HOW TO BUILD A BOOTY: WEEK 2

Is your butt switched on?

Expert trainer Arby is back for another week of booty building, this time teaching you how to activate your glutes before a workout!

What is glute activation?... you might be thinking!

Many people suffer from lazy glutes, because most of us (even the fittest of us) use our butt for one main purpose – sitting down, especially for long periods at work every day, resulting in your glutes 'switching off.' You might find that when you are performing certain booty targeting exercises that you can't feel your bum working, or you feel the exercise working other parts of the body. If your glutes aren't firing on all cylinders this could be other muscles or body parts taking the strain and compensating for your lazy glutes! Activation exercises are really important to warm up your butt, and get it ready for the big movements performed in booty building exercises like squats etc. The more switched on your glutes are the less likely you are to cause injury, and the easier it is to feel the burn in the right places! Arby, it’s over to you…

So, I’m a big believer that muscle growth is driven by development of a solid mind muscle connection. When I speak about mind muscle connection, I’m referring to the ability to actually tap into and feel the muscle group that is being worked. For example, feeling the glutes working and fatiguing during a hip thruster rather than just watching the weight move up and down. This is known as having an internal training focus.

Building a solid mind muscle connection can be extremely beneficial when training for gains and the glutes especially. Many people have an inability to feel the glutes fatiguing or working during targeted training and subsequently are unable to develop the necessary stimulus that will cause the muscle to fatigue which we know is the main driver of growth.

In order to enhance a Mind Muscle Connection before any Glute session I will try to do some form of Activation work in order to get the muscle fibres in the glutes firing. This “Pre-Activation” can be very beneficial in “turning on” the glutes before doing the main part of a session. This switching on will increase the glutes involvement when performing your main lifts. In addition, Pre-activation can be used to prepare for movements that will be performed during your main session meaning that they can be performed smoothly and safely preventing the risk of injury.

Below I’ve written an Activation circuit that you can give a go to really give your glutes session an edge. When performing the activation circuit, the focus isn’t trying to lift massive amounts of weight or to absolutely shatter yourself before the session even starts. The focus however is to feel the muscle, appreciate how it works and transition that feeling and knowledge into your session. I.e. feel the heat but stop before you get cooked.