What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com.
Take a look at this picture for me and tell me, do you look like either one of these people?
If you do, well, we've got our work cut out for us. But guess what? You're in a good place
because I've got a 22-day plan that's going to kick start you and get you on the right path to
having a better backside, stronger looking glutes. And coming from a realm of athletics I will tell
you this, it is important, not just important, critical that an athlete has a well-developed
set of glutes because of the powerhouse, the engine that drives high level performance.
Well, ask not what I can do for you, ask what you can do for yourself-- Actually, we're going
to do this together because I'm going to go step by step plan, as I said, every single
day for 22 days exactly what you have to do, removing all the guesswork so you
can get this done and get it right. You ready? Let's start breaking down
what are you going to do day by day.
All right, so in all fairness, I think we should
start with two important caveats just to make sure we have all of our bases covered. If you
look in the mirror and this is what you see, then you're really actually need to add an
extra zero or two to the 22 days in order to get this looking right. Because what you have
here is a body fat accumulation issue that is based in poor nutrition at its roots. There's
no way around it guys, you're going to have to figure out a way to eat much better than you
are right now to drop your body fat levels down, to even see what you're working with.
And of course, while you're doing that, you can always be training, but that
brings us to our second caveat, and that is if you're attempting to build up your glutes right
now, but you are not squatting and lifting and they're not part of your training at all, I would
recommend you start there, give it a fair shot. Some people still can't do it even after doing
that and this is going to be perfect for you.
Or if you're just looking for something to
change it up, this is going to be exactly what you wanted. But I would say if you're looking
for a plan where we incorporate squats, deadlifts, I have a free Push, Pull Legs that I just
put up here. You can find it by clicking this link up here or by clicking this link at
the end of the video. With that being said, let's start breaking down the plan now for
those are looking for above and beyond.
All right, so with all of our 22-day plans, we
start with a schedule. I'm going to make this really, really simple for you to follow, we've got
day one through day 22 and both day one and day 22 were new simple test. It's just the mirror test.
You're going to take a look at what you're looking like right now and make your own assessment. Do
you like what you see? Is it sagging? Is it flat? Does it look a little bit, I don't know, dumpy
from behind? Or maybe you have a confidant or a friend of yours will be willing to take a picture
and give you some feedback. Whatever it is, just make sure you don't let those leak out.
At the end here, though, we're going to look for improvement. On day 22 come back and compare. And
we're going to do here is we're going to build up that backside of yours is going to improve the
glutes by following a training plan that includes a lot of strength training, because we know
that if we can build the glutes up, we can do a better job of improving their appearance. And
we're going to hit them in two different ways. In a glute focused day and a hamstring
focused glute day. You might be thinking, why are we focusing on hamstrings? Because
the secondary function of the hamstrings is to extend the hip, which is going to impact the
glutes directly. And thinking that the hamstrings job is simply to bend the knee is actually
a flaw. I'll cover it in a different video, but in function, the hamstring is actually just
succumb to gravity to bend the knee. We want to focus on what they do in terms of working with the
glutes to really drive better looking glutes.
So, we're going to break it down in those two
training days and we're going to simply alternate them throughout the training days, on every
even day. So, on days two and four, you're going to have your first of two glute focused and
hamstring focused strength training workouts. And days six and eight you're going to come in
with the second version of the glute focused and hamstring focused workouts. From there,
you're going to simply continue to alternate these all the way down until you've exhausted the
remaining even days in our 22-day calendar.
Now, what do you do in the days in between? Either
you take a day off, which I'm going to recommend if you're feeling fatigued, or you add in the
corrective work, the all-important corrective work. See, I mentioned before that people that
just do squats and dead lifts sometimes don't get the results that they're looking for. A lot
of times it has to do with simply training in one point of motion, the sagittal plane. This is
not going to cut it when you want maximum glute development. You have to involve the other
planes that the glutes prefer to work in, which is the transverse and the frontal plane.
So, on these days, we're going to focus on the smaller but yet still important muscles of the
hip and glutes that are going to help to drive the overall appearance and performance. We're going
to simply alternate two versions of our corrective exercises on days three, five, seven, nine all
the way until we've reached our last empty spot. And remember, if at any time you're feeling
a little bit extra fatigue, you can simply utilize one of these days as an off day.
So, in terms of commitments and what I expect of you, very little in the way of equipment.
Some dumbbells, something to step up, arm your own body weight in a barbell ideally, or you
can simply swap those out for dumbbells as well. In terms of time commitment, no more than 20
minutes is what is going to take to get the job done here on any given training day. Now, if
you are training at the same time, you have leg training as part of what you're doing, which you
should, I would set that aside for now and focus on this as your leg training. Your quads are still
going to get worked through some of the exercise selections that we're using to work them alongside
the glues in an indirect way. No stone left unturned here, guys. I've got you covered. Let's
start breaking down the workouts day-by-day.
