2792: Squat & Hip Thrust Butt-Building Master Class

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, we're talking about a masterclass, the squat and hip thrust masterclass to build your butt. It's actually a free video you can watch with Adam and one of our top trainers, Corinne. And we talk all about it, but we break it down. But if you want to watch the exercises, you want to watch the cues, you want to learn how to do those exercises in a way that maximizes glute development, butt development, go to mapsbooty.com.

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1:53I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. We're going to do a master class on butt building, and we're going to talk about the two most important exercises to build your glutes, the hip thrust and the squat. By the way, we did a master class, an actual class you can watch. We're going to talk all about it right now. And we're going to talk about those two exercises and how to do them right so you can finally build that butt you want. Let's go. Did we really? Do you have a friend in your pocket or what? What? We? We is because you represent.

2:26I'm just teasing. Yeah, it's the collective. I'm just teasing. No, so Adam took one of our top trainers, Corinne, and they put together this master class video and broke down the hip thrust and the squat. So, you know, here's the deal. Building the butt is not hard. It isn't. However, if it is hard for you, we know why. And it's almost always a technique issue. And there's some underlying reasons as to why the technique with those two exercises are a challenge. Because those are the exercises that build the butt. There are no two other exercises as good. Deadlifts are good. There's other exercises that will build the butt too.

3:05Yeah. But if you just did good squats and good hip thrusts with good technique, your butt will build. Yeah. And that's the issue. Yeah. The issue is a lot of people have issues with the technique around them. With both of those, in particular the squat though. Yeah. I mean, even when we created the video, I tried to keep that in mind, right? Like this is, if this is somebody who was coming to me who was, that maybe knew about these movements, but complained that my butt's still not growing, most often than not, it was a technique issue that I had to address first. And then we could build from there.

3:42Because if there's poor technique doing these movements, many times people don't feel at all in their butts. And that's super common. Yeah, and a lot of times, you know, it's because of things taking you out of alignment or, you know, certain muscles are carrying most of the load and the recruitment is, you know, off. And so we're not really targeting the glutes specifically for this movement when it should be more of the main mover. Yeah, if you look at like the squat, for example, the barbell squat involves pretty much the entire lower body, all the way down to the calves. Even the calves are involved in stabilizing to an extent.

4:23But all the major muscles of the lower body, you also have lots of stability in the back, core stability. And, of course, glutes, hamstrings, quads are the prime movers. And then you have stabilization at the bottom of the calves and the soleus. What determines how much of each of those muscles you use is your technique? Yeah. So if you don't fix your technique first and you just get stronger, because getting stronger is how you build muscle, especially in the first few years of training. Like if you want to build and sculpt and shape your body, like just get stronger. That'll do it faster than anything.

4:59But if you just get stronger with the wrong technique, then the muscles that are doing most of the work, to put it plainly, are going to get most of the development. In other words, if I'm doing a squat and I'm super quad dominant, my quads are doing a lot of the lifting, and I add, I don't know, 30 pounds to my squat, most of where you're going to notice is my quads. So you're going to look at me and you say, wow, I could tell your quads have changed quite a bit, but I don't see any development in the area you want, which is your glutes. In other words, you can squat in a way that makes you quad dominate or one that makes you kind of glute and hamstring dominant.

5:37And if you're listening to this, it's because you want to build your glutes. You want to build your butt. So before you get to or try to get stronger, because you've probably heard by now, this is now a popular message. It wasn't so much maybe 15 years ago, but people get it now, even women. Like, I want to build, I want to shape, I want to sculpt, I got to get strong. But if your technique isn't ideal, you'll get stronger, but you're going to build your body in the way that you don't necessarily – you're not necessarily trying to. You're going to hardwire bad patterns. That's right. And that's the second part is as you get stronger with the technique that you're using, that becomes your technique.

6:13That becomes your default technique. Anytime you load the bar heavy, it's going to go to the way that you always practice it. So before building strength, it's technique, it's connection. Super important. The class that you did with Corinne, you really, really broke down the parts of the squat, especially the depth of the squat and how important that is for glute development. Yeah, one of the hardest things about doing a master class like that, that we know that thousands of people are going to see that are all unique and different is trying to cover the things that I think were the ones that I covered the most with someone that I was helping with technique.

6:51Like what are the biggest offenders? Right. Cause there's, I mean, I've watched a lot of great squatters and coaches online that have taught technique around the squat. My thought process was trying to remember, okay, all the clients that wanted to build their glutes that I was trying to teach squat, where were the most common breakdown? And And I think about how they got underneath the bar was always a huge one. Ankle mobility has to be 80 % of the people lack good ankle mobility. So many people collapse at the knees. So many people don't wedge the bar down to where they keep their scapula down and back.

