Rounder Butt in Just 30 Days

By Michael Matthews

If you want a bigger, stronger, and more bubbly and gravity-defying butt, then you want to read this article (and do these workouts).

Few things turn heads quite like a killer butt.

We just can’t help but oogle and think carnal things when we see a pair of round, perky glutes.

That’s why so many of us — guys and gals alike — want to know how to get our best butts ever.

And if you’re one of them, you’ve come to the right place because by the end of this article, you’re going to know exactly what you need to do for more butt gains in the next 30 days than you’ve seen in the last 3 months.

(Hint: it’s more or less what you would think – train your backside a lot – but isn’t that simplistic.)

I have to warn you, though — it’s not going to be easy.

You can’t get a set of god(dess)-like glutes by “eating clean” and doing bodyweight squats and donkey kicks.

So if you’re looking for “weird tricks” or “workout hacks,” then this isn’t for you.

If, however, you’re ready to learn the simple science of building a badass butt, and if you’re ready to put in some work, then keep reading.

The 3 Biggest Butt-Building Myths

There are many more wrong ways to go about butt building than right ways.

And unfortunately, when you look at the bulk of the advice out there on the subject, the bad far outweighs the good.

Let’s start, then, by busting a few of the bigger myths that you’ve probably heard and wondered about.

1. You can’t carve godlike glutes with “spot reduction” cardio.

Most people on a quest for the ultimate “Brazilian butt” slave away on cardio machines like the Stepmill or incline treadmill.

They believe this will help by isolating and “sculpting” their butts, and while it might seem reasonable that lighting your butt on fire with an hour of climbing or walking would help make it leaner and better defined, it won’t.

Unfortunately, targeted fat loss is a myth, meaning that you can’t trim body fat in specific areas of your body.

You see, while training your muscles burns calories and builds muscle, both of which certainly can aid in fat loss, it doesn’t directly burn the fat covering them to any significant degree.

All you can do, then, is reduce your overall body fat levels and, as a result, every inch of you will lean out to one degree or another.

(You can also do a few things to accelerate the loss of “stubborn fat,” but that’s another discussion.)

The reason for this is fat loss occurs in a whole-body fashion.

You create the proper internal weight loss environment (a caloric deficit), which then reduces fat stores all over the body (although not equally — some areas of the body shed fat faster than others).

That’s why you can do all the crunches you want and never have a six pack or, in this case, all the butt exercises in the world and not have the derriere of your dreams.

That is, you can’t until you’ve reduced your body fat percentage to where it needs to be, and that’s more a function of proper dietingthan anything else.

The bottom line is getting great glutes requires more or less the same process as any other body part:

Use proper training principles to build the right muscles up, and then use a proper dieting regimen to reduce your body fat percentage.

Do that and, voila, you now have a killer butt.

2. Sprints aren’t as great for building a butt as many people think.

Sprinters generally have great asses, which leads many people to assume that sprinting is the answer.

And they’re (mostly) wrong.

First, let’s not forget that many sprinters also lift weights, which is why they often have such impressively muscular physiques.

Sprinting alone doesn’t deliver results like that (check out the bodies of sprinters from a few decades ago, before track & field really caught on).

Now, that isn’t to say that sprinting doesn’t train the glutes, because it does.

It doesn’t, however, build the butt muscles as effectively as resistance training and also doesn’t preferentially reduce the fat covering them.

Moreover, it’s extremely high-intensity, which means the more you do, the more you increases the risk of injury and overtraining.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m a big fan ofhigh-intensity interval training, but there are just better ways to train the glutes.

3. You don’t need to do a bunch of fancy exercises to get the butt you want.

“Muscle confusion” is a piece of marketing frippery that just won’t let die. And as long as it keeps selling pills, powders, and PDFs, we’ll keep hearing about it.

The truth, however, is constantly changing up your workout routine offers little benefit. In fact, it’s probably more harmful than helpful.

The key to muscle development isn’t variety of exercises but progressive overload, which you can learn more about here.

This applies to all weightlifting exercises, including “butt builders.”

