How To Grow Your Butt For Insane Results! (Science-Backed Tips)

In this post, you will learn how to optimally train and eat to grow your butt as efficiently as possible.

As a personal trainer who specialises in lower body development, I am always asked by my clients how can they grow their glutes fast.

Although this desire is usually for aesthetic reasons, I am delighted that more individuals are including glute-targeting exercises in their weekly workouts. 

Why, you ask? 

Because building stronger glutes also has enormous health benefits!

No longer is it just women who approach me to ask how to build stronger and more developed glutes.

Now I also have men approach me in need of a lower body workout plan as recommended by medical professionals to help treat lower back pain!

Let’s take a look at what the amazing benefits of glute training can do for you!

As a result of glute training, you may experience:

• Improved lower back and hip pain pain
• Improved athletic performance
• Reduce the risk of injury when running 
• Increased lean muscle mass 

Before we dive into the world of glute growth, I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to my FREE Glute Builder Guide.

This e-book contains all the information I share here, as well as more of my other ‘how to grow your glutes’ secrets AND a FREE workout inside! Don’t forget to grab your free copy!

Now let’s look at how we can optimally train and eat for a bigger booty…

Exercise for Bigger Glutes

The first (and probably most obvious) step to growing your butt is exercising!

However, to reap the benefits of the time you put into training, it’s important to get this right from the very beginning.

The type of exercises you do, as well as the number of sets and reps you perform, can all have a huge impact on the results you’ll get from your training.

This highlights the importance of following a good glute program designed by someone who knows what they’re doing.

An optimally designed glute program will consider all these factors (and more) to provide a straightforward workout routine.

This is where I’d love to introduce you to my 12-Week Glute Builder Guide!

This contains 3 blocks of 4-week glute workouts, specifically designed to help you build strong, jaw-dropping glutes!!!

➡️ You can read my full post going into further detail about this program here.

For now, let’s take a look at some of the key exercise principles for glute growth (that also happen to already be incorporated into my 12-Week Glute Builder Guide 🤭)…

Rule of Thirds 

When it comes to what TYPE of exercises you should be doing, Brett Contreras aka ‘the Glute Guy’ has done his research! 

One of the main principles taken from his ‘Rule of Thirds’ theory that I follow and from which I have seen incredible results is incorporating 3 major movement patterns equally throughout my glute workouts. 

These movement patterns are squat/lunges, hip-hinge, and hip abductions.

By carefully planning out my glute training days to include exercises that require the body to perform all 3 of these movements, you are guaranteed to target all areas of the glutes, thus encouraging optimal muscle growth. 

Now this is just one piece to the puzzle when it comes to growing your butt, but it does play a significant role in the results you’ll get. 

To give you an idea of some exercises you can do for each of these movement patterns I’ve discussed, we have:

Squat/ lunges: barbell squat, goblet squat, hack squat, Bulgarian split squats, walking lunges

Hip hinge: Romanian deadlift, hip thrusts, Hyperextensions 

Abduction: sumo squats, abductions using the machine, glute medius-focused kickbacks

Lift Heavy

This advice changed the game when it came to growing my glutes! 

As soon as I started challenging myself with the weights I was lifting (especially during my compound exercises) the glute growth was INSANE.

Don’t get me wrong, good form and technique are super important.

You should also never resort to ego lifting (attempting to lift a weight for which you are not safely able) since this can increase your risk of injury. 

However, there is a distinct difference between ego-lifting and pushing yourself. 

Given this, I encourage you to lower your reps per set so that you can increase the weight you lift. 

For example, try completing 6 reps of an exercise with good form instead of 12 reps that become sloppy towards the end. 

Then just add a sprinkle of consistency and watch the magic happen!

Your glutes are stronger than you think, go see what you can do when you truly push yourself. 

On the subject of challenging our glute muscles, I cannot highlight enough the importance of incorporating progressive overload into your training.

Progressive overload is a training method that involves placing the targetted muscle under an increasing amount of stress over time to encourage muscular adaptations.

These muscular adaptations include an increase in muscular strength and/or an increase in muscular size.

Examples of how you can include progressive overload in your training include:

• Increasing the number of reps for an exercise
• Increasing the number of sets for an exercise
• Increasing the weight used for the exercise
• Increasing the time under tension for the targetted muscle
• Reducing rest periods in between sets

The weekly changes do not need to be significant or even complicated for that matter!

I often ask my clients to simply aim to complete an additional rep each week until they have hit the top of their given rep range. Once this has been achieved, we will increase the weight and gradually increase the reps again over time.

Begin using this technique in your workout routines, you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll notice changes in your glutes once you push yourself that little bit further each session!

