlifts, you can throw in there. Good morning, sure.

Yeah, good mornings or any kind of hip-injects or size. A good morning is essentially the same movement as like a Romanian deadlift. The difference is the weight is on your upper back rather than in front of you with your hands. If you have really good core stability and technique, good mornings you could load and you could go hard and strong and really develop the glutes. This was an exercise back in the day that bodybuilders used to compete over.

It was actually good mornings who could lift the most. Now you better have excellent technique when you do this, just just like with any exercise but I would put that up there. I would put that up there with the dead. No, it's got to go here because here's like I actually have a client right now that I help and she's 56 years old and one of the things that she has a job where she's on the computer time so we're constantly dealing with wrist stuff. So her wrist and grip are always giving out. So she could load the barbell way more on a good morning than she can on a deadlift where she has to grip the bar and hold up.

So there's definitely places where you're going to have, and that's actually, I've had a lot of clients where the grip was the limiting factor for them to load the bar. And so you could either one use wrist wraps in that situation or I can do a different exercise like a good morning where I could load it and she doesn't have to hold on to the bar her back and core supporting it. Next I would put split stance type lifts like lunges and Bulgarian split stance squats. Here's one of the reasons why I loved lunges so much. Getting a person to do a full squat can be really challenging

sometimes. Getting them to do a lunge where they go down to where if you look at the front leg on a lunge it's essentially doing a squat. You get them to do a full-range of motion lunge. It's as if that front leg is doing a relatively full-range of motion squat, at least parallel or maybe even a little below parallel, especially if you elevate that front leg a little bit. So it's easier to get that full range of motion, at least in that hip area. And so I think it just activates it really well.

Yeah, and I think too, to somewhat of your point of like the eccentric, I think, the added component here is stability. And so to be able to split your stance in general, I think people kind of go through the motions throughout the day and sort of find their way back to balanced, you know, set where their feet are kind of like in the same position, but to be able to spend more time in that split stance requires a lot of balance. And so now to add on top of that, you know, that component where we're squatting our way down and still being able to stabilize, left to right, you know, requires a little bit more intensity, which then stimulates the muscle

in a completely different way, which has massive value, you know, for the glutes. Well, Sal just glazed over something, I think we have to go back over because this was something I used a lot for this client in particular, and that is a lunge that is elevated. Yeah.

One of the number one limiting factors for clients that are trying to get deep squats is their ankle mobility. So many times, I am constantly working on that just to get them to even break parallel. We talked about the benefits of deep squats for the glute as far as full range of motion. If I have a client who has a hard time getting deep squats,

deep squats with good form, this is a great way to supplement this, is to do a lunge that's elevated because it's like a single leg. Yeah, so I would put like, I mean, literally you could put like a 45 pound plate on the ground, or stack a couple, I'd stack two or three of them,

and they lunge onto that plate, and when you'll see if you stop at the very bottom, it's like a burrow parallel. Yeah, it's a below parallel squat. And then they can actually step back so that their knee doesn't have to travel as far over their toes, which is the ankle mobility piece that's limiting. So it's a great way to get that deep squat position if you have a client that has poor ankle mobility. Yeah, so like walking lunges, backstep lunges, Bulgarian split stance squats, all these variations are excellent

for developing the butt, that split stance movement. And by the way, this is extremely functional. Our legs operate very, or at least they should operate in a way to where one leg is behind stabilizing, the other leg is kind of pushing forward. This is what happens when you walk and you run, is you have kind of this control lateral thing going on. And if you never do split stance exercises,

you're missing out. And I'll never forget seeing one of my good friends who's a very, very competitive power lifter who did squat at all the time and could squat record weight, do backstep lunges and never really had him in his routine, never but watching him do the backstep lunges and I'm like, okay, here's a guy who squat 700 pounds and he's having trouble with 135 pounds

because he never trains that split stance, you know, kind of movement or technique. So it's really important that you incorporate this as well. Now, the last one is important because as we said at the beginning of the episode, the glutes are very, very active in balance. They really are. Stand on one leg and balance. And what you'll find, besides your ankle getting tired, is you'll start to notice your butt starts to kind of fatigue. And what the hell is going on? It's your hip is a joint that moves in all kinds of different directions.