7:31So they end up too forward. And so they come too forward, which then makes the bar over the quads more. and so that was what i tried to to distill it down to is like okay when i think of the most common things that i needed to address technique wise for the client who was trying to build glutes these are the ones that came to mind that uh i had to work on the most and i really i couldn't think of anything else that was unless you guys i mean you guys saw it no that was perfect what you guys watched no i think the first so like let's talk about the first thing the main ones let's talk about the first thing that you did with corinne um in this uh master class you talk about bar placement and how to get the bar um nice and wedged in the right position nice and tight with good stability yeah if you don't if you're not unable to do this or you don't do this properly your limiting factor to how much weight you can lift or how much you can drive becomes that that that part right there in other words if if i'm rounding i'm gonna exaggerate if i round forward at my upper back or my elbows are back here because it's really hard for me to hold the bar, my shoulder blades rolled forward, that's going to dictate how much weight I can lift.

8:35Not my glutes, not my quads, not my hamstrings, but the fact that I'm holding the bar the way that I am. It's already pulling you forward with that positioning. And straining your neck. Your neck and your head's reaching into it. So everything gets affected. Think of a pole that you want to push something with, but in the middle of a pole is a sponge. And you push as hard as you can and the pole bends down. you can only push as hard as a sponge will allow you to before it folds well if your bar placement is wrong and nobody thinks about this with the squat that's why i'm so glad you you showed this and it's funny uh when you train clients this is a big area of focus you have to focus a lot of times there's a big discomfort there and shoulder mobility obviously is a big lacking component for some people um just to be able to place it like right there especially in And that meaty part, once you get that contraction there in between your shoulder blades, you want it to rest right there.

9:30But it's hard sometimes for people to achieve that. I also think it is a neglected cue. It was neglected when taught to me. I remember the first time. It was just assumed. Yeah, exactly. It was just assumed, oh, just put the bar on your traps. That was what I was told when I first started squatting. And so I really had all this kind of play. Like the bar could roll back and forth, but it was resting on my traps. I wasn't taught to lock it in. Like that wasn't something I learned until much later from like really good squatters. And I remember what a world of a difference that made on my squatting technique was just putting emphasis on, don't just put the bar on your traps, like get in there and get in that lock position because of the way it retracts, depresses the shoulder, locks you into position.

10:16It puts the chest upright, really puts you in this more optimal position to load the bar, huge difference. The more secure you have it, the less variables you have to account for, which, you know, the bar will travel. Like the most minute movement is going to place you in a bad position. And it shouldn't hurt. If the bar on your back hurts, you have bad placement. It's not you don't have enough muscle on your back. Yeah. Corinne is a petite trainer. She doesn't have this big old muscular back. She holds the bar on her back. No problem. I've trained many clients, beginners, people without lots of muscle, lots of padding on their back or whatever.

10:53and they place the bar and it feels right once we get it right. So if you put the bar on your back and it hurts, or you have to use a squat pad, here's how you know you're not positioning the bar right. You have to use a squat pad. If you're using a squat pad, your positioning is bad, and the squat pad makes your positioning worse. Yes. The squat pad raises the center of gravity. You've now added a few inches to the bar and essentially given yourself a different-looking squat, and then you start training that pattern. That has to be one of the worst tools ever invented. That's right. Oh, man. Like, looking back now, again, and I didn't know this.

11:28Well, I'll bring this one up. There's a pad for the back of a kettlebell for your arm. That's worse than that. Yeah, I don't know. That's just being a wuss. Well, I mean, even this is like, it's less that because it is so important for your ability to retract, to press, and get in that position, that if a client can't do that, and they're putting a pad and it's resting on their neck, I'm not loading them like that. No. I'm like working on that first before we even get to a barbell back squat. So crutching something like that, not to mention your point that you're making, that where you're loading it is not a good place.

12:03You're adding inches of discrepancy. It's also implying, a squat pad implies that if a bar hurts your back, because you think about it, if you've never done this before, it kind of makes sense, right? Well, it's a hard bar I'm putting on my back. Of course it's going to hurt. No. It doesn't hurt. if you do it right. It doesn't hurt. If you do it right, it's actually a good, tight position. You shouldn't have to feel like you're holding it up with your hands. Here's another key that you know it's wrong. You feel like you have to hold it up with your arms. No, it sits there. Yeah. It sits there.

12:35It's tight. It's not going anywhere. And so the bar pad implies, oh, this hurts because it's a hard bar. Put this on. It makes it comfortable. When in reality, the bar pad doesn't teach you to fix your technique. It actually makes it worse. Yeah. And then God forbid you get strong using a bar pad. now you've got a terrible squat that you've got to back out of. Many times what that is is it's resting on someone's spine. Yep. And that's why they feel that. It hurts their neck is what they normally will say. Oh, it bothers my neck or my upper back. And it's like, oh, it's resting on that bone. Where's your muscle?