All right, so let's start with those glute
dominant days, the ones that are scheduled for days two and day six and then repeated
throughout the remainder of the calendar here. We're going to start here with our activation
drills. And this is, again, some of the stuff that people don't do. They go right into glute work
and they have something called "glute amnesia" they don't even have an ability to really connect
with the muscle itself. And I'm sure you could do the test yourself. If you were to stand up right
now and simply try to push one leg back behind you and then push the other one really trying to
contract your clues, it's going to feel different right versus left and almost 99% of you. Because
we don't have a good foundational connection with our glutes in the first place, which will
oftentimes lead to a lack of development.
So, if we start with some activation
drills, we do the following: 30 seconds each of in this case, our Toe Down our Toe Stab
Hip Lif and 30 seconds of our Toe Up Hip Lift. And we're going to do this on each side so
you're looking at two minutes of committed work just to try to engage the glute medius, the
hip adductors, to get those glutes a little bit more alert as to what's coming next. And then
we start with our basic foundation of exercise and here is going to be the Barbell Hip Thrusts.
And when I mentioned the glute driven exercises where you can bend the knees and sort of take the
hamstrings into this flex position, then the glues to the majority of the hip extension work and this
is the best exercise for doing it. It's the first instance where I said you could use a barbell
here ideally, but if you don't have it, you can simply rest a couple of dumbbells on your thighs
and do the same exercise. Three to four sets of 10 to 12 is what we're looking for here.
We move into the second exercise here and this one is done for time. This is called
the Long Leg March. And again, we're really driving hip extension by getting up as high as
we can and trying to keep it there and hold the glutes up high while we lift one leg off the
ground. It becomes challenging, I understand, but it's something we could work into. If you
can't really extend your legs that far out, you can only shorten them a little bit, but
you're doing three sets of one minute apiece. And then we come into that quad exercise I
mentioned before. How do we continue to give some stimulation to the quads while still working
the back side? The Step Up is an amazing exercise to do just that. But we preload it and you preload
it by simply leaning forward a little bit.
As we angle our body forward, we preload
the glutes as they activate to sort of counterbalance and prevent excessive
motion in the forward direction. So, we can feel it right away just by doing that.
And then we perform our step ups from there, two to three sets of 10 on each leg, making sure
to get all the way up, drive the opposite knee through to get through full hip extension.
We move on to the second glute focused to the one that's going to first appear on day
six and here we're just going to make a slight difference. We're going instead go
for activation in the standing position. We're going to do the Toe Up Hip Swing and
the Toe Down Hip Swing. And for each of these, we're getting rotational stability, we're working
the upper leg and the down leg, I cover these in this specific video. I'll think these for the end
here so you can see more the details on what these will provide you. But these will actually
help you to activate those groups and get them awake for what's coming next? And that's
the single leg version of the hip thrust.
So now why are we doing this? Because we want
to expose this right and left and imbalances. Remember, I had to do that test where you tried
to do that hip extension right versus left and you likely felt the difference. Well, here we want
to make sure that we're not hiding anything. So, by demanding that you do this single leg
version of a hip thrust, we will find where those weaknesses are and we're going to
address them head on. Here you're going to go slightly lower on the reps, still three to four
sets this time of eight reps on each leg.
Which brings us to the second exercise, and it's
one of my favorites, it's called the Dumbbell Frog Press. And what you do is you take basically
the weight that you used on the step ups, you combine them and that's what
you get to use in one dumbbell across your hips. And the key here is the
position of the feet and legs in the exercise. You're not keeping your feet flat, instead,
you're leaning on the outside of your foot, externally, rotating your hips and now driving the
movement, not through the glute max, but through the glute medius. And I mentioned those really
important muscles that oftentimes get overlooked, this is what I'm talking about. You want to make
sure you're developing all the muscles of the hip if you want to round out literally the appearance
of your butt. So, we do this once again in three sets, one minute a piece, really trying to
drive the intensity of the contraction and make sure you're feeling it in the right place,
which is more on the outside of your hips.
And we come into our last exercise here from
that quad focused exercise and we're going for the Low Bar Squat. And we know that the position
of the bar on your back will dictate the position of your torso. The lower the bar gets, the more
you're going to have to lean your body forward. And this will actually start to ignite and light
up the backside for the same reason that it did on the Leaning Forward Step Ups. Do three sets of
10 to 12 reps to round out the second workout.
Which brings us now to those hamstring driven
glute focused training days. And here we start with our foundational exercise of the basic RDL.
And we know that this is now hamstring driven because we're getting that good pre-stretch
the hamstrings in every single repetition. But if you focus closely on how this happens, you
really aren't trying to bend your knees very much, you just soften your knees and drive
this primarily through a hip hinge. And through hip Hinge, we get hip extension and hip
extension we get glute development. Once again, driven by that free stretch of the hamstrings, so
slightly shifting the focus, but not the overall impact of what we're trying to achieve. You
do three to four sets of 10 to 12 repetitions and you move on to the next exercise.
And today we're doing something called the Prone Frog Curl. No weights are needed here. You
simply lay on your belly and you start by lifting your thighs up off the ground to ignite and
activate those glutes again into hip extension. And while holding this position, bend your
knees by bringing your feet closer to your butt. You'll start to feel this really, really light
up and tighten up inside that glute medius in the rotators of the hip. I want you to do this
for three sets of one minute apiece, resisting the burn, really trying to make sure that you
don't allow the hips to lower even as you flex the knees and bring the feet closer to your butt.
