GLUTE WORKOUTS FOR MASS: Strategies for Gaining Size and Strength in Your Glutes
If you want to add a bit of extra mass to your glute muscles for a bigger and more powerful butt, you’re going to need to know how to work out your glutes properly in order to get the best results as possible as fast as you can. There are many different glute workouts for many different parts of your body, but working out which are the best glute workout plans can be difficult. Even more experienced lifters and athletes might not know the best glute workouts for men, and there’s no shame in that. After all, most of the focus tends to be placed on more glamorous areas like the arms and legs.
Below, you’ll find an introduction to some of the best glute workouts out there, helping you to learn the best ways to add mass to your glute muscles for a bigger and more powerful butt. These simple processes offer great results if you exercise regularly and healthily.
WHY ARE GLUTE WORKOUTS IMPORTANT?
Many bodybuilders and athletes often find that their glutes aren’t as great and powerful a state as they’d like them to be, and that’s for a simple reason. They don’t do glute workouts that specifically target those muscles, instead focusing on more general exercises or those that target other body areas.
Many exercises generally used for glutes, such as squats and deadlifts, are not specifically focused on the glute muscles. These are all compound exercises that actually work out a wide range of muscles across your body. That makes them great for general strength training, but they aren’t going to do all that much in terms of butt exercises.
It’s important to add some glute workouts that focus specifically on your glute muscles in order to build them up to the best they can be. Adding some more targeted glute workouts to your regular workout routine can make a huge difference to the state of your butt muscles very quickly!
HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU DO GLUTE WORKOUTS?
Everyone’s body is different, which makes it a little difficult to give precise recommendations on how often to train your glute muscles, but there are a few general principles that you should follow. Generally, larger muscle groups will require more exercise in every session and a longer recovery time. Your glutes might not be the largest muscle group of your body, but they’re big enough to take a high level of strain and need a bit more recovery time.
Generally, you should probably only do glute workouts for mass two or three times a week, but in higher volumes of 8 to 15 sets per session. If you’d prefer to do shorter and lighter sessions of 4 to 8 sets each, you could get away with up to 4 sessions per week, but more than that is inadvisable. If you put too much strain on your glutes, you could end up with unpleasant injuries that will take a long time to recover from!
BUTT EXERCISES BEYOND SQUATS AND DEADLIFTS
You’re probably already doing a number of exercises with moderate benefits to your glute muscles, such as lunges, deadlifts, and deep squats, so we will focus on the much more targeted glute workouts for mass that you might not already know so much about. Below, you’ll find a selection of our favorites.
Many of these exercises hit your glute muscles from a shortened position, which offers different benefits from normal exercises. Deadlifts and lunges hit your glutes the hardest at the bottom position of the exercise while the glute muscles are lengthened. Most of our favorites, though, hit the muscles when your legs are straighter and your glutes are shorter, which gives a different stimulus with different benefits.
CABLE PULL THROUGHS
Cable pull throughs are a good exercise if you want something for extreme muscle contractions that can place a high level of stress and strain on a specific muscle. These glute workouts for mass allow you to contract your glutes to their maximum at the top of each rep. They also have the major advantage of increasing the time you spend under tension, with the cables constantly applying additional load to your glutes and hamstrings for dramatic and faster results.
ELEVATED GLUTE BRIDGES
The elevated glute bridge is a flexible and versatile glute exercise for mass that can offer great benefits without adding much additional suffering to your regular workout plan. This exercise can be performed unilaterally or bilaterally, letting you focus your work out as tightly as you like. It’s a great option for anyone wanting to add a higher range of motion and high contraction exercises to their glute workouts. Elevated glute bridges also have the added benefit of being a useful glute muscle exercise for dealing with any muscle imbalances or hip based instabilities that might limit the development and general health of your glute muscles.
HIP THRUSTS
Hip thrusts are great for causing more extreme muscle contractions, placing more stress and strain on the muscle in question. The big advantage of this exercise is how effectively it isolates your glute muscles, focusing tightly on the specific area you’re trying to improve rather than more generally working out a larger part of your body.
BANDED CLAM SHELLS
If you’re looking for glute engagement or endurance exercises, look no further than banded clam shells. These are a flexible sort of glute exercise for mass that can be performed with or without mini bands, and offer a great level of focus on the smaller glute muscles that many other exercises overlook. These muscles control hip abduction and stability, and keeping them in great condition or risk imbalance and instability is important. As an added bonus, these exercises are easy to perform in high volumes to really pump up the endurance of your glute muscle mass.
STRAIGHT LEG MONSTER WALKS
Performing monster walks with locked knees and straight legs might seem strange. Still, it is actually a valuable glute exercise option for targeting some overlooked areas of the glute muscles that many other exercises neglect. These exercises target the gluteus medius, a smaller glute muscle often overlooked, for great results. By keeping your knees locked during your monster walks, you ensure that the quadriceps have no involvement in the movement, keeping the strain much more focused on your glute engagement to boost development.
BANDED PUMP SQUATS
Banded pump squats are a great option for extending the time your glutes spend under tension, putting them through their paces for an extended time. These shallow squats are easy to do: simply squat below parallel and rise up only as far as a few inches beyond parallel. Doing this small motion over many reps without a break puts a high strain on your glutes, but it can add to their mass very quickly and effectively, especially if you perform them at the end of your workout.
BANDED SUMO WALKS
Banded Sumo Walks are a great, simple way to boost glute activation and muscle endurance. By assuming a wide sumo stance with your legs spread apart, you can isolate the glute muscles effectively and put a high level of exercise focus into them. This is an easy glute exercise for mass that can give great results if you’re persistent and use mini bands to increase resistance a bit.
CONCLUSION
All of the exercises above are effective ways to add mass to your glutes with a bit of focus and dedication. Spending time and energy on your glutes adds to the time taken up by your workout routine, but it can help you stay balanced and add some significant mass. Different people will have different personal preferences regarding exercise, so different glute workouts will be better suited to different people at different times.
No matter what your exercise routine or starting point, all of the exercises above are good choices if you want glute muscle exercises for mass. Try a few of them and see which suit your preferences the best! Many of these exercises without using bands are ideally suited for even the least confident and experienced beginners. As you grow more experienced and your glute muscles get larger, you can steadily increase the resistance.
There are many other great glute workouts mass that you can try in addition to these ones, but these are a few of our favorite glute workouts for mass that you could try. Don’t be afraid to experiment and switch things up if something isn’t working out for you! After all, everyone’s workout habits and preferences are different. More tips here.
