 Butts, asses, glutes, everybody wants a nice butt. At least everybody likes to look at a nice butt. This is true for men and for women and for those of you that don't identify with either. The butt is a very important muscle. It's sexy, it provides stability and power. The problem is it's hard to develop sometimes for some people. So in today's episode, we talk all about the best exercises for developing amazing butt muscles. Now, here's the giveaway and a lot of you are gonna be shocked because this is a huge giveaway. We're gonna give away the butt builder bundle for free to when you lucky viewers. Now, this includes MAPS anabolic, MAPS aesthetic, kettlebell for aesthetics, and specific programming with the trigger sessions and focus sessions for building the butt. We're gonna give that away for free to one of you but you gotta do the following. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Also, subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. If we pick your comment, if we think your comment's the best comment, we'll notify you and you'll get that butt builder bundle for free. Now everybody else, check this out. We don't wanna leave you out either. So this is what we're gonna do. The butt builder bundle normally takes those programs and discounts them like 25% off or something like that. Well, here's what we've done for this episode is we've taken that and discounted it an additional 50% off. So it's half off and already discounted bundle. This is huge but it does end October 31st. So if you're interested in signing up, head over to mapsfitnessproducts.com, check out the build your butt bundle and then use the code BUTT50, B-U-T-T-5-0 for that discount. All right, here comes the show. All right guys, it's time to talk about the butt. Yeah! The butt. Justin's favorite. Sorry, I got excited. Everybody's favorite. You know what's interesting about this? If you think about it, because when you talk about like muscles that people tend to rank near the top in terms of attractiveness, they actually find this with men and with women. So women will even say, I've heard you say that, but is that true? It is. When you look at, dude. Baseball pants. Yeah. He notices so many girls. I swear he has like all the moves, like you know what, his carpenter thing with his shirt off with his wife comes in. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I've heard it many times. Come back from softball practice wearing his pants all, you know what I'm saying. Hey honey, it's a thing. You were so quick to answer that right there. No, but it's true. When they do polls, women will rank the butt up there, men rank the butt up there. I always thought that for women it was arms. That's what I thought. Arms is up there too, but so is the butt. And people don't think that, right? They don't think women are into... I would say it's the top three things I was hired for. I would say that's when you, fat loss obviously number one, right? Most people come in and say they want to lose, but I would say butt is either a close two or three as far as... Well, there's no industries now, devoted to... No, of course. And a lot of this, and you know, we might say people might think, oh, this is driven by marketing and advertising, but reality, it's evolution and biology drives marketing and advertising. So you got to ask yourself, why is the butt a muscle that everybody focus on? And also, by the way, if you look at like ancient sculptures, primitive statues and sculptures, they tend to place an emphasis on the butt, the glutes. Look at Greek sculptures, develop muscular backs, hips and glutes. And so you think, well, what the hell is going on? When you look at primates, there's a few differences between humans and primates structurally speaking. One of the greatest ones is the size of our glutes. We have massive butt muscles compared to other primates. And it's because we walk on two legs, we balance and we run, and we run better than any primate that there is. It's also very involved in throwing and generating power. You have to have powerful glutes to do that. Do you think we've lost our ass in the last 100 years? Probably. No, I'm serious. Like, because we don't sit in like in the squatted position as much, like we're more sedentary, we're not throwing like you're alluding to right now, like we're not doing a lot of these things. So do you think that we've lost our ass? I think turned into shrimps where we're basically curled forward, we have no butt and our shoulders are super protracted. Well, it's a big reason why we have a lot of back pain. Like people don't realize that that stability, a lot of it comes also from the glutes. It's the lumbopelvic hip area, right? So it's not just the core, it's not just your abs and your obliques and your low back. It's also actually, believe it or not, some of the lower lats. And then the glutes, which really weak glutes cause a lot of problems in people. And so, you know, evolutionarily speaking, when we see healthy, strong-looking glutes, we can't help but find them attractive because that probably meant that he could run fast and he could throw with a lot of power or she was very stable and strong and had good, you know, even women with developed glutes or when they store body fat in that area and have better fatty acid profiles, you know, for offspring and so it's just one of those things that's like a big deal. So this is why there's so much that surrounds, you know, butt training and butt development and what it means. And even today, if you look at athletes, like especially explosive athletes, that you could tell a lot by looking at an athlete's hip area. You really can. Oh yeah, 100%, like how powerful or how fast or how high they can jump by the way their hips look for sure. Oh yeah, yeah, look at sprinters. They've got these huge glutes because they can generate tremendous speed. So it's a muscle that is very important and of course, very attractive and developing it. If you do things right, you should be able to develop it pretty well. The problem is that there's a lot of challenges that people have along the way to developing