What are glutes?
What a lot of people may not know, is that your glutes and thighs are your body’s largest group of muscles. By working them out, you are able to give your metabolism the jump start it needs as it speeds up and in turn burns more body fat off your entire body, even when at rest. Remember, muscle burns more calories than fat.
You will first need to build lean muscle in the glutes area, this comes from doing a range of exercises and not sticking to just one. You need to target the different muscle groups to help in sculpting and toning your glutes and thighs. There are three groups of muscles in your booty, these are the Gluteus Maximus (being the biggest one), Gluteus Medius (just above the big one) and Gluteus Minimus (below the Gluteus Medius). All three of these need to be trained to reach your goals of growing your glutes, and let’s not forget, a nutritious eating plan as well as including strength training into your workouts.
Lifting weights doesn’t make you ‘big’
So many women are afraid to lift weights in fear of looking like a body builder, but if that were realistically possible, then everyone who ever lifted a weight would be real-life ‘Hulk’ lookalikes. You are not going to get ‘big’ by lifting weights or through resistance training. You are going to build muscle tone and strength.
It is so important to add resistance to your training and exercises. Not every exercise needs to have weights, but you will need to incorporate them in order to improve definition and build your strength.
Form plays a vital role when lifting weights as it prevents injury, it also ensures that you engage the right muscles. If you feel as though something is hurting, then you are probably doing it wrong and should stop immediately. This is not to confuse the sensation of muscles burning from a good workout with actual joint or muscle pain though – there is a difference.
Always engage your core to help increase your power and also tone your abdominals, as well as getting great abs in the process, your back will also be protected from injury by doing this.
Stretch and stretch some more
It is important to stretch before a workout in order to warm up your muscles and prevent injury. By activating the muscles you are going to use in your workout, this allows you to connect your mind to the muscle groups and prepare the muscles for the exercises. Also, remember to stretch at the end of a workout to cool down and ease out of an intense exercise regime.
It is sometimes best to do at least a five-minute walk before a workout as a warm up and then end with a 10-minute stretching session.
Rest your glutes
If you have had a great workout, it is vital that you give the muscle group you exercised, a well-deserved break. You should leave at least 48 hours between exercises of the same muscle groups. Try to work your glutes out at least once a week, whilst also exercising other muscle groups on the other days.