Optimal Glute Training..
Building your glutes isn’t as simple as just training hard & hoping for the best! But rather, putting all the pieces together in the right order to create the outcome you desire.
There are 4 key ingredients when it comes to growing your glutes..
Volume:
The total amount of training per week, commonly prescribed as total sets per muscle group per week. Volume has a dose/response relationship depending on your experience levels, recoverability, exercise selection & ability to recruit the right muscles. Volume is a key driver of muscle growth when implemented correctly based on the above factors. It's important to identify your own individual needs & then re-assess on a regular basis to ensure you are optimising your training.
Frequency:
Refers to the amount of times individual muscle groups are trained each week. Frequency & volume are inter-dependant as any changes in training frequency can have a direct impact on overall training volume. It's been demonstrated that there is a per session volume threshold & once this is reached we can simple increase training frequency to allow more volume to be accumulated throughout the week.
Intensity:
How hard a given muscle group is trained each session. Usually prescribed as RPE (rate of perceived exertion) or RIR (reps in reserve). Effective training needs to be within a certain proximity to failure to stimulate growth. This doesn't mean that you need to train until failure all the time, but rather, most of your training being in the 1-2 RIR range.
Exercise selection:
The role of exercise selection is critical to ensure that when all the above factors are met we are giving adequate stimulus to the right muscles. There are 3 divisions of the glutes: max, med & min. These all require different exercise selection and set up to achieve balanced development. To take this one step further, each division also has different ranges you can work within and the exercises you choose need to tick all the boxes. There are distinct exercise variations that achieve different ranges for the glutes: squat variations, lunge variations, hip hinge variations, hip thrust variations.
Here’s an example of an ideal training split:
DAY 1 - Deadlift variation | 6-10 rep range
DAY 2 - Squat variation | 10-15 rep range
DAY 3 - Hip thrust variation | 15-30 rep range