big glutes and some of it has to do with just, you know, poor advertising and poor exercise programming but there's more. Yeah, no, I think a lot of it has to do with going back to my point of how sedentary we are. You know, understanding anatomy and like when you sit in a chair, like we are all right now, you shorten the hip flexors and when you go to stand up, if you have really shortened hip flexors, it kind of puts you in this kind of forward position. Now I'd be exact, this is exaggerating it, right? When we stand up, you have this shortened hip flexor and you're leaned over like this. And so you're putting all this weight on the front of your quads and then you go and you go to train exercises for your glutes and you can't help but the quads take over. That has to be the number one issue that I had to deal with helping somebody out. It was just simply they were doing all the butt exercises that they read in the magazines or they heard from people that they're supposed to be doing but the problem was their glutes just weren't firing properly and it has a lot to do I think with posture more than anything else. And then we all wear elevated heel shoes, even men, we don't wear heels like women do but I mean running shoes, tennis shoes, all of them, the heel is slightly elevated that brings your center of gravity forward a little bit and that places more emphasis on the quads. In fact, if you're doing squats and you wanna hit your quads, one of the things you do is you elevate your heels. I know, and you've brought this up before, evolutionary speaking, that's ideal, like that's where the whole heel thing comes from, right? Sticks your butt out and it creates this illusion but it actually creates muscle recruitment patterns that deactivate- Right, that's what's ironic about it is that you talk about this whole idea that we're naturally attracted to more pronounced glutes but the high heels actually give you that almost like false advertisement. It's not really- It's very official. Yeah, they're not really as pronounced and it ends up kinda shooting you in the foot if you're somebody who walks around in high heels all day long. The glutes are so important in balance. When I was training towards the end of my career I trained a lot of people in advanced age and you see very, very underdeveloped glutes in aging populations and weak. And like Justin said, they start to develop that shrimp posture and if I would strengthen their glutes a little bit, their balance would improve tremendously. Well, isn't that like one of the top injuries is you fall and break your hip in advanced age? I mean, I think that's just a lack of good hip stability and hip stability comes from those muscles that support and keep that stable and if you don't train it, you lose it. You do, so I'd say, okay, so one of the number one reasons that I ran into, and I'd love you guys' feedback for clients who just had issues developing their butt, besides not working out. So these are people who now have done some exercise and they're just like, yeah, it doesn't seem to respond. My butt doesn't seem to respond. I'd say probably the top reason is just they're not really connecting and firing their glutes really well when they're doing certain exercises. That would probably be the number one thing I can think of and what people oftentimes don't realize is that just because you're doing a movement doesn't mean you're really using your target muscles or the muscles you're trying to work to their max capacity, or at least efficiently or effectively, all your body's doing is it's moving in the motion that you're asking it to do. So if your butt is weak, it'll just ask other muscles to do the job. So you could be doing the movement and not really firing the glutes really well. I think too, and I blame some bit of the high rep advertisement that's out there with women especially too, but just getting through the movements and workouts a lot of times people think that they just need to get through the workout to be able to get the growth and the development of the muscle instead of really focusing in on the intent of the exercise. So one thing is to really kind of reduce the amount of reps and add load, but also before all that is to get that kind of connection like you're saying. And so to adjust the hips and to make sure that you're really firing and activating glutes by making sure your hips are in the proper position to be even be able to fire properly is step number one. And then to address those things in your programming is vital. Yeah, I think you're talking about the second most common, right? When you talk about heavy lifting, right? The first one is poor connection, 100%. It's rare that I would get somebody who I didn't have to address posture issues first before being able to develop their glutes. It just, it's just rare. I would say one out of 10 has got great posture already fires the glutes. We can get straight to just good programming and I can develop their glutes. Most people we have to address the connection first. Then the most common in just in my female clients is what- Especially female. Yeah, is what Justin's talking about, which is, you know, especially early on in the career. I think that's changing. I think CrossFit, we've talked about this before. I think they're a big part of that movement of getting women to lift heavy. But before CrossFit, when we were all still young trainers, man, it was, I'd get a female client that wanted to develop their glutes and they'd never seen anything less than 15 reps before. Everything was 15, 20, 30, super setting, low rest periods, jazzercise classes, body pump classes, circuit training. Like no one was doing deadlift squats, good mornings, hip thrust for five reps that was just unheard of for like any female client. I think it's just like that led into a lot of the problem of the poor connection that I saw with clients coming in because they were doing a lot of the work but they just weren't feeling their glutes being involved. So yeah, it is like, it's important for you to understand like how to actually place and roll your hips into a good position to even get that kind of activation first but the majority of the problem I've seen is because of just all these reps based off momentum and not the intent. Yeah, you know when it really dawned on me, this was, I don't know, maybe six years into my career. And I kept noticing with brand new clients when I would have them do an overhead press, a lot of people have trouble with full extension. So they'll come up and then it's hard for them to really straighten their arm out so they can get this nice tall overhead press. And so I tell people, straighten your arms up, you know, tall or get the weight up there and then they'd get stuck here and they'd come up on their toes. They'd go up on their toes. And I remember thinking, what the hell does your calves have to do with extending your arms? Like I'm telling you to extend your arms and then it dawned on me. Their body understands get the weight higher because that's what you're telling your arms. Essentially what you're thinking is I got to get the weight higher my trainer, Sal, told me to. So your body thinks these muscles up here aren't doing it, come up on your toes. That's what happens when you have a poor connection to your glutes. You go to do a squat or a hip thrust or a lunge and your glutes aren't really strong. Well, that's all right. We got the hamstrings and quads and they'll take over. And so if you don't teach your body to connect well then you can't fire the glutes really well and it's hard to develop them. And then back to what you guys are talking about with heavy weight. Like, and when I say heavy weight what I mean is training in a muscle building rep range. And that's, it's a relatively wide range, right? I would say six, five to six reps up to as high as 20 with high intensity and load. A lot of people, especially women, when they go to workout they follow these online glute workout programs. They're doing 50 reps, 60 reps. They're doing burn, there's no load and they're feeling the muscle burn and yeah, they feel their glutes but there's no muscle building going on because they're afraid of loading. So you gotta train heavy too. I think a lot of that too is just a marketing strategy. Because if you're training someone who's a beginner client who doesn't necessarily know about programming getting them to feel it is like a big deal, right? So if I write a program for someone who doesn't know any better and I write, you know, glute kickbacks and fire hydrants and, you know, floor bridges body weight floor bridges like in these, you know, frog pumpers and like I got all these like kind of, you know, I have their place, yeah, right. They have value and if I get someone to do it then I have, let's say that's program one, okay? And then I write a program that is good mornings, deadlift, squat lift, squatting. Those are like the main exercises. The one problem that I know that and this is, let's say this is a virtual program the program that's got all these bullshit little exercises in there the client's going to feel that. They're gonna feel it in their butt because it's easy when you're doing these little glute kickbacks and stuff because they're small isolation exercises that help target that. And they're gonna feel, oh, I feel the burn in my butt. Then they're not familiar with good mornings they're not familiar with deadlifts they're not familiar with squats and they have all the posture issues that we were talking about. Although this program will build way more of an ass than this program the client who has no experience does this one and doesn't feel anything in their butt because it's not fire part. So then they just right away discount that as oh, that's not a good program. This is a good program because I feel it in my ass all the time. But the truth is this is the more superior program as far as what is going to build their butt but because they don't feel it. So that's part of the hurdle for good coaches and trainers to get over is that you've got people that have tried these little pumping type exercises and it's easy for them. They can have pretty bad form and still feel it in their glutes. So they think that that's a better program for building their butt when in reality if we can get them to train their glutes properly and fire them properly this program is far more superior in doing that. I think that's part of the hurdle. Yeah and you know, here's a thing too with those other those exercises that you mentioned the little pumping ones or whatever they have value and a lot of the value of those is being able to add frequency to your training. They shouldn't be the core of your workouts but they're great for adding frequency which is the other big issue which is people aren't training with the optimal amount of frequency to build their butt. You probably wanna hit your butt with good lifts, you know, two or three days a week. Then on the other days in between especially if your butt is a focus for you then you throw in the exercises that you just talked about. Your frog, pumpers, your body weight, hip thrusts, your, you know, fire hydrants and, you know, kickbacks those are great exercises to add volume and not too much damage but what they do is they maintain this really loud muscle building signal and then you see especially, this is especially for people who see development in other parts of their body but the glutes seem to be lagging. Like this is one way to really get the glutes to catch up is to increase the frequency but you can't just do heavy lifts every single day. You can't be back barbell squatting three times a week. You could but the likely of you hood of overtraining depth that way is more likely. Yeah, no, but that reinforces that it's a priority and the body responds accordingly and so to be able to do that properly and have that kind of load of moderate intensity in between it just keeps that signal alive. It keeps that a priority for your body to build and develop that area. So, you know, that's something to definitely want to focus on if this is your goal is to build, you know, substantial glutes. I mean, I see two applications there, right? I see them