It rotates and it goes out to the side, the front, the back. And so it's your butt that holds everything steady and together along with the hip flexors. But mainly it's the glue that keeps you stable. So single leg toe touches, single leg deadlifts, like those single leg exercises, your butt will fire like crazy. I mean, you know, it's actually, I can't even think of a single person I've ever trained who didn't tell me when I did a single leg toe touch,

even people who said their butts don't fire, let's do this movement and balance with no weight. And I can't think of a single person that didn't say, oh my God, I can feel that in my butt. No, it's one of my favorite exercises also to teach. And it's also kind of the beginning, right? So this is, if you get somebody to single leg, deadlift really, really well,

even just with their body weight, right? Being able to balance and stabilize without having to put their foot on the ground every single rep. If they can actually do five to eight reps without having to touch with the other foot and they've got that stability down there, they're really ready for a lot of these other movements

because that's a challenging movement to do. Just to even body weight, much less loaded. And if you can get to the point where you're loading that because of the stability component, you'll see your develops grow fast. Yeah, I think the, I love single leg toe touch exercises on trigger sessions. And I also like them on focus sessions, but

trigger sessions are my favorite because it's not a loaded exercise. It's just body weight. It's not super intense, so it's not going to like hammer my body. But let's say, for example, maps in a ballicle, have you working out with heavy foundational workouts two to three days a week, so depends on your level of fitness. You could pick two to three days a week. Then on the days in between, you do these trigger sessions. They're lighter, shorter workouts. You typically do two or three of them in a day. They last about eight minutes. You do toe touches on those trigger sessions. Watch what happens to your butt. Like it just it grows and it develops, especially when you combine it with those heavy workouts. Yeah, I always thought it was just a good idea

in between, especially like really trying to build and develop with these bilateral, like barbell loaded type exercises to be able also to check and see like where the compensations are and the discrepancies are left to right. And so like this is one of those exercises that will really highlight any kind of instability in the hip, anything there that we can strengthen both

sides equally if we put more emphasis on both independently. Yeah, when we built the butt builder program, literally this was the logic behind that, right? A lot of the program for anabolic and aesthetic, that part of it, the foundational stuff is what everyone's familiar with, but the butt builder part of it is all these focus and trigger sessions, addressing all the exercises that we're talking about,

and that was the science behind what we're doing. Yeah, totally. Okay, so here's the deal, right? So we just gave you basically the answers to what you can do, to most effectively get your glutes to grow, develop, become stronger, improve your performance. But a lot of times people want it written out.

They want the programming, they want the reps, the sets, they want the exercise demos to learn how to do them properly. We talked about technique. So what we did a while ago is we put together a build your butt bundle, which includes maps and a ball, maps aesthetic to of our most popular muscle building programs, along with the kettlebell for aesthetics program, which is always included in that bundle, so there's

some alternative kettlebell type exercises. And then in there, what we did is we put specific trigger sessions and specific focus sessions for people who want wanna build their butt. It's called the build your butt bundle. And because we're doing this episode, what we've done is we've taken that bundle, which is already discounted. So normally what we do is we have that bundle.

And I think it discounts both programs, something like 30% off or something like that. What we did because of this episode is we took an additional 50% off. So it's something like 70 or 80% off, the normal price of all those programs. So this is, if you're interested in doing this, what you do is you go to maps, fitnessproducts.com, you find the build your butt bundle, and then you use the code, but 50. So, B-U-T-T-5-0. So, B-U-T-T-5-0, zero no space and this particular promotion will expire Halloween.

So, October 31st is the last day for this particular promotion. Also, if you want to get more free information from us, head over to mindpumpfree.com. We have lots of free guides that can help you with lots of your fitness goals. And then if you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Instagram. So Justin's at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump Sal and Adam is 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 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 sour, animal-added Justin as your own personal trainer's butt

at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump!