ONE SIMPLE LITTLE TRICK TO FIRE UP YOUR GLUTES!

This simple little trick can dramatically improve your performance and get you significantly better results! Wanna know what it is? Glute Activation!

Building nice round glutes is challenging! It takes lots of energy and effort to target glutes properly, even if you have a great glute building program! The problem is your glutes may not be being utilized all that much during an exercises if they are not active or dormant. Solution: Glute Activation Exercises!

Let’s look at GLUTE anatomy

Our glutes are made up of three major muscles: Gluteus Maximus, Gluteus Medius and Gluteus Minimus. They originate from our pelvic joint and insert underneath the hamstrings (the muscle in the back of our thighs) at the gluteal tuberosity of the femur and ilitibial band.

The biggest muscle in the glutes is the gluteus maximus. It tends to pick up most of the work when exercising! It’s important to know that other muscles in our hip and legs also assist our glutes. Thus when it comes to working out, its useful to target all the muscles in the hip and ensure your glutes are active prior to lifting!

Exercise Selection

When it comes to glute building, both isolated movements like donkey kicks, straight leg kickbacks are just as important as energy draining compound movements like squats and lunges.

Now you might have an awesome glute building program and a list of booty building exercises but they will not be effective if your glutes are not being used during the workouts! Flexing properly and ensuring your glutes are actually working throughout your reps is just as important  as exercise selection. How do you ensure your glutes are firing during your workouts? Simple, perform glute activation exercises BEFORE hitting the weights!

Glute Activation

Don’t forget to activate those glutes pre-workout💪🏽 Key to #bootybuilding 🔑 – Tag your training partner🍑 Double tap to show love ❤️

A video posted by Lyzabeth Lopez (@lyzabethlopez) on Jan 10, 2016 at 5:45pm PST

Glute activation is a set of exercises PRIOR to workouts that in essence “wake up” your glutes. They ensure your glutes are FIRING during your workout. It’s one thing to workout it’s another thing to flex appropriately! There is no point of working out unless you have the right muscle taking on the load!

By doing glute activation exercises prior to your lifts (specially important before demanding lifts like squats and lunges) you can significantly improve performance. This in turn means bigger, rounder glutes! 

So how do you exactly activate your Glutes?

No, it’s not some magic trainer terminology. Glute activation is actually a thing! And it’s simple to do! All you need is a booty band or some ankle weights!

Here are four simple glute activation exercises you can do prior to lifting

1. Donkey Kicks
2. Lying leg lifts (aka hip abduction)
3. Standing Glute kickbacks
4. Fire Hydrants

#NoGymNoProblem 💪🏽 Here is an easy way to work your glutes at home. This move really hits the top of the glutes where it meets the low-back area, also known as ‘The Shelf’ (not the technical term)😜… #PutAdrinkOnIt 🍸🍑 I generally do this movement using the cable machine, but this can be a decent alternate for home training with the ankle weight. The most important form tips would be to engage your abs to protect your low back, and flex your glutes at the top of each repetition💪🏽 Happy training everyone😘 #trainwithlyzabeth

A video posted by Lyzabeth Lopez (@lyzabethlopez) on Feb 25, 2016 at 5:26pm PST

Now there are many other good glute activation exercises, including fun ones you can perform with booty bands. If you looking for a more comprehensive list of glute activation exercises, get on my newsletter!