as great exercises for frequency builders like you're talking about and then also great for priming, right? So, they're great if I- Yeah, you'll find all those in like trigger sessions with our program maps and a bullet focus sessions with maps aesthetic. You'll find those exercises but they have to be used- Yeah, we'd put them in the butt builder guide for that exact reason. The idea is that, okay, I'm helping this person get that connection, that mind muscle connection to the glutes by doing these very basic easy exercises to fire the glutes so that when I go over and do the exercise that really build the glutes, they will fire properly. That's kind of the idea behind that. But what you see most common in the gym is you see people doing those exercises all the time and neglecting the big barbell movements that are really gonna move the needle in your pursuit of building your glutes. You're so right. I would say this was more true in the past than it is now but still pretty true. And that is that people are just emphasizing the wrong exercises when they wanna build a butt. Like barbell squats, and this was very true when I was a trainer years ago. Barbell squats are as one of the best butt building exercises you could do. And yet, when people would go to build their butt, you wouldn't see barbell squats. In fact, I mean, geez, when I first became a trainer, nobody did barbell squats. Like deadlifts. Deadlifts are an incredible butt building exercise. You rarely would see anybody doing deadlifts or deadlift variations to build their butt. So it's a wrong emphasis on the wrong exercises. And just like it's true for building your chest or your shoulders or your back, the compound lifts with good load is what's gonna give you the best results. I mean, I remember specifically one client. I had this woman that I trained who she wanted, like her goal was to get a nice, in her words, bikini looking tight body, right? And she showed me her routine. She was advanced in the sense that she'd been working out for a long time. And I looked at her workout and I said, why, I saw no barbell squats and no deadlifts. And I'm like, well, why don't you barbell squat? And they're like, well, I don't wanna get big. I'm not trying to get huge. I'm like, well, you're not gonna get big or huge, but you wanna build your butt. These are some exercises you should probably do. So literally, this is, I mean, no joke. And luckily I can be very convincing because I had to sell her on this. I cut out 80% of her exercises and we got really good at deadlifting and squatting. And her butt grew like she'd never developed it before. She had this, and she's like, oh my God, my butt is so round. I can't believe these two exercises are so much better than those other 15 ones that I was doing before. And it's like, yeah, you know, exercises are not all created equal. Some are way better for correctional purposes. Some are way better for balance and function. And some just build muscle. And they build muscle very, very well. And you know, like a barbell squat, for example, it is at the top of lower body, just in general, building exercises. And you see a bit of hesitancy here, mainly because I mean, it does require good technique. It requires you to understand, you know, how to hold your body throughout this movement. And so there's a bit of an education there, but it's so worth it. It's so worth it to go through that process, you know, hire a coach or, you know, really like study through some videos and master the form of it because, you know, your body's gonna be able to generate a lot more force throughout this exercise, which in turn, you know, your glutes are gonna get a lot more of that demand, which it's not gonna get from these little tiny exercises. Well, I think it goes back to the feeling thing. I think that's the main problem here. I think that clients feel these little isolation exercises. And so then they, that just makes you think, think about it, if you didn't have your knowledge that you have an experience that you have, and you did something, and you really felt one exercise in the area you wanna develop, and then another exercise you do, you don't feel it as much. Well, what would you think, as a non-experienced, non-trainer, what would you say? And I ask you, I quiz you, which one of these exercises does your butt more? You would say the isolation, the kickback. Here's an example I used to give to people when we'd have this discussion. Sometimes people would debate me and I'd say, okay, because it's funny, when you talk about other muscles, everybody understands. Yeah, right, use the quads, use the quads. You have leg extensions, you feel leg extensions like crazy in your quads. You're not gonna do anything to your quads like a squat would. Yeah, like a Bulgarian split stance or like a traditional squat. Here's the example I used to give, I would tell people, okay, what's one of the best exercises to develop good, strong shoulders? They'd be like, oh, a standing overhead press or a military press. I'd say, awesome. So, what are you gonna feel more of a burn? Five sets of five reps with an overhead press, or if I take your arms and extend them out to your sides and you do shoulder circles for three minutes straight, you know? The shoulder, you're gonna burn that shit out of your shoulders. But you're not gonna develop, you know, any muscle really doing it that way. So, but is there value in those movements in learning how to feel the muscle so that when you do the big lifts, you can do them right? Absolutely. You know, back to what Justin was saying about your technique and form, this is why we talk so much about practicing exercises versus just training for fatigue. Your technique and skill really determines how much you get out of the exercise. So, to use another example, so if we stick with, for example, a barbell squat the goal of the squat in this particular context is to develop the butt. So, we do squats because we wanna develop the butt. All right, let's use another example, right? My goal with throwing is to get the baseball to go as far as possible. A big part of what