Toned glute muscles, or buttock muscles, go a long way towards supporting our body’s structure, especially as we run and walk, and they can also help improve your look from the rear.
However, in your quest for glute exercises to help develop the muscles in your bottom, you’ve undoubtedly run across the term “glute activation” and wondered, what is glute activation?
Glute activation is simply waking up the rear-end muscles during exercise to help strengthen, lift, and build them for a more defined bum, which helps keep your pelvis balanced for improved posture and more.
How Do You Activate Your Glutes?
Activating your glutes triggers the entire chain of muscles that make up the posterior into action, including the glutes, hamstrings, calves, erector spinae, and exterior hip muscles, which helps keep them strong and properly functioning.
However, it is important to ensure your glutes are properly activated during exercise and other glute-reliant activities.
Otherwise, they will remain dormant, which can cause a muscle imbalance in various other parts of the body, thus leading to differing issues, including lower back pain and more.
To activate your glutes simply means squeezing your buttocks or feeling your buttock muscles squeeze during exercise.
Once your buttock muscles are awakened, you can then move onto more compound movements, like deadlifts and squats, or you can stick with more isolated glute exercises.
However, many experts agree that it is best to start with light exercises to warm up the rear-end muscles and ensure they are properly engaging before moving onto more challenging moves for peak performance and safety.
What are the Best Glute Activation Exercises?
As stated above, experts recommend beginning with a few simple glute exercises to ensure they are activated before moving onto more complex moves, which will enable you to get the most out of your training and prevent excessive strain on other muscles.
That being said, some of the best exercises to help warm up the glutes include:
- Donkey Kicks
- Bird Dog
- Prone Leg Extensions
- Glute Bridges
- Fire Hydrant
- Clams
After you have successfully warmed up your bum, you can then move onto more challenging exercises that also engage other muscles in the body for a dynamic strength training workout.
Some of the best exercises to activate the glutes as well, as other lower body muscles include:
- Lunges
- Squats
- Single Leg Banded Exercises
- Deadlifts
- Lateral Walks
- Glute Step-Ups
- Cable Pull Throughs
- Cable Calf Raises
Glute Activation Benefits?
Glute activation helps strengthen your posterior muscles, which is important for maintaining proper balance and mobility.
It also helps keep the hip flexors relaxed, so the hamstrings and lower back don’t overcompensate, which can cause them to become overworked, thus leading to pain and stiffness in these areas.
Effectively and efficiently functioning glutes also enable good motor control to perform different body movements and positions, which is needed to comfortably carry out various everyday tasks.
It also supports optimal flexibility, endurance, lumbar strength, and muscular development, which helps improve athletic performance, including running, weightlifting, and more, and it even helps those in high-risk occupations, such as firefighters, to perform better.
And lastly, for the exercise buffs, glute activation enables you to get better pumps when strength training for a more exhilarating workout and a sculpted behind.
How Can You Tell if Your Glutes are Activating?
According to medical experts, the glutes are some of the largest but hardest muscles to activate because you’re not taught or used to how to recruit them.
Therefore, they eventually become weak, and a muscle imbalance occurs somewhere within the lower body that typically results in pain in the lower back, knees, and more.
Furthermore, even if you are committed to doing moves that are supposed to work the glutes, unless you are taught, you still might be targeting the hip or leg muscles instead of the buttocks.
However, to know if your glutes are activating during exercise, physical therapists suggest working out in front of a mirror to ensure you see the squeeze.
Or you can also just place your hand on your glutes to feel the muscles contracting.
When you become more experienced at activating your glutes, you can also push through your heel on some exercises to recruit your muscles.
In the meantime, they recommend practicing warming up the glutes to get used to how they feel when they are squeezing, so you can activate the muscles when needed to see an improvement in your glutes.
How Often Should You Exercise Your Glutes for Results?
How often you should activate glutes for maximum results depends on your particular fitness goals.
For instance, many professional bodybuilders stick to training their glutes just once a week for preferable results.
Meanwhile, some studies showed a significant increase in muscle mass after 2-weeks as compared to 1.
And then, some swore to have achieved noticeable results after doing glute exercises 6-times per week.
However, experts conclude that, on average, you should participate in glute workouts 2 to 6 times per week, resting 1 day in between, to help optimize recovery, so you can continue to train effectively during your regular routines.
They also stress that glute exercises benefit everyone, from elite athletes to office and warehouse workers who do heavy lifting or stand or sit for long hours.
When is the Best Time to Do Glute Exercises?
Since activating the buttocks requires a strict mind and body connection, it is recommended you perform glute exercises in your warm-up to help establish focus, so you can effectively recruit the muscles during more compound moves.
This way, you will be utilizing your glutes instead of your lower back or hamstrings to do your heavy lifts and runs, etc.
However, you can also incorporate them as isolated moves on their own training day or as a quick finish to your routine once you become more experienced.
Just be sure your glutes are squeezing during your moves to get the best results.