13:06If you retract the shoulders back, it'll rest across the back and the shoulders. And you teach it very well. When people go to, it's a free master class, by the way. When you go and watch this, you'll see Adam teach the technique. But I remember as a kid, It's mapsbooty.com. Doug just reminded me. I like Corinne's tip. I actually never cued that way. I don't know if you saw this. Like a lat pulldown. So after I cued, I asked her, is there anything that you've cued? Because obviously she's been a trainer for a long time too. And so she's like, oh, I love a lat pulldown cue. And I kind of looked at her like, what?

13:38And then she got in the bar where she hung under the bar and then she did a lat pulldown. I thought, I don't know why. Which I love that. Especially if someone really understands how to do a good lat pulldown, that pulls you up into that position really well, which is another great way to cue it. Absolutely. And so again, when you place the bar right on your back, you've set yourself up now for a good squat. If the bar placement is wrong, you have the wrong activation, the rest of the squat's going to fall apart. Okay. The next thing is cueing core activation or staying tight in the midsection.

14:11This is very important because if your spine isn't thoroughly supported, the squat is going to cause problems for you. You can't put much load. No, no. You'll hurt your back. You're going to get movement in the pelvis you don't want, or you'll get the dreaded, you know, the tailbone tuck, excessive tailbone tuck at the bottom. And you want to brace your core. And there's a couple ways to cue this. The way you cued it in the video I thought was hilarious. The way I used to cue it with my clients is I would tell them, like, pretend like someone's going to poke you in the midsection. That's the other way.

14:43Yeah. You brace. Punch in the stomach. Yeah, it's important to brace. Now, some people wear a weight belt. Look, if you're going to compete in powerlifting or if you've always trained with a weight belt, that's fine. But if you've never used a weight belt, there's no need to use one. In fact, it changes your muscle recruitment patterns because rather than kind of drawing and embracing, your core pushes out against the belt, which creates that stability. And if that becomes your default pattern, well, then squatting without a belt becomes – I think I've worn one since the 90s. I mean I haven't worn one in a while.

15:18I would want to teach to be able to do it without it, even if you do decide to do it. Like the skill to be able to draw in your core and activate like that to support your spine is so beneficial in so many other things than just what we're talking about. And so no matter what, I want my client to have that skill set to go, regardless if we end up using a belt down the road to load even more or use the advantage of that tool, but to teach it, to get that technique down, to be able to, and to your point, And this reminds me again, my own journey. Another thing that wasn't really cued to me or told to me, like how important it was that I was so rigid and stiff in my upper body.

15:56Like, because if you, if there's, if the bar is wobbly, if your core is not activated and tight and there's movement in that everywhere, you're not going to be able to load it. You're probably going to, your low back is probably going to bother you and hurt you. And at the very least you're going to feel it in areas that you're not supposed to feel. You've taken an exercise that is so amazing for developing the lower body. especially the glutes, and you've completely turned it into something else because of your inability or your lack of knowledge on how to place the bar, how to brace your core.

16:26That's why it's so important you start there. A lot of people don't even look at that. They just look at the squat and focus on everything else. Another thing you did on the video, Adam, which I thought was great, was you talked about using a heel lift. Which seems a little controversial because typically when I use a heel raise today, I use it to become more quad dominant. Right. Okay, so you raise the heels, you are going to shift a little weight towards the quads, typically. But again, what I was thinking in my mind when I was teaching this is when I think of the client who comes to me who wants to build a butt that lacks this, I would say a good 80 % of them.

17:05And I address this in the video after I go through this tip. If you're not this person, right, then you don't need this. but I'd say most people that I trained in particular, my female clients that wanted to build a butt, uh, lacked ankle mobility. Yeah. A lot. And, and could barely break 90 degrees. And what this looks like is you can't squat all the way down. Or if you do your heels come up or your feet twist out, or you have torsion in the knees or you get weird stuff happening in your low and you're lots of compensations as a result, lots of compensation. So as you're squatting, you might not think of ankle mobility, but when you're looking at the squat, the ankles have to have a good amount of mobility.

17:42Otherwise, you're not going all the way down. Well, you're always looking for stability. Yes. I mean, your body's naturally doing that. Like you said, your feet are going to turn out, your knees are going to adjust and boggle. There's all kinds of downstream effects to that if you don't have stability in the ankle. Right. Now, why is this so important to address? Because most of the gains that come to your glutes from a squat comes from a deep squat. So if you look at... That stretch position. That's right. So, in fact, if you look at the studies that compare hip thrusts to barbell squats for glute development, the reason why they're head-to-head competitive, because if you look at the hip thrust, biomechanically speaking, you would think, like, that's straight glutes.