determines how far the baseball goes is definitely how much power I generate, but there's also my technique. Like a bodybuilder is way more powerful than a baseball player, but the baseball player will throw far further, right? Why is that? They know how to express the movement much more and generate more force to get the ball to move faster through their technique. If you squat or do any other exercise with really good technique and skill, you're gonna essentially throw the ball further. You're gonna get more out of that particular lift. So, it's very important that you do the following exercises and I say following, because I think we should list some of the best butt building exercises that you should do. And these exercises should be in your routine in one way, shape or another if your goal is to develop your butt. So, let's start with some of the ones that we know to be some of the most effective. I think one of the more obvious ones, which you hear a lot of people talking about nowadays, is the barbell hip thrust. This is, this could be labeled as a compound lift, although the knee joint doesn't have a lot of activation. It's the compound lift. You could go pretty heavy on it and it does focus on the butt and it does build the butt. So, hip thrust should be in your routine if you're trying to build round butt. I think this one is king in this area because it is a compound lift that almost acts like an isolation exercise. Yeah, good point. It's maybe the- That's a very rare combination. Right, yeah, a compound lift that actually moves like an isolation exercise. So, I mean, everything is pretty stable and the weight is directly opposing gravity with the glutes. And it's easy for even somebody who doesn't have a great connection, glutes to fill it in their glutes. That's why I think this has got to be in the routine and it's probably- It's basically the bench press for glutes. Yeah, right. No, it really is. And I think it should be in every program if you're doing that. And it's one of the best ways, one, to load really well, safely without somebody getting hurt who doesn't have really good technique yet in barbell squatting or deadlifting. That's a thank you. I'm so glad you said that because there's always this debate, what's better to build the butt, barbell squats or hip thrusts? I think if you have a poor connection, hip thrusts are extremely valuable. Once you get a good connection though, and you can get the glutes to fire and you've got good technique, barbell squats are hard to beat. They're hard to beat, especially a good full squat. And studies will show this by the way. Hey, if you do a half squat, it's mostly quad. But if you're doing a good full squat, you've got good stability, mobility. You're gonna activate your glutes a lot, especially at the bottom of the squat. And a barbell squat is very functional. The carryover from barbell squats into any other lift or real life or performance or balance or stability or health is just tremendous. And remember, we talked about why we like looking at the glutes so much. There's the evolutionary aspect of it that it's functional, right? Barbell squats are very functional. So when you can do barbell squats right and you do them and you're good at them, you're not gonna have a part of your lower body that's really not well developed. And that includes the prime hip movers, which are the glutes. Well, and to that point of getting proper depth, like a lot of times you see with, as you age, like you lose certain ranges of motion and this is where all the problems start to arise. And so to be able to keep ahead of that and stay strong with depth, with your hips down that position will help tremendously going forward in terms of the longevity of, you know, the health of your joints and the strength to support your body from the lower half. I also think that squats are better because there's a little bit more emphasis on the eccentric portion of the exercise. There is. If you watch somebody do a hip thrust, it's mainly just the thrusting portion. You rarely ever see someone hip thrust and really focus on the weight. It's a short range of motion. Yeah, it's a short range of motion. It's primarily focused on the concentric portion of the exercise. Most people thrust up at the top, squeeze and then let it drop down. Thrust up, squeeze, let it drop down. And we know that one of the best portions of an exercise for building is the eccentric portion. And so I think squats do that. And then I also think that the stability component, even though it's bilateral, I still think that the stability component in squatting is much greater than in a hip thrust. It's a longer range of motion at the bottom of the squat. The hips have to stabilize. The glute meat is one of the main muscles that's responsible for stabilizing hips, which gives you that kind of, you know, heart-shaped butt that everybody wants. I think you get more of that with the squat. And so even though I know Brett Contreras has done some really good studies and research to show that there's more glute activation in a hip thrust, but there's other components that it's not just about, you know, an e-stem activation. There's also more going on when you do a barbell squat versus a hip thrust. Yeah, I mean, hip thrust. So it's gotta be up there. Yeah, hip thrust are up there, but barbell squats give you more than just developing your glute. So they have to be in your routine if you want well-developed glutes and a lower body that communicates well and good stability all the way around. But yeah, you talk about range of motion. Compare the range of motion of a hip thrust to the range of motion of a full squat. I mean, a full squat is one of the biggest, I'd say, I'm thinking what exercise would have a larger range of motion than a squat? For the glutes? For any part of the body. I think it's one of the largest range of motion exercises, right? It involves the knee joint, the hip joint. You're going all the way down, all the way up, especially with a full squat. That's a very, very long range of motion type exercise. It's probably one of the reasons why it's so