6 Key Tips To Tone Your Glutes
The goal of strengthening and toning your glutes can help to prevent lower back injuries and maintain a balanced body. Added to this, the shape of your body improves when working out this area. For those who don’t know how to start, here are some basic principles to help you.
Heavy weights equal few repetitions
There is a valid maximum for toning all muscle groups and the glutes are no exception. In this particular case, it’s no good toning up, if we don’t already have strong muscles.
In this sense, our exercises will be based on carrying weight and exercising strength, with a few repetitions. The gluteus is a muscle that tends to develop excessively with many repetitions. Doing 10 to 12 repetitions with the maximum demand will be more than enough.
Increase the weight progressively
As we’ll see, it’s preferable to start with challenging weights. When it comes to glutes, the load is usually quite heavy, even for women. This happens because these routines will involve the use of other muscle groups: legs, back, and arms.
For all these reasons, it’s essential to include deadlifts in your workout. This is achieved by the support of dumbbells or better yet, a barbell with weights. Advanced training will allow us to carry more than our own body weight and always exceed our limits.
Exercise various parts of your glutes
There are very general exercises such as the squats or the strides. These are excellent to begin to strengthen, but with the advance of the training, we must change the positions, angles and specific areas. The good news is that there are endless exercises for this area: Bulgarian lunges, laterals, and all kinds of variations.
You must also remember to change the implemented routine with some frequency, or else the muscle will become used to it. There is no worse motivation than a predictable dynamic. The idea is to always look for variations and assume new weights and exercises that are increasingly difficult.
Rest is also important
The fact that we train the same muscle several times doesn’t imply that we have muscle growth or definition. Rest is key to toning the naturally fleshy area of the buttocks. Remember that after any muscular stress a recovery stage is necessary.
For all of the above, it’s recommended to train this muscle for a maximum of twice a week. The recovery consists of at least 24 hours without effort, leaving at least two days between the glute routines. It is important to avoid excessive efforts during this break and sleep for eight full hours.
Don’t forget to go to spinning classes
The fact that we don’t incorporate too many repetitions doesn’t mean that we should avoid a good round of cardiovascular effort. Treadmills, spinning and stair machines are excellent for this purpose. People who are above their ideal size can take advantage of it to burn calories in general terms.
However, if you want to accentuate your rear, the best option will be to work out with the stationary bicycle.
Some excellent exercises to tone glutes
- Hip raises: this is one of the few exercises that we can do with our body weight and still generate a remarkable impact. The mission of this exercise is to harden the buttocks and strengthen the lower back.
- Romanian deadlift: place a bar with weight, on the ground, and lean forward with firm feet and buttocks. The knees will be bent and you’ll form a ‘V’ shape opening between your two legs. Then, simply go up and down the bar, keeping you back firm.
- Side squats: these type of squats are ideal to work each gluteus and leg in a specialized way. While one of the legs is fully extended, the other makes the effort to lower and raise all of your body weight. The best thing is that you can add weight to a dumbbell.
Remember that all of these exercises must be complemented with proper nutrition and the appropriate supplements according to your training objectives. Toning your buttocks and increasing their muscles mass go hand in hand.