How Long Should You Do Glute Exercises for the Best Results?
You should be performing your glute exercises so that you feel the burn each time; hence, even if you do just a few reps for a total of 10 minutes, you will still experience results.
However, if you are a beginner, it is recommended you start short and slow, and then with time and consistency, you can work your way up to longer, more strenuous sessions for more noticeable outcomes.
How Long Does it Take to See Results With Glute Exercises?
Naturally, the more committed you are to training your glutes, the quicker you will see results.
However, combining your exercises with a nutritious, low-calorie diet along with regular cardio and strength training, you can expect to see some visible results in as soon as 4-weeks.
And then, provided you continue to stick to the regimen, you will see even more pronounced results after about 12-weeks, after which time, you will also have to continue to work hard and be consistent to help maintain your results.
You should also note that different moves target different glute muscles, which will also affect how soon your efforts will be noticeable.
Hence, in general, your overall results will depend on your procedures, as well as the efforts you put forth.
How Can You Speed Glute Exercise Results?
The glute are made up of the gluteus maximus, which is the largest muscle responsible for the contour of the buttocks, the gluteus minimus, and the gluteus medias, which sits between the gluteus minimus and the gluteus maximum.
Therefore, any workouts that target all three glute muscles, such as glute kickbacks and fire hydrants, will help provide you with quicker results.
Meanwhile, increasing the number of reps you do will also help increase muscle mass faster.
You can also incorporate weights into your routine for added resistance, which also helps you quickly tone your glutes.
For instance, hip thrusts are one of the easiest exercises you can do to target the glutes; however, adding weights to this move really engages the muscles for faster results, and the hips can bear a lot of weight, so don’t be afraid to pack on the pounds. Or you can also use resistance bands.
Eating a clean diet when trying to lose fat and build your posterior muscles also helps you see results sooner, so be sure to avoid processed foods and sugar that can actually encourage your body to store fat.
In the meantime, to build more muscle in your tush, health professionals advise incorporating more dietary protein, such as salmon, eggs, flaxseeds, protein shakes, quinoa, and lean chicken, into your diet, especially within 30-minutes after you exercise, which aids the muscles in repair.
What are the Precautions With Doing Glute Exercises?
Improperly activating your glutes can cause other muscles in your body to become overworked, which can lead to back pain, hip pain, knee pain, and more, and adding weights to the moves only exuberates the problem.
Therefore, you must take precautions to practice the proper form when exercising your buttock muscles.
In fact, experts warn that strengthening this area requires good form and concentration to allow your glutes to act.
Otherwise, your body will rely on the wrong muscles to do the heavy lifting, which will prevent you from meeting your expectations.
This is especially true when lifting heavy weights, which can utilize your spine instead of your glutes and cause injury.
Therefore, they also suggest when adding weights to your workout, you start with light dumbbells and just a few reps, and then slowly work your way up once you become more accustomed to the moves.
To further prevent injuries, which can also occur when your body is fatigued, be sure to wait for at least 1-day in between your regular workouts to do isolated glute exercises so that your muscles have time to heal and transform.
As with any exercise, it is important to brace your core to also help protect the lower back and tone the muscles in the surrounding areas for better support.
You should also avoid tensing your body when doing glute exercises. Instead, keep the rest of the body relaxed to help focus solely on working your buttock muscles, which deep breathing throughout the moves will help you do.
Lastly, if you suffer from an injury or other questionable health condition, be sure to consult your doctor before participating in glute workouts to ensure they are the right ones for you.
Best Glute Trainers
| Sunny Health & Fitness Row-N-Ride | COBA Glute Trainer | Star Uno Ab Squat |
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| We included the Sunny Health & Fitness Row-N-Ride in our list because of this glute training equipment’s versatility to adjust the depth of your squats by adjusting the saddle angles. | The COBA Glute Trainer is simply one of the best ab trainers on the market because it allows you to do all of the top 8 glute exercises with just one glute training device. | We like the Star Uno Ab Squat because this glute training machine uses its proprietary Power Assist Spring System (PASS) that allows you to leverage your body weight to fire up your glutes. |
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Final Thoughts
So if you’ve ever been at the gym and witnessed someone activating their glutes during exercise, now you know that it is to help properly build the hind muscles.
In fact, it’s one of the main motivations that trainers continuously stress during their clients’ workouts when reminding them of the proper form.
Likewise, now having your own understanding of why it is important to activate your glutes, as well as how to do it properly via exercise, can also help you work towards improving your own workouts.
It can also help alleviate any current back pain you may be experiencing. And you don’t have to be in a fancy gym to get results because you can flex your hind muscles anywhere, even while seated in a chair, for improved outcomes.
However, in the end, no matter your gender or fitness level, glute activation can help improve your posture, mobility, and motor skills for better athletic performance and more, which makes now a good time to start exercising your bum muscles to ensure they are awake and can do what they are meant to do for a healthier body and better overall physique.