functional and why when you do them right, it's so important for overall lower body and lower back up. And that's why it can't be discounted, because again, I know that there's been a lot of stuff. And Brett Contreras has definitely been like the leader in this, right? Because he's the one that really brought the hip thrust to the forefront for people. And 100% thinks that I think it's king and it's one of the best exercises you can do. Because I think, again, for the simplicity of it, right? You could take somebody who's a pretty new lifter and get them to start loading a barbell thrust a lot sooner than you can get a client who's new to probably load a barbell back squat really well. But all things equal, if you have advanced lifters who can squat really well, obviously know how to hip thrust really well. I think that in that case, that's where I would say that the squat becomes superior to the hip thrust. But it's a very close call when you're, and they both belong in the routine. The next exercise would be a deadlift. And it could be a conventional deadlift. It could be deadlifts in their variations. Like my favorite would be the Romanian deadlift where the knees are bent but fixed. And so it's all hip. And what's interesting by the way of a Romanian deadlift, technically it's an isolation movement or a single joint exercise, you would say, right? Because the knees are supposed to stay locked. But it definitely performs like a compound lift. You can get really strong and develop tremendous hamstrings and glutes from doing that exercise. But even a conventional deadlift, like if you do a good conventional deadlift, the prime movers are the hips. Now, we typically refer to the deadlift as a back exercise and I still think it's an excellent back exercise. But the prime movers, biomechanically speaking, are the hips. That's what's getting the weight to come up. And it's the butt, it's the glutes. This exercise, especially in the beginning of my career when hip thrusts were nowhere near popular, it was deadlifts. Deadlifts was like my prime way of getting people's butts to build. And it was super effective. You know, sumo style, conventional style. Just a great exercise, also extremely functional. I mean, if you get deadlift well with good form and technique and stability and you get strong, you're getting close to developing a low back that is bulletproof in everyday life. I mean, you could deadlift your body weight or more with good form and stability. You're gonna feel like your low back is impervious. And I wanna be careful when I say that, of course, there's always risk of injury. But I mean, I fixed more backs with good deadlifts than almost anything else. Sumo deadlifts, like one of my favorite exercises to teach for this. One, in the sumo stance, it puts you a little bit more in the squatted position. So you naturally get a little more glute than hamstring activation, I think than you would on a conventional deadlift. So I like that. Plus, because your feet are externally rotated, it turns that glute meat on, right? So- But you gotta push out, right? Remember that. And I just think that the glute meat is one of those muscles that is just underdeveloped on most people. We just don't do a lot of hip stability work and that muscle, if you train it, it'll definitely make the shape of your butt way more round or pronounced. And I think that the sumo deadlift, especially if you're somebody who conventional deadlifts all the time, if that's the main way you deadlift, if you ever deadlift is conventional and you don't do sumo a lot, what a great exercise to do for building the butt for somebody. Yeah, and there's contention, of course with academics about all this kind of stuff, but it's really like, when we're talking about compound lifts, the value of them, we can load them some substantially and it's gonna affect so many muscles in your posterior chain. So all the way up. And to be able to put more demand on those muscles is how we're gonna actually achieve the growth. And so to be able to incorporate lifts like this, even though it's not in isolation, you're not gonna feel this specifically all the time, just in the glutes, you're gonna feel this all over your backside, so much value there in combination with these other ones we're mentioning. By the way, too, this is what, we didn't list this on any of our stuff, but this is, and we should address this because I know somebody's gonna be thinking about it. One of the most popular things you've seen in the gym in the last decade is the banded knees in all these exercises. Yeah, I would have trained. And that's to the point that I'm talking about about the external rotation in the feet, right? And the kind of pushing the, so my feet are externally rotated and what obviously when you do a sumo deadlift, what you're trying to keep from happening is the knees collapsing in. Yes, you have to push out. So intrinsically, I have to push out. The band just gives you that feedback. And it's developing the muscle that I was talking about that is so underdeveloped on so many people. So that's why so many, you see so many people doing it because it's worked for them and they don't necessarily realize what they're doing, but that's exactly what's happening. And I would intrinsically teach a client to do that versus having to use it. You can do it without the band. Well, I mean, let's be honest, the band in position that you hold really isn't building much muscle. What's building the muscle is the fact that you now have feedback and you know how to intrinsically activate certain muscles. So, and this, we understood this as trainers. I would do, look, I'll give you an example. I had a client once who, I don't remember what sport it was that he played, but he developed this really bad imbalance between his right and left side. And when we would squat, if we squat with any load, his left knee would start to travel in a little bit. And so what I did is I attached a band to his left knee and anchored it on the squat rack. So we had to push out as we squatted. Now, why did I do that? Band distraction. Yeah, it's just, I'm getting