Frequency of Training

There’s a lot of information out there about training for optimal glute growth. 

I’ve tried and tested various glute training methods and discovered what works and what doesn’t, using myself and my clients as Guinea pigs! 

Now I can share all the best recommended advice that I swear by.

When training for glute growth, we aim to increase the size of these muscles. In the fitness world, this phenomenon is commonly referred to as ‘muscle hypertrophy’.

Professor of Kinesiology, Andy Gaplin, noted during the Huberman Lab podcast episode ‘Optimal Protocols To Build Strength & Grow Muscles (Part 2)‘ that for muscle hypertrophy to occur, at least 10 working sets must be performed to target the particular muscle we want to grow.

On the other hand, Brett Contreras has increased this threshold even further stating that 36 sets of glute-targeting exercises are required for optimal glute growth. This involves a combination of low and high repetition sets.

In my opinion, if you are a beginner or simply do not have time to train 36 sets of glute exercises per week, then performing 10 sets as a minimum for glute growth is absolutely enough to see glute growth.

As a beginner, it’s important to focus on learning proper technique and you definitely do not need as much volume for progress to take place!

If you are a more advanced gym-goer, then you can try aiming to hit Brett Contreas’s recommended 36 sets a week.

This is very reasonable to do throughout the week. Simply plan 2 days a week for training 6 different glute exercises for 3 sets each and you’ll be onto a winner!

The most important part of choosing a workout program is that it is realistic and sustainable to stick to. As long as you are training within the 10-36 range of glute working sets per week, you will see results.

This leaves me with the final piece of advice surrounding exercise for glute growth, how many days to train per week.

I recommend training your glutes 2 (or a maximum of 3) days a week.

This may seem surprisingly low for some but I have good reason.

James Krieger found that after volume-intensive sessions (10+ sets), optimal muscle recovery requires 72 hours of rest.

Muscle recovery is super important for allowing you to perform at your best (eg, lift more weight or perform more reps per set) so we really should prioritise our rest as according to this study!

To summarise, for optimal training for glute growth, train 2-3 days per week completing a minimum of 10 working sets targeting your glutes.

Grow Your Butt with Food

Calories

It can be difficult to eat more, especially if you’re an extremely busy person.

However, it really is worth the extra effort if you truly want to grow your glutes.

For muscle growth to occur, we need to be in a caloric surplus meaning we consume more calories than we burn.

Although it is possible to gain muscle mass in a caloric deficit, eating in a small surplus (by 100-200 calories) allows our body to build lean muscle tissue much more efficiently.

This means we will see results much faster!

Protein

Protein will become your favourite sidekick in your glute growth journey since it is absolutely essential for building lean muscle mass.

According to research, 2.2g of protein per kg of body weight should be consumed by an individual seeking to increase their muscle mass.

This may seem like a lot of protein to fit in during the day, however, I have some great tips to help you smash your daily protein goals in my post: 9 Smart Yet Easy Ways To Eat More Protein Daily

Note: If you don’t already eat much protein then I advise slowly increasing each week your protein consumption to avoid any digestive issues in the process!

Supplements

I am a firm believer that your diet should be responsible for the majority of your protein consumption and you should not rely on protein supplements to hit your daily protein goal alone.

However, for those who struggle to fit an extra 20g of protein or so into their meals, supplementing your diet with a whey protein powder can be a handy hack!

Make sure you purchase whey protein from a reputable company with minimal extra ingredients to ensure it is a high-quality protein source.

Another supplement I like to use to aid my personal glute growth journey is creatine.

Research shows the impressive effectiveness of supplementing creatine for muscle growth. Creatine works by increasing energy production in the muscles (which helps you to lift more) as well as the rate of protein synthesis (aka rebuilding muscle faster), to allow for more efficient hypertrophy.

Disclaimer: I am not a registered nutritionist, therefore you must conduct your own research to understand whether these supplements would be a good fit for you.

Extra Useful Glute Growth Tips

If you’ve found the tips in this ‘How To Grow Your Butt’ post useful then I encourage you to download my FREE E-Book for Optimal Glute Growth. 

This includes all these tips and tricks (and more!) into a handy little PDF book that you can have on you at all times!

Better yet? You even get a FREE glute workout that incorporates everything I have spoken about in this post so you can start your glute growth journey immediately.

You can download the Travelling Wellness Girl’s Glute Builder Guide below: 

This post contains all the secrets you need to grow your butt effectively and achieve insane results. Don’t forget to share and save for later!

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• 10 Best Lower Glute Exercises To Make Your Underbutt Burn!