Another thing you should know is the gluteus maximus is one muscle. Here’s how it looks:

There’s no such thing as “upper” or “lower” regions of the glutes or “glute-ham tie-in muscles” or anything other than what you see above.

Thus, when someone is throwing those types of terms around to try to sell you on their way of building a great butt, just know they’re either ignorant or lying.

Instead of trying to train nonexistent butt muscles in different ways, you need to focus on something much simpler:

Strengthening the gluteus maximus and minimus muscles along with the hamstrings.

And there it is: the “secret” to an awesome butt.

Butt Building 101
How to Get a Bigger Butt

Most people make two major mistakes in their butt workouts:

1. They mostly do the wrong butt exercises.

They spend far too much time on machines and isolation exercises and far too little time on compound movements like squats and deadlifts.

2. They do too much high-rep training.

They train more to get a nice pump rather than to get stronger, which is one of the easiest ways to hit a plateau.

(This applies to every major muscle group in the body, by the way — not just your glutes.)

And when they start doing the opposite – more compound exercises than isolation, and more heavy training and emphasis on progressive overload over pump –  they inevitably start seeing real changes in their butts (and entire physiques) for the first time in a long time.

This highlights one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about weightlifting and building muscle naturally:

If you want to build muscle consistently and effectively, you want to focus on heavy (80 to 85% of your one-rep max) compound weightlifting.

In terms of butt workouts, that means your bread and butter is heavy barbell and dumbbell squatting and pulling, and your dessert is supplementary work like hip thrusts, glute kickbacks, and split squats.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to have you do in the workouts in this article.

Before we get to that, though, let’s talk diet.

How to Get a Bigger Butt in 30 Days
The Diet

You probably know that exercise alone isn’t enough to gain muscle and lose fat.

Ultimately, your success or failure is going to be decided by your diet.

If your body were a car, exercise is the gas pedal and diet is the fuel in the tank.

You have to step on the gas (exercise) to get moving (improve your body composition)…

…but how far will you get without enough of the right fuel?

My point is this:

If you know how to manage your fuel (diet) properly, building muscle and burning fat will be easy and straightforward.

If you don’t, it will be ridiculously difficult …if not impossible.

That’s why it’s not enough to just give you a 30-day butt workout routine. We need to set your diet up properly as well.

I break it all down in my in-depth guide to meal planning, which I highly recommend you read and implement in conjunction with the workouts.

If you don’t, you simply won’t get as much out of them as you should.

How to Get a Bigger Butt in 30 Days
The Exercises

Browse the Internet for opinions on the best butt exercises and you’ll quickly be overwhelmed.

I have good news, though:

Out of the hundreds you can choose from, very few are actually necessary for achieving your goals. Here they are:

1. Squat
2. Deadlift
3. Romanian Deadlift
4. Hip Thrust
5. Lunge
6. Bulgarian Split Squat
7. Glute Blaster

Yup, that’s all you need. Forget the endless lunge and leg lift variations and everything else you see in those flashy Pinterest infographics.

Focus on getting stronger on those key movements above and your butt WILL grow bigger and better.

So, let’s take a closer look at how to do each of the butt exercises you’ll be doing in this 30-day routine.

Squat

There’s a reason why people with great physiques are always banging on about the importance of squatting regularly.

It’s just the single most effective movement for building total lower body strength and muscularity.

If you want great legs and a great ass, you want to take your squatting seriously.

There’s quite a bit that goes into a proper squat (this article will teach you what you need to know about proper form), but here are two key points that relate to butt building:

Squat deep to make your butt work even harder.

The deeper you squat, the more work your legs and butt have to do.

I recommend either full squats or parallel squats, but not half squats. Here’s a good example of proper depth:

A wider stance hits the butt more, too.

Research shows that, when squatting with relatively heavy weights, a wide stance increases the amount of activation in thequadriceps and glutes.

Practically speaking, this means adopting a stance that is about 125 to 150% of shoulder-width. Here’s a visual:

Deadlift

If I could only do one exercise every week it would be the deadlift.

It trains everything in your body but your pressing muscles, it builds a tremendous amount of whole body strength and power, and it heavily involves both the hamstrings and glutes.