him to feel something pushing in so he knows to push out. Now, can I do that without a band? Absolutely. I would just tell him, push out. But sometimes people need that outside, you know, feedback. And we would do this with trainers with our hands, here, push against my hand or squeeze right here where I'm touching. And this will help people. They're educational tools. Yeah, so when you're doing a sumo deadlift, you don't just get in the position and lift. In fact, if you talk, by the way, if you listen to power lifters on how to sumo deadlift properly, what do they always say? Spread the floor with your feet and your knees, right? They're really saying is push out, activate those side butt muscles, which make you more stable and stronger. And that's when the sumo deadlift becomes an incredible butt building exercise. And by the way, the band around the knees is a great tool. But if you're somebody who does that all the time, the idea of that is to teach you to do that intrinsically yourself. Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, I got nothing wrong with someone using that as a tool, but it's become so popular that you see people doing it all the time, nonstop, and all their leg exercises. Because again, they feel it, right? They're pushing out on a band and squatting. All of a sudden they feel the side butt light up like they never had before. And they attribute that, oh, it must be the band that's doing that. Well, no, that's you forcing your knees out. Now that you grasp that and you understand that, you can feel that connection. Now you can do it without the band. So now get rid of the training wheels and actually get rid of the band and try and do that intrinsically. By the way, we said deadlifts. You can throw in there. Good mornings too. Yeah, good mornings or any kind of hip hinge exercise. A good morning is essentially the same movement as like a Romanian deadlift. The difference is the weight is on your upper back rather than in front of you with your hands. If you have really good core stability and technique, good mornings you could load and you could go hard and strong and really develop the glutes. This was an exercise back in the day that bodybuilders used to compete over was actually good mornings. Who could lift the most? Now you better have excellent technique when you do this just like with any exercise, but I would put that up there. I would put that up there with the deadlift. No, it's gotta go here because here's, like I actually have a client right now that I help and she's 56 years old and one of the things that she has, she has a job where she's on the computer at times so we're constantly dealing with wrist stuff. So her wrist and grip are always giving out so she could load the barbell way more on a good morning than she can on a deadlift where she has to grip the bar and hold up. So there's definitely places where you're gonna have and that's actually, I've had a lot of clients where the grip was the limiting factor for them to load the bar. And so you could either one use wrist wraps in that situation or I can do a different exercise like a good morning where I could load it and she doesn't have to hold onto the bar. Her back and core are supporting it. Next, I would put a split stance type lifts like lunges and Bulgarian split stance squats. Here's one of the reasons why I love lunges so much. Getting a person to do a full squat can be really challenging sometimes. Getting them to do a lunge where they go down to where if you look at the front leg on a lunge, it's essentially doing a squat. You get them to do a full range of motion lunge. It's as if that front leg is doing a relatively full range of motion squat at least parallel or maybe even a little below parallel especially if you elevate that front leg a little bit. So it's easier to get that full range of motion at least in that hip area. And so I think it just activates it really well. Yeah, and I think too to somewhat of your point of like the eccentric I think the added component here is stability. And so to be able to split your stance in general I think people kind of go through the motions throughout the day and sort of find their way back to balanced set where their feet are kind of like in the same position but to be able to spend more time in that split stance requires a lot of balance. And so now to add on top of that, that component where we're squatting our way down and still being able to stabilize left to right requires a little bit more intensity which then stimulates the muscle in a completely different way which has massive value for the glutes. Well, Sal just glazed over something that I think we have to go back over because this was something I used a lot for this client in particular and that is a lunge that is elevated. One of the number one limiting factors for clients that are trying to get deep squats is their ankle mobility. So many times I am constantly working on that just to get them to even break parallel. We talked about the benefits of deep squats for the glute as far as full range of motion. If I have a client who has a hard time getting deep squats with good form this is a great way to supplement this is to do a lunge that's elevated because it's like a single leg. Yeah, so I would put like a, I mean literally you could put like a 45 pound plate on the ground. Yeah, or stack a couple of them. I'd stack two or three of them and they lunge onto that plate. And you'll see if you stop at the very bottom it's like a very... A below parallel squat. Yeah, it's a below parallel squat. And then they can actually step back so their knee doesn't have to travel as far over their toes, which is the ankle mobility piece that's limiting. So it's a great way to get that deep squat position if you have a client that has poor ankle mobility. Yeah, so like walking lunges, back step lunges, Bulgarian split stance squats, all these variations are excellent for developing the butt. That split stance movement. And by the way, this is extremely functional. Our legs operate very, or at least they should operate in a way to where one leg is behind