It seems like everyone these days is itching to know what it really takes to build a Booty. We see many different before-and-after photos on Instagram featuring impressive booty gains, leaving us wondering what has to change in our fitness routines in order to make that happen for ourselves.
As someone who has built her booty from the ground up, Diksha Gautham, NPC bikini bodybuilding competitor and NASM Certified Personal Trainer in progress, knows firsthand what kind of work it takes. "Muscle growth occurs when you put your muscles under stress and tension," Diksha told POPSUGAR. "So if you want your booty to grow, you gotta stress it out with the resistance training!"
These are the five glute exercises that almost always show up in Diksha's training program:
- Hip thrusts
- Glute bridges
- Glute kickbacks (aka donkey kicks)
- Deadlifts
- Plié squats
"The combination of all these movements hits all three main 'zones' of your glutes," Diksha explained. "These are all also compound movements, meaning they work a lot of muscles at once, so you burn a lot of calories."
The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that you can't achieve visible booty gains without increasing the weights you're working with. "As your body adapts, make sure to continue pushing your booty by adding weight, increasing volume, or increasing the frequency which you train it," Diksha told POPSUGAR. In other words, the secret to growing your butt is constantly surprising your glutes with new challenges.
If any of this feels intimidating, Diksha recommends you do a couple sessions with a personal trainer, just to learn the form of compound lifts, like squats and deadlifts. After getting a solid baseline, you can continue to work on all these exercises on your own. "Don't feel intimidated," Diksha said. "Everyone was a beginner once."
