2770: 4 Reasons Your Butt Isn't Growing !

0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, it's all about building your butt. We talk about the reasons why you're struggling, and we help you fix it. By the way, we have a free Build Your Butt Masterclass. Adam and one of our top trainers, Corinne, teaches it. It's free. Go to mapsbooty.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Legion. Legion supplements are some of the best in the industry.

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1:19All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. This is a build your butt masterclass. This is for you ladies out there. Here's what we did. We've identified the absolute most common reasons why people struggle building their butts. If you do what we say, they're going to build. You will have, by the end of the year, an amazing looking booty. But you got to follow our advice. Don't make these mistakes.

1:55They're so common. God bless America. Step one. Wrong exercises. Yeah. Yeah. Although, I will say this. this is a lot better way better yes way better i mean this this was something that uh when we all first started as trainers uh you rare rarely ever saw anybody doing the right movements to build their butt that's changed for sure yes in fact i i don't think i go into a commercial gym and not see at least a handful of people doing great movements to build their glutes where it wasn't like that before. Yeah, no. So I think it's important to kind of take a step back, right? So there's lots of exercises that activate and train and work the glutes, right?

2:45By the way, the glutes aren't just one muscle. There's several muscles that make up the glutes, the gluteus maximus, minimus medius, and that makes up that kind of glute complex. And there's a lot of ways to work those muscles, but some exercises just build the glutes and others just don't build a lot. And so you could, you could categorize these exercises into two general categories. You have your main exercises. These are your like, these are your meat and potatoes. Okay. These are what do most of the work when it comes to building your glutes. Then you have what are known as volume builders.

3:19Volume builders are exercises that you could add or throw on top of the main lifts if appropriate. I want to say that as well, because sometimes it's not appropriate. Sometimes you're just adding extra work for no reason, or in many cases, uh, tipping the, the balance from appropriate to too much. And then you actually build, uh, less muscle, but volume builders are not the main exercises. And the, the, the, here's the thing, a lot of but building courses or programs or even content on social media. Now, yes, it's definitely changed, Adam, but you still see a lot of this, right? Involve a lot of these volume builders, you know, these like, you know, abduction exercises and this new way to, you know, use bands to make you feel the glutes more or dog pees or kickbacks, which, you know, for correctional exercise purposes in some cases are great, but you're not going to build your butt doing those as your main lifts.

4:19Yeah, and I think a lot of it has to do with they gain traction because people do feel that sensation. And so feel is a big part of that that helps to sell it. However, you're not really moving the needle like you would with these bigger lifts where you're actually adding a substantial amount of load for it to overcome, which actually helps to build that muscle substantially. Well, I think you said it best when you said there's a difference between working a muscle and building a muscle. An example with your legs would be running a marathon works your legs out. Yeah. Big time. You're going to feel your legs.

4:58Oh, yeah. It'll burn. They'll get tired. They'll get sore. Yeah, they'll get tired. They'll get sore. You'll definitely feel them working. But if you've ever seen a marathoner's legs, they're not built. No. They're not buff. They're not big. They're not round. They're not shaped. They're not sculpted. most people that are looking to build their glutes they want them to look a certain way they want them round they want them shapely they want them bigger and that just like the example you you gave with the there's a difference between working them out and building them doing a lot of those exercises where you feel it to Justin's point where you feel the burn you feel the movement is like running a marathon for your glutes and you're not going to build them that way There's specific exercises that do a good job of adding size to the glutes, which is what most people are trying to do.

5:48That's what they're looking for. Yeah, when they say, I want to build my butt. That's right. And so you could really boil those main exercises down to not very many. And there may be variations off of these. So like squatting, squats, incredible butt-building exercise. Deadlifts and deadlift variations, incredible butt-building exercises. Hip thrusts, incredible, especially loaded, and we're in particular loaded, butt-building exercise. And then you have variations of them, right? Split stance squats are your lunge variations, your Bulgarian split stance squats. Deadlifts, you have stiff-legged deadlifts.

