Hey, hey everyone, I hope that you all have been having a great week and as always, happy Thursday.
Today, I want to take some time to address one of the most frustrating and stubborn phenomena my team and I encounter; and a phenomena that we unfortunately encounter on a far too regular basis.
And ladies, this one’s for you!
My team and I have trained and consulted hundreds, if not thousands of women throughout our careers.
And without a doubt one of the top three most sought after goals by women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s and even beyond, is to build a high, firm, tight and great looking butt.
But ladies, so many of you still refuse to include comprehensive lower body weight training in your exercise programs.
Now my team and I have said this to every woman we have ever trained or consulted or even freaking met at this point and ladies we cannot say this more clearly: You cannot build a lean, high, firm and great looking butt without making lower body weight training the basis of your butt development program.
It’s that simple. We can’t say it any other way.
And why is this so?
Ladies, we want to ask you a question:
What makes a lean, high, firm and toned butt?
And we are not asking this dismissively. We are asking you this as a serious question because the answer will help you understand why you have to include lower body weight training if you want to build a great backside.
The answer is a combination of dense and developed muscle and lack of fat.
Now we are not going to go into the fat reduction component here today because that is an entirely different discussion for a whole other time, but look at the first part of that answer: Dense and developed muscle.
Ladies, your butt muscles act and react the same way as every other muscle in your body. If you stress them, they strengthen, develop and grow but if you don’t, they stay flat, weak and small.
(This is the golden rule of muscular development. Whether you’re a male, a female, an animal, an alien or whatever!)
Now every woman my team and I have trained fully understood this concept. The problem is too many women don’t understand or accept, what stress really means.
When building firm, high and tight butt muscles, stress in this case alludes to two exercise concepts. The first is called specific adaptation to imposed demands and the second is called progressive overload.
The principle of specific adaptation to imposed demands states that muscles only change, adapt and grow to the point where they can handle the demands that are regularly put upon them.
The principle of progressive overload states that muscle only grows when you continuously add new and more intense stress to them on a regular basis.
And what all of this means in English is that if you don’t continuously expose your glute muscles to intense and ever increasing stress your gluteus muscles are not going to grow.
And here is the second part of the disconnect. Body weight and small isolation exercise performed with extremely light weights are not enough of a stress to stimulate muscle growth throughout your butt muscles. Exercises like body weight squats, prone hip extensions, lying side leg raises and body weight hip bridges simply are not enough.
You have to include major compound lower body exercises such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, split squats, weighted hip bridges, step ups and/or the many variations of these types of exercises. And you must do these with real weight if you want to build a high, firm, tight and great looking butt.
And what is “real weight”?
Our female clients who have the best backsides as judged by other women are routinely squatting over eighty pounds, for eight reps and for three sets. Deadlifting over one hundred pounds, for eight reps and for three sets. Hip bridging over one hundred and twenty pounds for ten reps and for three sets. Doing split squats with at least twenty pound dumbbells in each hand. And doing step ups with sixty plus pounds on their backs.
That is real weight. And we promise if you saw these women in person your jaw would drop because of how good their butts look.
Ladies, we know many woman focused fitness magazines still put forth the idea that you can do lying leg raises, prone hip extensions and body weight exercises like those and build firm, toned and tight glutes, but it’s complete bull. They are straight up lying to you.
And we are not exaggerating. They are lying to you.
Why?
First there are a lot of people who have based their careers on telling women body weight exercises are enough to build firm and toned glutes. And as the saying goes, “it’s hard to convince someone of something when their paycheck depends on them knowing otherwise.”
And second, the narrative that women can build firm and tight glutes with small isolation exercises and body weight exercises sells. We don’t know why, but it does. And at the end of the day many health magazines care about making money first and what will actually help you achieve your goals second.
So ladies, please, please, please start incorporating lower body weight training into your exercise programs.
At this point our whole team is basically begging you too!
We want you to build the high, firm, great looking butt you’ve always wanted, but we can’t help you, nobody can help you, if you don’t start adding weight training into your exercise program.
As always, to our health,
Your exercise and dietary coach
Zach Moore
And everyone, if you found today’s article insightful, inspiring or enlightening and you have a friend, family member, colleague or peer who you think would benefit from what we’ve talked about here today please pass it on.
One of the best things you can do for those you care about is helping them to build a healthy and great looking body. A body that is strong, capable and moves without pain, and a body in which they feel confident and happy.
