4 Easy And Beneficial Butt Workouts

4 Butt Workouts to Sneak Into Your Day

1. Take the Stairs

While the elevator is convenient and sometimes gets you there faster, have you considered using the stairs wherever you go? By using your legs and your glutes with each step, you engage those muscles and most certainly raise your heart rate. Of course, going up the stairs provides the most benefits, but going down can also help by working different muscles.

2. Go for a Walk

Walking is one of the best things you can do and something most people can manage to do every day. Your glutes will definitely reap the benefits of regular walking, as well as other muscles in the legs and core. I like to wear my GPS watch or other fitness tracker so I can track my distance and pace. It’s important to have good posture, and you can engage your abs and glutes while walking. With practice, you can walk a mile in 15 to 20 minutes.

3. Take Up Cycling or Do a Spin Class

Cycling not only cranks up your heart rate, but it tones and builds the glute muscles, especially if you take it uphill. If you cycle outdoors, find areas where you can cycle uphill in the heaviest gear you can handle, and do hill repeats — meaning go up the hill, come back down and repeat. You can do them seated or standing, though standing is more difficult. Either way, if on a stationary bike at the gym or at home, you need to increase the tension on the gear to mimic a steep hill.

4. Sprint It Out

Sprints are great to engage those glute muscles. Try incorporating an easy 10- to 15-minute warm-up jog followed by sprints — either on a track or flat road — into your routine. The sprints can be anywhere from 25 meters to 400 meters (a quarter mile), depending on your level of fitness. Just make sure you are warmed-up first.

5 Benefits of a Toned Butt and Strong Glutes

1. Reduce the Risk of Injury

Studies show that weight-bearing exercises — including bodyweight exercises — improve the muscle function of the glutes and can reduce injury in athletes. One study shows the effects of strong glute muscles in swimmers verses non-swimmers, indicating that the swimmers with the stronger gluteal muscles enjoyed a lower risk of injury.

2. Improved Athletic Performance

Because the glutes are responsible for helping our bodies move faster, slow down, change direction and create explosive jumping moves, strong glute muscles are critical in most sports. But you can’t just rely on squats to built strong glutes. Instead, you need to stimulate your backside muscles in different ways.

Sprinting is one of the most effective exercises for simulating the glutes and activates 234 percent more of the gluteus maximus muscle than a vertical jump. Athletes with strong glutes are faster, more efficient and explosive in their movements compared to athletes with weaker glutes.

3. Better Support for the Back

Research shows that stronger gluteal muscles can help prevent back injury and back pain. Strengthening your glutes can greatly decrease the risk of back pain, too. Some of the exercises mentioned, such as the deadlift and squat, ultimately take some of the pressure off your lower back.

4. Less Knee, Hamstring and Groin Injuries

Developing strong glutes not only helps prevent back injury and pain, but it can also lower your risk for injury in the knees, hamstring and groin areas. By strengthening your weak glutes, you help improve hip alignment, which could improve knee pain, too. In fact, many butt workouts are also effective knee strengthening exercises. Runners notoriously suffer from patellar knee pain due to hips overcompensating for weak glutes. Furthermore, weak glutes may also contribute to pulled muscles in your hamstring or groin.

5. Nicer Visual Appearance with the Reduction in Cellulite

Usually fluid retention, lack of circulation, weak collagen structure and increased body fat result in the annoying cellulite that most often shows up in spots like the legs, butt, stomach and back of the arms.

Naturally, butt exercises, leg exercises and a smart whole foods-based diet help decrease body fat, which can reduce the appearance of cellulite on the skin. Burst training exercises, similar to interval training, HIIT workouts and Tabata workouts, are great routines that you can add to your butt-lifting program and also work as natural remedies for cellulite.

Butt Workout Precautions

If you’re a beginner, never use added weight without the supervision of a fitness professional. If you have a heart condition or are taking medication, please consult with your physician before engaging in any new exercise program.