6:23You have sumo deadlifts. You have conventional deadlifts. Those are all great butt-building exercises. And hip thrusts are pretty straightforward. But that's essentially, and it's not a lot of exercises, you guys. So this is where people get kind of weird with this, is they think they need to throw all this crazy variety and lifts when honestly, if you pick like three of those and just got really good at those, you're going to build your butt. If you pick 15 or 20 of all of those other kind of volume builder exercise and avoid or don't focus on those main lifts, you're not going to build. You're not going to get very far.

6:59No, you're not going to get nearly as far. Well, that's the big secret sauce to this is not a lot of complexity and variety. It's focusing on a couple or a few at most of those exercises that you just listed. Literally two or three of those and getting really good and really strong at those lifts alone will be far better than trying to do all of them and adding a bunch of other things to the regimen. And I think that's where people go wrong is they might do those and then they do a bunch of other, They do all this stuff in hopes that more is better, and it's not. It's like do a couple of these really good movements that really build the glutes, get really good, and get really strong at it, and that is what's going to do.

7:47If you did barbell squats, deadlifts, either conventional or sumo, and hip thrusts, and that's it? Yes. You would get phenomenal results with your glutes. you could compare just those three to 30 volume builder exercises you could put them all together mix and match them i don't care yeah and and they're not going to get close to what those three exercises are going to do so in other words that is what your routine should be built off of that's the foundation and for many of you that's all you do for your glutes and you don't even have to include all that other stuff totally and now next up is you're not lifting heavy now you know Now, here's where things get a little murky.

8:30People are like, oh, it's hard. It's intense. No, no, no. Lifting heavy isn't just how much weight you can lift, okay? Lifting heavy, there's programming that goes to lifting heavy, which includes long rest periods. When we say lifting heavy, we're talking about you lift a weight that is very challenging for anywhere between 5 to, let's say, 12 reps, sometimes lower if you want, but we'll stay 5 to 12, just keep it kind of there in the middle. and you're going heavy and you're resting three minutes in between sets. Yeah, three minutes. Because sometimes I say lifting heavy and what people will do is circuits or they're resting 20 seconds in between sets or they want to feel the burn so they go in one extra.

9:10And they're like, no, no, it's challenging. I'm only doing 10 reps. But the rest period is what makes heavy lifting heavy lifting because what you're trying to do is you're trying to train an energy system of the body that is known as anaerobic. Anaerobic is not aerobic. Aerobic is the stamina and endurance. Anaerobic is a different energy system. And when you train that and then leave it alone and rest so you can continue coming back to it. Fully replenish. Because it burns out quickly. So strength, this energy system. If I did eight heavy reps of barbell squats, I'm anaerobic. If I go to 80, somewhere around 25 reps, maybe sooner, I'm going into aerobic.

9:53It's no longer strength training. It's now just stamina and endurance building. If that's what you want, that's cool, but you're listening to this because you want to build your butt. So you hit the anaerobic system. Then you wait and rest and let it replenish. And what that does is it trains the muscle fibers that grow. It trains all the muscle fibers, but it makes them bigger because when you get bigger muscle fibers, you get better at that kind of exercise. When you're training for stamina and endurance, bigger muscle fibers are actually disadvantageous. so in other words circuit training and hit and doing all these crazy supersets and short rest periods uh not only do they not build as much in many cases they actually uh discourage your body to build because big muscle fibers tend to be less uh it's less advantageous when it comes to stamina it's probably one of the most commonly like misused or overlooked totally uh part of trying to build the glutes especially in this category a lot of people would like to get that size.