It also lends itself particularly well to heavy lifting, which is crucial for building muscle as efficiently as possible.

Like the squat, the deadlift is a fairly technical lift that takes some practice to master. Clickhere to learn proper form.

And in case you’re wondering, research shows that conventional and sumo deadlifts are about equally effective for training the glutes so you can’t go wrong either way.

I prefer conventional deadlifting because of the increased range of motion (requiring more work to stand the weight up) but some people like to alternate between them and I don’t see anything wrong with that.

A key point worth calling out before we move on is the importance of full glute activation while deadlifting.

You should be squeezing your glutes as you lift the bar off the ground and should feel them especially involved in the upper half of the ascension and lockout.

This image shows both proper and improper lockout positions, which result in full and partial glute activation:

On the far left you can see the most common lockout mistake people make: the over-extension. This increases the risk of lumbar injury and reduces the amount of glute activation.

Moving right we see a good upright position at lockout but an over-zealous “chest out and shoulders back” position. Another common mistake.

Next on the mistakes is the shrugging lockout, which you want to avoid.

Last we see a proper lockout: upright position, no lumbar extension, no exaggerated chest puffing, and no shrugging. This is how you want to finish your deadlift.

Hip Thrust

The hip thrust is an awkward and embarrassing movement, but it’s also one of the best exercises you can do for isolating and overloading your glutes.

There’s a good reason you’ll you’ll find it just about every fitness competitor’s routine: it’s simple and it works.

There are tons of variations of hip thrusts that you can do but the barbell, band, and single-leg variations are what you want to focus on.

Here’s how to do the barbell hip thrust:

And here’s how to do the band variation:

And last but not least, the single-leg hip thrust:

(If you gym doesn’t have the proper setup for this, you can do a single-leg glute bridgeinstead.)

Lunge

Although the lunge isn’t normally thought of as an effective butt exercise, research shows the glutes are very involved with pulling you back to a standing position.

Here’s the traditional forward lunge:

If you can’t do that due to knee issues, try a reverse lunge instead:

While I personally prefer barbell lunges, dumbbell lunges work well too:

Romanian Deadlift

The Romanian deadlift is a deadlift variation that particularly targets the hamstrings, making it a worthy addition to a glute routine.

(Remember the backside that you want is going to require both glute and hamstring development.)

Here’s how to do it:

Bulgarian Split Squat

Next on our short list of the best butt exercises is another type of squat: the Bulgarian split squat.

This lunge-like movement is very effective for targeting the quads and glutes and here’s how it works:

Glute Blaster

Most workout machines suck. They’re not as safe as many people think and you’ll get more out of free weight movements.

That said, the “Butt Blaster” is a good piece of equipment. It allows you to safely perform a glute-targeted movement that can’t be easily replicated with free weights.

Here it is:

How to Get a Bigger Butt in 30 Days
The Workouts

We’ve covered a lot so far — the ideal approach to butt building, the physiology of muscle growth, how to eat right, and the best butt exercises for gaining muscle and strength.

It’s now time to hit the gym and make some butt gains!

Step one is outlining our goal for the next 30 days, and that’s focusing the majority of our time and energy on maximizing glute growth.

As you’ll see, we’re not going to neglect the rest of the body, but we’re going to dial everything else back (reducing both intensity and volume) so we can really hammer our posterior chain for a month.

That’s why this is a 30-day program, by the way.

It’s not a balanced whole-body routine that you should do for an extended period of time — it’s a tool you can use periodically to “shock” your bum into growing and, once that has been accomplished, that should be returned to the toolbox.

So, here’s the workout plan:

Day 1

Lower A

Barbell Back Squat

Warm up and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Romanian Deadlift

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Barbell or Band Hip Thrust

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Day 2

Upper A

Incline Barbell Bench Press

Warm up and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Close-Grip Bench Press

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Seated or Standing Military Press

Warm up and 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Dip (Chest Variation)

3 sets of bodyweight to failure

(Not sure how to do these exercises?Check out this article.)

