Things I Didn’t Know About Growing My Glutes

A peachy butt might be more achievable than you think

It feels weird to be talking about booties as a Muslim girl. What’s the point? You’re all covered up and dressed ever so loosely. Nobody is going to see it. But I want it for myself — that’s a strong enough reason to embark on this journey. You don’t do things only to gain validation from others. All my life I thought that having a /peachy butt/ comes down to pure genetics. That a small-framed lady who has been deemed skinny will have a pancake booty for life. Haha. Imagine how excited I was to learn that this is actually attainable.

Mind-Muscle-Connection (MMC)

The medical student in me loves it when we talk about anatomy. The glutes consist of three muscles: the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. To sculpt a round 3D butt you need to train your muscles from different planes. Approximately one-third of the glute exercises you perform should be horizontal in nature, one-third should be vertical in nature, and the latter one-third should be lateral/rotary in nature.

It’s important to be aware of these muscles because you need to be able to feel them work. This is where the concept of Mind Muscle Connection comes in. Movement is controlled by the brain. The brain releases neurotransmitters (signals) to the muscles and tells them to contract. A single muscle head is made up of many individual muscle fibres. By improving MMC, you’re increasing the number of muscle fibres recruited resulting in better quality muscle contraction.

Waking up sleepy glutes

I sit revising in front of the laptop a lot. I dare say that I am a lazy ass /literally/. I learnt that one should start off their Booty or Leg day with 5–10 mins of glute activation exercises. This ensures that you are not quad-dominant where you’d end up only working your thighs.

One should also master the Posterior Pelvic Tilt. Shelly Darlington demonstrates it well in her Youtube tutorials. Some say it’s like squeezing a penny in between your butt cheeks! You want to finish any gluteus maximus exercises with a Posterior Pelvic Tilt. Not only does it maximize your glute gains, but it also keeps your back safe which easily gets injured by leg workouts.

Glute Isolation Vs. Compound Exercises

In her Youtube video on How I Grew my Glutes, Kyla Beland talks from her experience and showed stunning results. She trained her glutes at least 3 times a week when starting to grow it — a day doing compound, isolated and burnout/drop sets (until failure) respectively. And came down to 2 times a week when maintaining it after reaching her goal — a day doing compound + burnout sessions and Isolation + burnout session for the other day. She also talks about the concept of Progressive Overload. Bret Contreras, also known as The Glute Guy talks about continuously increasing the amount of resistance you expose your muscles to — keep upping the weight and/or reps in your workouts over time to consistently challenge your muscles.

Cardio Vs. Weight Training

The age-old fitness conundrum. Here’s another one of my favourite video from Shelly Darlington that defies popular opinions. This article shared:

The logic seems simple enough, if your objective is to slim down — or to effortlessly run for hours — strength training isn’t the way to go. On the other hand, if you want to get hefty biceps, the exercise bike does little to help you reach your goal.

To grow one’s glute then, one should focus more on strength training. But one can’t deny that cardio has it’s benefits — reducing the risk of heart attack, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and improved cardiovascular health.

Invest in equipment

For me, it meant investing in fitness wear, dumbells and resistance bands. I find so much happiness and motivation in wearing sports gear when exercising. Investing and graduating to heavier weights feels like a big accomplishment. If you’re consistent enough, maybe you could invest in a gym membership too!

Muscles are made in the kitchen

I’ll end with the biggest point I learnt that would make the others irrelevant if you don’t focus on it —diet and recovery. Studies found that strength training results in micro-tears leading to inflammation and mild stimulation in rates of muscle protein breakdown (MPB) and muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Repeated sessions of resistance exercise when coupled with the right diet (nutrition) — protein ingestion skeletal muscle growth or known as hypertrophy. It is stated that 1–2 days of rest is ample to allow the muscle protein synthesis process to take place.

To all my other girls who are on the same journey, this is for you!