10:53And to be able to do that, like to eliminate the conditioning element of it into the endurance portion of it, to actually build, we need to get strong. We need to get, you know, focused on strength. The only way you can focus on strength is really be adamant about these rest periods. Even if you feel like your heart rate has gone down, you're going to, you're not going to feel exhausted with your heart rate. It's just going to be hard. It's just hard. This is such a major point that i i like to take it to an even further extreme than the one that you recommended which unless you are familiar with or have experience with training either with a power lifter or trained for a power lifting meet i oftentimes will teach clients that this that have this specific goal how to train singles doubles and triples yeah uh because most people most programming even good programming rarely unless you were specific to power lifting you don't get exposed to that you don't get exposed to singles doubles and triples a set of two reps yes and that's that that's so out of the ordinary for the average person especially someone who is focused just on sculpting the body or losing body fat or just building muscle it it's very popular in the power lifting world but the reason why i like to go to that extreme is because i introduce a client most times to a very new form of training and stimulus and also really extend that rest period timeout or we'll go get a weight and and they'll they'll pick it up two times and like and then i'll make them rest at least three minutes and then hey how do you feel let's put another five pounds on there let's put another 10 pound and i'll just keep trying to find where that limit is uh of them pulling the bar up just one or two times and a lot of times especially my female clients that have never trained this way really surprise themselves at how much weight they can lift because they've trained in this you know short rest period and because to them it is heavy yeah so it's hard to say like it's it's that's why the rest period is exactly so it's real easy for us on the podcast to say this and communicate it and then the average person to hear and go like well no this is a heavy weight for me but then i'm ready to go you know because their heart rate might have come down or they don't feel like they're sweating enough and so then they go right back into it it's only been 60 90 seconds it's like no no no let's rest even longer and wait and let's see if we can stack more weight on.

13:12And you know what? I don't even care if you can't get five. If I put on too much weight and you can only get three to four, that's okay. And I want to push in that direction. If you've never done that and you're listening to this, I can't urge you enough to go in that direction and see how beneficial this can be to your training. Really good coaches understand this. Brett Contreras, who's widely regarded as like the, he's the most well-known guru when it comes to developing glutes. And he's a good trainer. He knows what he's doing. So he's not like these other social media fitness influencers that I wish would disappear.

13:46He knows what he's doing. He's a smart trainer. And what he does works. And if you watch the women that he trains and you look at them posting their lifts and their PR, they are strong. Yeah. Because he knows. In fact, he puts them through blocks of really low rep training. Yes, yeah. And he often posts their one rep or two rep PRs. and they get phenomenal because he understands strength equals muscle size so if you want great results uh and building your butt and you're not training this way uh i mean good luck it's it's really it's gonna be really really hard i think that i think what that is more representation of too it's it's less because we've talked about on the podcast before that you can build a great body and never pr but i think it also meaning that you don't have to chase you don't have to chase prs But I think he, like us, from training so many people, especially female clients that want to build their glutes, have realized how few of them have ever trained in that direction.

14:44He's talked about that. So you get tremendous value by pushing that group into chasing PRs because it is so foreign. And they really surprise themselves on how strong and how much weight they can actually lift and the benefits that they reap from training that way. Because I remember when he was on the show, I can't remember how often, but he encourages hitting a PR more frequently than we normally do to general pop. And so this isn't an area where we are at conflict or we disagree. Just because on our podcast, you hear us communicate a lot. They're like, no, you don't have to chase PRs and there's a safe way.

15:19But when we're talking specifically to somebody who has these goals of, I want to build my butt, I've struggled with it forever. That's right. And getting that person to understand what it's like to pull a bar up with so much weight, they can only do it one or two times has tremendous value. Huge value. It makes a big difference. And I remember back in the day when I would get female clients that did lots of strength training but struggled in getting their bodies to change or building their butt. We would do an hour session and we would do a grand total of five or six sets in the whole hour. the whole hour.

15:57Now, thank God I can be quite convincing. But then once they saw the results, they didn't have to convince them anymore. They'd show up and we'd chill in between sets. And I'd look at the clock, five minutes would go past. All right, let's do another set. So it was like five sets. This included warmup and everything. And they got phenomenal, and they couldn't believe it. Like, this is so different than what I'm used to. I'm like, look, you want to build, this is how you train to build. You want to go get lots of endurance, keep doing what you were doing before. But you came to me saying, you wanted to see a difference in muscle development, this is how you do it.