Drive up through hip extension and maintain that on each and every rep for the entire minute.
Which brings us to the third exercise of the day, the one that's devoted to quads but has
that indirect glute involvement as well, and it's a Lunge. But it's a lunge variation and
it's all about the variation that gets this thing to work the way we want it to. This is called a
Curtsy Lunge. So instead of dropping straight back and loading just the front quad up, we're going
to step back in across, creating an imbalance that will demand that we have control of the hips in
the frontal plain, side to side. We know once we do that, we work on the control of the abductors
of the hip, which wrap around into the glutes, tie in perfectly and help to round out that
development, like I said before. You're going to do two to three sets of 10 repetitions
on each leg here to wrap up this workout.
Which brings us to our fourth and final workout
in our strength base training days and this is the second variation of our hamstring dominant
day. This goes on day eight and then continues to be repeated throughout the rest of the days.
And here we start with the single leg version of the RDL. So, we're still going through that same
pattern, we're still relying on the activation of the hamstrings, which will drive hip extension,
but we're going to do it one leg at a time to one more time expose any imbalances you might have.
We're going to do three to four sets of eight repetitions on each leg before we transition
into maybe one of my favorite exercises of all time, and you could do it with just your
own body weight. It's called the Slick Floor Bridge Curl. And all you have to do is get some
socks and a slick floor, like a hardwood or tile, and you're off and running. You get up into this
good high bridge position and you try to keep it there the entire time. As you allow your feet to
start drifting out and away from you, lengthening at the hamstrings and straightening out the knee.
You do three sets of one minute, once again, don't let those hips drop even for a single second.
Which brings us to our final exercise of the day, and this is the Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat
out of the sprinter position. What are we doing? Again, pre-loading the glutes by not just keeping
our torso upright, but by leaning slightly forward to pre-reactivate the glutes and load them more
favorably than the quads during this exercise. You do two to three sets of 10 on each
leg to round out this workout.
And that leaves us with just our two
corrective workouts on each of those days, guys, just two exercises. The keys to perform
each and every repetition as if it's the only one that you're doing. Remember, you're going for
high quality contractions here to drive the mind muscle connection with the glutes that's missing.
And on the first day here, we have our Reverse Hyper paired up with something called a Hip Drop.
In the Reverse Hyper you simply position yourself on top of a bench and you're going to drive your
legs together and up into good hip extension, focusing on that good glute contraction.
Again, 15 to 20 repetitions, good squeeze and hold at the top, lower down slowly. The Hip Drop,
you're going to focus on one leg at a time. And again, we're working now on that frontal plane,
the abduction of the hip side to side. You stand on that foot outside the wall, you let your hips
get lazy and just relax and drop out. Now you want to do is slide them back towards the wall at the
same time, you're likely going to lift up a little bit, so the hip that's closer to the wall will
rise. But you get a really tight contraction in the leg that's on the ground in the outside of the
hip if you're doing this right. Again, 15 to 20 repetitions, high focus on quality contractions,
not just simply ripping them out.
The second corrective Day has two exercises as
well. The first one is the Internal Rotation Hip Lift. And this is an awkward one because
people are extremely weak into internal rotation of the hip. And the way you do this, as you get
into this position here, you get your back leg at a 90-degree angle. Lean all of your body
weight towards that front leg, and all you're trying to do is lift your hip up off the ground.
Even if you can get it three or four inches, I'm happy many people will find that they can't
lift it at all. If that's you, you need to work on the strength here and you could actually
cheat this a little bit by leaning more and more towards the direction of that forward leg.
Fifteen to 20 repetitions on each leg, really going for this high quality contractions.
And then we go for that last exercise and this is called the Fire Hydrant. You probably seen
this one before, but with a slight tweak to make it even better. You get in this position,
you externally rotate the hip this time as we lift up as if we're peeing on a fire hydrant,
if you're into that sort of thing. And then you kick your leg back into extension with the
leg rotated. You'll feel that tight contraction squeeze once again in your outer glutes if you're
doing this properly. Three sets of 15 to 20 on each leg to round out your training day.
So, there you have it guys, a 22-day game plan for building that butt of yours, to getting
better glute development, for either feeling better performance or simply looking better in
the mirror. Remember, you're going to want to check out those gains in the mirror on day 22 and
there's nothing stopping you from keeping those improvements coming. If you're looking to take it
to the next level guys, we have step by step plans designed to train you like an athlete, which
means a lot of focus on building, high powered, high performing lower bodies. You can find them
all over at athleanx.com. If you found the video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and
thumbs up below. What else do you want to see me cover? I'll do my best to do that for you in
the days ahead. And also, if everyone does so, make sure you click Subscribe and turn on
your notifications, so you never miss the new video when we put one out.
All right guys, no more "ass nots" not after this video. Good luck and
let me know how you do. See you.