Day 3

Lower B

Deadlift

Warm up and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Barbell or Dumbbell Lunge

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Single-Leg Hip Thrust or Single-Leg Glute Bridge

3 sets of bodyweight to failure

Day 4

Rest

 Day 5

Lower B

Barbell Back Squat

Warm up and 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Bulgarian Split Squat

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Glute Blaster or Hip Thrust

1 set of 8 to 10 reps

Day 6

Rest

Day 7

Rest

Take measurements, do four weeks of those workouts, and measure again. I promise you that your butt will be bigger.

(I also recommend that you take a week todeload before resuming your normal training as your body will probably need a break.)

A few points to keep in mind while you’re doing these workouts…

Rest 3 minutes in between your 4-to-6-rep sets and 2 minutes in between your 8-to-10-rep sets.

This will give your muscles enough time to fully recoup their strength so you can give maximum effort each set.

You don’t have to push to absolute muscle failure every set, but you need to come close.

The subject of whether to train to failure (the point at which you can no longer keep the weight moving and have to end the set) or not is a contentious one.

Experts disagree left and right, legit-sounding scientific arguments can be made for a variety of positions, and many people report success with many different approaches.

Well, I break it all down in this article, but here’s the long story short:

We should be training to failure, but not so much that we risk injury or overtrain.

Exactly how much that amounts to will vary from person to person.

Personally, I never train to absolute failure for more than 2 to 3 sets per workout, and never on the squat, deadlift, bench press, or military press as this can be dangerous.

Furthermore, I don’t recommend you train to failure when you’re using very heavy loads (1 to 4 rep range).

Instead, the majority of your sets should be taken to the rep preceding failure (the last rep you can perform without assistance).

If you’re new to weightlifting, finding this point will be tricky, but as you get used to your body and your lifts, you’ll get a feel for it.

Once you hit the top of your rep range for one set, you move up in weight.

For instance, if you squat 6 reps on your first 4-to-6 rep set, you add 5 pounds to each side of the bar for your next set and work with that weight until you can squat it for 6 reps, and so forth.

What about abs and cardio?

If you want to add some ab/core work into the program, you can. This article will help.

You can also do cardio in addition to the weightlifting, but given the amount of lower body work you’re going to be doing, you need to take it easy so you don’t cut into your recovery.

Everyone’s body is different in terms of resilience, but I personally wouldn’t do any HIITwhile doing this routine. I would stick with a couple hours of walking or light rowing or cycling per week.

What About Supplements?

I saved this for last because, quite frankly, it’s far less important than proper diet and training.

You see, supplements don’t build great physiques–dedication to proper training and nutrition does.

Unfortunately, the workout supplement industry is plagued by pseudoscience, ridiculous hype, misleading advertising and endorsements, products full of junk ingredients, underdosing key ingredients, and many other shenanigans.

Most supplement companies produce cheap, junk products and try to dazzle you with ridiculous marketing claims, high-profile (and very expensive) endorsements, pseudo-scientific babble, fancy-sounding proprietary blends, and flashy packaging.

So, while workout supplements don’t play a vital role in building muscle and losing fat, and many are a complete waste of money…the right ones can help.

The truth of the matter is there are safe, natural substances that have been scientifically proven to deliver benefits such as increased strength, muscle endurance and growth, fat loss, and more.

As a part of my work, it’s been my job to know what these substances are, and find products with them that I can use myself and recommend to others.

Finding high-quality, effective, and fairly priced products has always been a struggle, though.

That’s why I took matters into my own hands and decided to create my own supplements. And not just another line of “me too” supplements–the exact formulations I myself have always wanted and wished others would create.

I won’t go into a whole spiel here though. If you want to learn more about my supplement line, check this out.

For the purpose of this article, let’s just quickly review the supplements that are going to help you get the most out of your butt (and other) workouts.

