Either exercise like hip thrust are defended at all costs and isolation exercises are forgotten, or the latter are given too much importance and the compounds are ignored.
In this article, we review how a good buttock training should focus and we explain five exercises that can be an important pillar in your buttock training in the gym.
If you prefer to train at home, this is not an impediment for you to train your glute without going to the gym.
How do I choose the correct exercises for my glute training?
The priorities we should have when selecting our glute exercises should be the following:
- Exercises that reproduce the functions performed by the gluteus: hip extension, hip abduction, external hip rotation, and pelvic retroversion.
- Exercises with horizontal and vertical force vector. In exercises with a vertical vector, the gluteus finds its highest peak of tension when it is stretched, however, in ex,ercises with horizontal vector this happens when it is contracted.
- Exercises the above two points may be classified as activators exercises ( activators ), extruders ( stretchers ) and pumpers ( pumpers). Performing these exercises will ensure good fibrillar recruitment, mechanical tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress. What are the best gluteus exercises to perform in the gym?
- We will choose an activator, two stretchers, and two pumps.
Hip thrust
The hip thrust is one of the star gluteal exercises. It is the best exponent of activating exercises with horizontal force vector.
One of the things that Bret Contreras explains is that we should maintain a pelvic retroversion during the movement and keep the knees at 90 degrees, that is, with the shins perpendicular to the ground.
Romanian deadlift
The Romanian deadlift is a stretcher and one of the best examples of dominant hip exercises with a vertical force vector.
It is necessary to master our hip hinge and properly disassociate our lumbar spine and pelvis so as not to flex the back during movement, but the hip.
Bulgarian squats
The Bulgarian squat is also a stretcher, but with the particularity that it combines a horizontal and vertical force vector. This not only makes it an ideal exercise for the posterior chain of our legs, but also for the previous one.
Frog pumps
Finally, we can include two pumping exercises as training finishers. With these two exercises, we seek to pump and bring blood to the muscle so they work well at high repetitions and very close to muscle failure or even failure since they are exercises that do not cause much muscle damage and do not affect our recovery too much.
In the case of frog pumps, we must perform rapid repetitions.
Abductions with rubber in sitting
Band abductions are our last exercise. We have chosen this variant of abductions because it is the simplest, but no less effective. We can perform this exercise in the machine, in a standing position or even in lateral laying.
Combining the different resistance of the gums and their place of placement can give us a wide variety of stimuli, something we look for in the pumping exercises.