16:26Now, this next one is by far, in my opinion, the biggest reason why women can't, have struggled building their butt. And it's because they don't eat in a calorie surplus, but I'll put it differently. Women say, I want to build my butt and I want a six pack. You're not going to be lean. It's not going to happen. You're not going to build if you're not eating enough. It's just not going to happen. So you can try to eat to get leaner, and then the goal is to keep whatever muscle you have or you could try to build and you're going to gain some body fat that's just the way it is uh or if you have body fat maybe you won't gain some body fat but a lot of women who are like i'm struggling to build my butt they need to gain a little bit of body fat they need to get their calories up and and by the way this isn't just uh you know high protein although that's a big part of it you need to eat about a gram of protein per pound of target body weight it makes a big difference you also got to eat carbs yeah because you'll also get this fear of okay cool i want to build all right i'll eat more but i don't want any carbohydrates i don't want to get any body fat okay it's also you're also uh playing this on hard mode extra hard mode eat the carbs eat the protein put yourself in a calorie surplus i'm not telling you to eat garbage uh or eat in a way that's unhealthy but you have to eat more calories and you're burning or your body's not going to build it's just not going to happen and i don't have to agree that this is this is probably one of the more difficult ones just because you're right uh most always uh what's accompanied i want to build my butt is also i want to shrink my waist you know i want to shrink my waist i want to build my butt and both are very much so possible but to focus on both of them at the same time is nearly impossible um or as you put it uh you're playing on hard mode.

18:18It doesn't mean it's not possible to do a very slow, gradual progress in both where you see a little bit of leaning out on the waist and you see a little bit of growth on your butt. But most people don't have the mental discipline to do it that way for a long period of time. You're far better off saying, okay, this is bulking time. The next six to eight weeks, I am going to dedicate myself to putting inches on my butt. I'm going to eat in a calorie surplus. I'm going to hit my grams of protein and do that consistently, not just once in a while or every now and then, but consistently be in a surplus.

18:53And what's nice is as long as you don't do this in a dirty way, as you said, like eating a bunch of garbage, you won't really put body fat on. And a little bit of the weight you put on most times is a little bit of water that you're adding because you're increasing carbohydrates and calories. But if you do it correctly, you will put mostly all muscle on. And even if you put a little bit of body fat on, your metabolism is going to end up coming up and speeding up anyway. You're going to get leaner a lot easier. But it is difficult to get over that hurdle, at least in my experience with my clients.

19:28They feared that I don't want my waist to grow or I also want to have abs. And many times that tends to be the thing they care about more, but then they also want to build their butt. but you'll, I just want to make this point to the person who wants both, because I think they're both very common goals that come together. It'll serve you to focus on building the butt first and then leaning out. Then it will to try and lean out first, then build the butt easier order. One is the metabolic rate, which helps the fat loss. The other one, not so much. Right. And we do have, there's probably a little bit of a selection bias because the episode is how to build your butt.

20:03And so if you're listening intently, you probably struggle with this. and if you're probably struggling with this then it's part of the reason why you struggle is you just don't you're scared to eat enough to build your butt and i'm so i'm going to encourage you a little bit okay if you gained two inches around your butt and you gained a quarter inch around your waist your waist looks smaller than it did before there is a there's this is this is what happens when you get the hip to waist ratio illusion so even if you did gain a little bit around your waist but you gain more around your butt your waist now looks smaller than it did before because your butt is bigger.

20:36And this is what happens. This is, this is what happens when you sculpt and shape your body. But just to add to this, to try to build your butt without gaining any weight on the scale, huh? Yeah. What do you think you're doing when you're building? Yeah. You're going to gain some, you're going to gain a little bit of weight. If you gain three pounds of muscle to your butt, it's a lot bigger, a lot rounder, but you're heavier on the scale. So you got to kind of get over that and make that decision and commit. You have to commit because Because what also happens with a lot of women is they'll be like, okay, cool, I'm going to try this.

21:06Then a week or two into it, they get scared. Scale went up a couple pounds. Forget it. I'm going to back up a little bit. No, no, no. Commit. Give yourself eight weeks. Give yourself 12 weeks. Make this happen. You won't regret it. You won't regret it. And then lastly, this is where it gets really interesting, is that some people, and this is just for lack of a better way of saying this, can't connect to their glutes really well with some of the exercises that I mentioned before. So when you look at the studies on what builds the butt more, there's two exercises that tend to be compared to each other.