18:21Like, that's got to be the one that builds the most. And yet, squats compares head-to-head, and in some studies, it might even build a little bit more. Why is that? Because it loads the stretch position. That's right. The hip thrust loads – it's really good in the squeeze. The squat, barbell squat deep is you get in that stretch position. And the data shows that a loaded stretch in a rep range builds two to three times more muscle. Okay, there's two to three times the hypertrophy from there. So if you're not doing a full squat, you're still working the glutes. I don't want to freak everybody out and be like, it's a waste of time to do them then.

18:54But if you want to build your butt and you can't do that full squat, and it's probably due to ankle mobility, that's almost everybody listening right now. If you can't squat all the way down, it's probably because your ankles don't let you. You do a little heel lift. You can either get a ramp like the one that you showed in the video, or you could put plates under your heels and squat down, and suddenly you can go all the way down. Now you're activating the glutes. Now you're getting maximum. And Justin said something I think is so important too, is another reason why I like to start someone there.

19:21I addressed this in the video where I go, listen, if you can, and I demonstrate because I can get all the way down in regular flat shoes comfortably with good technique. I wasn't like that before, but I'm like, if you can do that, then disregard this, this point right here. But in my experience, almost everybody in a really deep squat that I was trying to help do this had breakdown, either one, they couldn't do it at all, or the heels lift or their feet squirm around like crazy, or their knees collapse in. Like you see all this breakdown. And if you have all this breakdown in this squat like that, you're not, the glutes are not going to be driving out.

19:54You're going to be compensating all over, all over the place, which many times is the reason why this person is struggling with that you said something else that highlights why these two exercises because there's a bunch of great butt exercises and this wasn't designed to be like let's give you all the best butt exercises it was hey if i could just pick two exercises that i i'm going to teach a client who wants to build their butt these are the two to go get really good at them in the same workout yes and you you bring up the point of the glutes do such a good job of loading the glutes in a stretch position and the hip thrust does such a good job of loading it in the contracted position that's right these are both phenomenal but they complement each other so well that you can do in the same workout and and to be honest with you it doesn't matter which one you do first typically i would tell someone to squat first honestly it's not gonna make that big of a difference you could lip thrust first and squat second you do these two exercises in a workout this is a great but you can load it you can do low reps you can do higher reps.

20:52That's right. Most of these other exercises, you're just bound to doing high reps. That's right. And then it brings us to the hip thrust. And I love the way Corinne, there's a couple things that I didn't really consider with the hip thrust, mainly because hip thrust wasn't popular when I was a personal trainer, except for correctional exercise purposes. And so I didn't run into this issue that much. Now I hip thrust myself, but I don't run into this issue either because I'm a six foot tall guy. But here we have Corinne, petite female trainer. She talked about how to pick the right size bench. All right.

21:23Makes a lot of sense. You get a bench that's too high, you're not going to be able to do a proper hip. You're not optimal. So she talks about how to pick the right size bench. And then if the bench is too tall for you, how you can put a plate underneath you so that you can go down and be in a nice full range of motion, but not overdo it. I thought that was great. Well, it's such an example of the point you just made. We don't even think of those. I mean, honest, complete transparency. We were trainers. and the we used to do hip bridges yes that was popular for priming but the hip thrust was not popular when we were all trainers and so that's why i had her teach the cueing on that obviously i've taught a lot of people how to squat and so that's i would consider that an area that i'm pretty good at uh but i was really genuinely curious to hear her because she's been a trainer for the last eight years and she's probably taught a lot more hip thrust to a lot more women than i ever have and so hearing her cue that i was like oh that's such a great point that i haven't considered and so yeah the combo of her and i ping-ponging off each other in the video worked really really well she's so good on camera too she is such a good job and then the other cues that i really liked were to tuck your pelvis and then go up so if you have an excessive arch in the back and then you try to come up you get this kind of overextension right and you'll hear people complain sometimes that the hip thrust bothers the low back which is interesting because it doesn't have direct load on the low back necessarily but what's happening is they've got this what's called an anterior pelvic tilt or this over arch then they come up hard and they're like why is my back hurt when i do this also by the way deactivates the glutes to an extent so she teaches how to tuck the pelvis and then go straight up first and then yeah that's right go through the rep that's right listen you guys all have to watch this it's maps booty.com it's a 20 minute video adam and Koran, break down the two best exercises for your glutes.

23:11It's free. It's free. It doesn't cost anything. Then you can go do it yourself. Watch what happens. You'll add inches to your butt. 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.

23:47With 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. The 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 5-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.