The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Glutes Without Growing Your Legs (Sample Program)

If you want to grow your glutes without growing the size of your legs this is the ultimate guide for you. To accomplish this we want to focus on two main things. 1) Do a higher proportion of our weightlifting with isolation exercises that isolate the glutes and 2) Make sure we are using technique that biases the glutes during compound lifts.

1) More of our training volume should be exercises that isolate the glutes, not allowing our other leg muscles to contribute. These are going to be exercises like the hip thrust, single leg hip thrust, kickbacks, cable abductions, and hip extensions on GHD. In terms of execution, we have to make sure we avoid arching our back, which is going to take stress off the glutes and place it on our low back muscles. We want to maintain a neutral spine as we move around our hips as much as possible. I like to program one of these types of exercises to start each workout, working heavy in the 4-8 or 6-10 rep range and then finish the workout with another from this category in a higher rep range, often 15-20 as a burnout. 

2) When we do our big compound movements, we want to make sure our technique puts our glutes in the best position possible to contribute to the movement. To do this, you have to learn to hinge. A good hinge has you moving entirely through your hips without rounding or arching your lower back and maintaining good tension through your trunk. The kickstand hinge is the best place to test yourself, seeing if you can actually move through your hips, or if you have been compensating in this movement by moving through your spine or knee. 

Once you can effectively move through your hips, focus on the the knee bend. You generally want a small- moderate amount of bend in your knee on every glute focused exercise to keep the tension on your glutes. In the leg press, place your feet high to reduce the amount of bend in your knees. Your squats should have a more forward torso lean, almost like a good morning. And with your lunges you should try to stack your knee on top of the middle of your foot and lean your torso forward as you go through the movement. In your hinges, make sure you keep your weight over the middle of your foot, and your knees bent accordingly. Try not to move through your knee at all in your rdl work, and feel how much harder your glutes have to work compared to your hamstrings. 

The following is a 3 day routine that will train your glutes incredibly effectively. 

Day 1 

A) Hip thrust (barbell or machine) 3 sets of 4-8 reps 

B1) Barbell Back squat (glute focus) 3 sets 6-10 reps 

B2) Staggered stance RDL 3 sets 8-12 reps per side 

C) Cable abduction 3 sets of 15-20 reps per side 

Day 2 

A) 45 degree hip extension 1 + ¼ reps 3 sets 4-8 reps 

B1) RDL (barbell/trap bar/ double dumbbell) 3 sets 6-10 reps 

B2) Reverse lunge 3 sets 8-12 reps per side (complete all reps on one side before moving to the other) 

C) Single leg hip thrust 2 sets rest pause as many reps as possible (if you get more than 20 reps in your first set add a dumbbell to the hip on the working leg) (rest pause works as follows - complete as many reps as you can on one side, then immediately without resting go to the other side, then without rest back to the first side, and so on until you have completed three sets to failure on each side) 

Day 3 

A) GHD hip extension 3 sets of clusters 5.5.5 (rest 5 seconds in between each set of 5 reps) 

B1) Rear foot elevated split squat 3 sets 6-10 reps per side 

B2) Bosu ball hamstring curl 3 sets 15-20 reps 

C) Glute medius kickbacks 3 sets 15-20 reps 

Enjoy!