21:42There's two great butt-building exercises that tend to be put head-to-head. Squats and hip thrust. And hip thrust. Yep. And what the studies will show is that they're both equally as good, okay? In fact, some studies might even show that the squat might be a little better because it loads in the stretch position, okay? But generally speaking, they're about the same. And yet, when you go and you do pulls on what builds the butt more, a lot of women are like hip thrusts, hands down. Well, here's what's happening. Barbell squats are a great glute exercise unless you're quad dominant. Yeah. Unless your body really places most of the load on your quads.

22:22Now, I can typically tell when I watch someone's form and technique. Yeah. But most people don't know what's going on. So they do squats, and they're like, man, I'm getting strong at squats. I know you said squats, but my butt, man, I'm squatting over 200 pounds, and the only thing that's gotten more shapely and built are my quads and my butt is just not working. Hip thrusts become a superior exercise. It's much easier to connect to your glutes with a hip thrust than it is with a barbell squat. It can be a very subtle variation in your mechanics. That's right. puts you like more front anterior focused and uh and again it's it's not recognizable at times but yeah if you feel that your quads are getting more activity uh so there's a way to really redirect that whole sequence and and to do that you know requires a bit of mobility a bit of you know hip work and ankle work sometimes to be able to unlock you know that potential where your glutes will fire i actually i found this to be very common um and i think there's a there's there's a handful of reasons.

23:28We're anteriorly driven, right? So we do everything in front of us. A lot of women in the past, even today, still run to get in shape. And so they do a lot of like - They've already trained it. So they've already trained that pattern of the quads firing. It's like quads and calves, quads and calves. That's right. And then you can also have, but I've seen some very pretty mechanically looking squats, but still be quad dominant. And I think that has a lot to do with it is because they've done a lot of running and sprinting and your quads take over in a movement like that so much. And so you're so used to using quads, they become so strong and dominant that you go do an exercise that incorporates your quads and your glutes and your quads go, oh, we got this.

24:10And they take over the movement and it's subconscious. You don't even realize it. So you could have this beautiful form and technique, but the quads are just taking over because you've trained them for so many years to be the strong dominant muscle. and then now you're starting to do these movements. I actually think this is what popularized the hip thrust. That's right. They hit all those women that just didn't build their butts with squat. Yeah, bypasses that whole process. Yes. And we did this well before the hip thrust even got popular were floor bridges. You used to take a client who struggled to connect or feel their butt.

24:44So long before I knew who Brett Contreras was and that stuff got popular, I'd take a client who I would do these great squats, and I'd see her form, and I'd be like, that's beautiful form. And she'd be like, I still just fill up my quads. We'd get down, and we'd do these floor bridges, and I'd have them do these isometric holds on a floor bridge and squeeze their butt to where they feel it. And so just helping that connection, that's where you want to feel this when you do this movement. And so I think hip thrust really got popular because it kind of forces that. It almost became one of those trainer tricks that ended up being like, oh, this is the go-to move for people to build their butt.

25:21But Sal's absolutely right. If you're somebody who feels squats in your butt, that's going to be one of the best exercises. If you don't, it doesn't mean that they're not a great exercise, but it just means that you lack that good connection there and you're probably more quad dominant, and then hip thrust becomes probably the primary mover I'm going to focus on in the programming. Yeah, generally speaking, if you're strength training three days a week, one of your days would be a hip thrust day, one of them would be a barbell squat day, and one of them would be a deadlift day is what it would kind of look like.

25:51And I would say start your week out, the week with your hip thrusts if you don't feel your glutes optimally. Otherwise, start up with your squats. Now, here's what we're going to do because there's more to what we're saying, right? There's detail, there's coaching that's involved. And one of the challenges with doing a podcast is I'm not here teaching you visually like I would as a trainer. And there's just so much value in that. So here's what we did. uh adam and corinne corinne was one of our top trainers she also competes um as a physique competitor adam obviously was a pro and trained lots of people and his expertise at one point was building people's butts there they did a master class that you can actually watch and they're going to show you a lot of the things we're talking about and more and it's free you go to maps booty.com so maps booty.com you can watch the free butt build your butt master class and And you're getting the two of the best people in the industry are going to teach you a lot of what we're talking about, but they're going to show you and teach you so you can apply it yourself.

26:51So, again, it's mapsbooty.com. Go check it out. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price.

27:35The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.