Creatine

Creatine is a substance found naturally in the body and in foods like red meat. It’s perhaps the most researched molecule in the world of sport supplements–the subject of hundreds of studies–and the consensus is very clear:

Supplementation with creatine helps…

• Build muscle and improve strength,
• Improve anaerobic endurance
•  Reduce muscle damage and soreness

You may have heard that creatine is bad for your kidneys, but these claims have beencategorically and repeatedly disproven. In healthy subjects, creatine has been shown tohave no harmful side effects, in both short- or long-term usage. People with kidney disease are not advised to supplement with creatine, however.

If you have healthy kidneys, I highly recommend that you supplement with creatine. It’s safe, cheap, and effective.

In terms of specific products, I use my own, of course, which is called RECHARGE.

RECHARGE is 100% naturally sweetened and flavored and each serving contains:

• 5 grams of creatine monohydrate
• 2100 milligrams of L-carnitine L-tartrate
• 10.8 milligrams of corosolic acid

This gives you the proven strength, size, and recovery benefits of creatine monohydrate plus the muscle repair and insulin sensitivity benefits of L-carnitine L-tartrate and corosolic acid

Protein Powder

You don’t need protein supplements to gain muscle, but, considering how much protein you need to eat every day to maximize muscle growth, getting all your protein from whole food can be impractical.

That’s the main reason I created (and use) a whey protein supplement. (There’s also evidence that whey protein is particularly good for your post-workout nutrition.)
WHEY+ is 100% naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate that is made from milk sourced from small dairy farms in Ireland, which are known for their exceptionally high-quality dairy.

I can confidently say that this is the creamiest, tastiest, healthiest all-natural whey protein powder you can find.

Pre-Workout Drink

There’s no question that a pre-workout supplement can get you fired up to get to work in the gym. There are downsides and potential risks, however.

Many pre-workout drinks are stuffed full of ineffective ingredients and/or minuscule dosages of otherwise good ingredients, making them little more than a few cheap stimulants with some “pixie dust” sprinkled in to make for a pretty label and convincing ad copy.

Many others don’t even have stimulants going for them and are just complete duds.

Others still are downright dangerous, like USPLabs’ popular pre-workout “Jack3d,”which contained a powerful (and now banned) stimulant known as DMAA.

Even worse was the popular pre-workout supplement “Craze,” which contained a chemical similar to methamphetamine.

The reality is it’s very hard to find a pre-workout supplement that’s light on stimulants but heavy on natural, safe, performance-enhancing ingredients like beta-alanine, betaine, and citrulline.

And that’s why I made my own pre-workout supplement. It’s called PULSE and it contains 6 of the most effective performance-enhancing ingredients available:

• Caffeine. Caffeine is good for more than the energy boost. It also increases muscle endurance and strength.
• Beta-Alanine. Beta-alanine is a naturally occurring amino acid that reduces exercise-induced fatigue, improves anaerobic exercise capacity, and can accelerate muscle growth.
• Citrulline Malate. Citrulline is an amino acid that improves muscle endurance, relieves muscle soreness, and improves aerobic performance.
• Betaine. Betaine is a compound found in plants like beets that improves muscle endurance, increases strength, and increases human growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor 1 production in response to acute exercise.
• Ornithine. Ornithine is an amino acid found in high amounts in dairy and meat that reduces fatigue in prolonged exerciseand promotes lipid oxidation (the burning of fat for energy as opposed to carbohydrate or glycogen).
• Theanine. Theanine is an amino acid found primarily in tea that  reduces the effects of mental and physical stress, increases the production of nitric oxide, which improves blood flow, and improves alertness, focus, attention, memory, mental task performance, and mood.

And what you won’t find in PULSE is equally special:

• No artificial sweeteners or flavors..
• No artificial food dyes.
• No unnecessary fillers, carbohydrate powders, or junk ingredients.

The bottom line is if you want to know what a pre-workout is supposed to feel like…if you want to experience the type of energy rush and performance boost that only clinically effective dosages of scientifically validated ingredients can deliver…then you want to try PULSE.

The Bottom Line on Getting a Bigger Butt

As you can see, building a bigger and better butt is pretty straightforward.

You hit it with a lot of heavy lifting. You do the right exercises. You eat enough food, sleep enough, and, if you want an easy boost, take the right supplements. And your body takes care of the rest.

Happy training!