stabilizing, the other leg is kind of pushing forward. This is what happens when you walk and you run is you have kind of this contralateral thing going on. And if you never do split stance exercises, you're missing out. And I'll never forget seeing one of my good friends who's a very, very competitive power lifter who did squat at all the time and could squat record weight, do back step lunges and never really had him in his routine. I remember watching him do the back step lunges and I'm like, okay, here's a guy who's squat 700 pounds and he's having trouble with 135 pounds because he never trains that split stance, you know, kind of movement or technique. So it's really important that you incorporate this as well. Now the last one is important because as we said at the beginning of the episode, the glutes are very, very active in balance. They really are. Stand on one leg and balance. And what you'll find besides your ankle getting tired is you'll start to notice your butt starts to kind of fatigue and what the hell is going on? It's your hip is a joint that moves in all kinds of different directions. It rotates and it goes out to the side, the front, the back, and so it's your butt that holds everything steady and together along with the hip flexors. But mainly it's the glue that keeps you stable. So single leg toe touches, single leg deadlifts, like those single leg exercises, your butt will fire like crazy. I mean, you know, it's actually, I can't even think of a single person I've ever trained who didn't tell me when I did a single leg toe touch. Even people who said their butts don't fire, let's do this movement and balance with no weight. And I can't think of a single person that didn't say, oh my God, I can feel that in my butt. No, it's one of my favorite exercises also to teach. And it's also kind of the beginning, right? So this is, if you get somebody to single leg deadlift really, really well, even just with their body weight, right? Being able to balance and stabilize without having to put their foot on the ground every single rep. If they can actually do five to eight reps without having to touch with the other foot and they've got that stability down the wall, they're really ready for a lot of these other movements because that's a challenging movement to do just to even body weight much less loaded. And if you can get to the point where you're loading that because of the stability component, you'll see your develops like grow fast. Yeah, I think that I love single leg toe touch exercises on trigger sessions. And I also like them on focus sessions, but trigger sessions are my favorite because it's not a loaded exercise, right? It's just body weight. It's not super intense, so it's not gonna like hammer my body. But let's say, for example, MAPs on a ball will have you working out with heavy foundational workouts two to three days a week. So it depends on your level of fitness. You could pick two to three days a week. Then on the days in between, you do these trigger sessions. They're lighter, shorter workouts. You typically do two or three of them in a day. They last about eight minutes. You do toe touches on those trigger sessions. Watch what happens to your butt. Like it just, it grows and it develops, especially when you combine it with those heavy workouts. Yeah, I always thought it was just a good idea in between especially like really trying to build and develop with these bilateral barbell loaded type exercises to be able also to check and see where the compensations are and the discrepancies are left to right. And so this is one of those exercises that will really highlight any kind of instability in the hip, anything there that we can strengthen both sides equally if we put more emphasis on both independently. Yeah, well, when we built the Butt Builder program, literally this was the logic behind that, right? A lot of the program for anabolic and aesthetic, that part of it, the foundational stuff is what everyone's familiar with, but the Butt Builder part of it is all these focus and trigger sessions addressing all the exercises that we're talking about. And that was the science behind what we're doing. Yeah, totally. Okay, so here's the deal, right? So we just gave you basically the answers to what you can do to most effectively get your glutes to grow, develop, become stronger, improve your performance. But a lot of times people want it written out. They want the programming, they want the reps, the sets, they want the exercise demos to learn how to do them properly. We talked about technique. So what we did a while ago is we put together a build your Butt Bundle, which includes maps and a ball, maps aesthetic, two of our most popular muscle building programs, along with the kettlebell for aesthetics program, which is always included in that bundle. So there's some alternative kettlebell type exercises. And then in there, what we did is we put specific trigger sessions and specific focus sessions for people who wanna build their butt. It's called the build your Butt Bundle. And because we're doing this episode, what we've done is we've taken that bundle, which is already discounted. So normally what we do is we have that bundle, and I think it discounts both programs, something like 30% off or something like that. What we did because of this episode is we took an additional 50% off. So it's something like 70 or 80% off, the normal price of all those programs. So this is, if you're interested in doing this, what you do is you go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, you find the build your Butt Bundle, and then you use the code BUT50. So B-U-T-T-5-0. So B-U-T-T-5-0 with no space, and this particular promotion will expire Halloween. So October 31st is the last day for this particular promotion. Also, if you wanna get more free information from us, head over to mindpumpfree.com. We have lots of free guides there that can help you with lots of your fitness goals. And then if you wanna find us on social media, you can find us on Instagram. So Justin's at Mind Pump, Justin. I'm at Mind Pump Salon. Adam is at Mind Pump, Adam.