Why You Should Work on Your Glutes
Your glutes can make a significant impact on your entire body’s overall strength. They work to support your core and allow for increased mobility with other exercises. Having weak glute muscles can contribute to back pain, damaging posture and affect your balance.
Best Glute Exercises With a Resistance Band
Hip Bridge Pulse
This is a classic exercise to work your glutes, as well as your hamstrings. Your core has to work to keep you stable so as an added bonus, your abs get a good run too. By using a resistance band as an extra to this exercise, you can increase the difficulty and therefore see even better results.
How to perform a hip bridge pulse:
- Lay flat on your back, place your hands by your side and bend your knees, making sure to keep your feet flat on the floor and shoulder-width apart.
- Place your resistance band just above your knees.
- Lift your core a few inches off the ground, squeezing your glutes as you do this, and walk your feet together.
- In this position, keep your feet together and push your knees away from each other.
- Return your knees back together for 1 rep and repeat, without lowering your hips back to the floor.
Try starting with 15-20 reps to complete a set.
Rainbow Kick
This exercise really focuses on your glute muscles, making it an excellent butt workout.
How to complete this exercise:
- To begin, position yourself on all-fours, with your wrists shoulder width apart, and your knees in line with your hips.
- Place your resistance band around your left foot and hold one end of the resistance band in each hand.
- Extend your left food so it’s straight behind you and your toes are touching the floor.
- In an arched motion, lift your left foot towards the right and tap the floor, lift again from there and reverse your arch so your toes tap the floor where you started the first arch.
Each time you tap the floor, that’s a rep. Complete 10-15 reps on each leg and remember that the height of your arch isn’t that important, just focus on squeezing your glutes and hamstring in order to lift your foot off the ground to complete the arch.
Glute Bridge
The glute bridge is a simple but highly effective glute workout. Don’t let its simplicity fool you, you’ll definitely feel the burn of this exercise after a few reps.
To do a glute bridge:
- To start the exercise, lay on your back with your knees bent at hip width apart and place your hands flat by your side. Place your band just above your knees (Your lower back should be pressed against the floor).
- Lift your hips up off the ground until they are in line with your knees and squeeze your glutes once there.
- Hold this position for a second or two, before lowering your hips back to your starting position.
Complete 15-20 reps of this exercise to work your glutes well.
Donkey Kick
The donkey kick is another simple but very effective exercise for building and maintaining strong glute muscles. They target your glutes specifically in a way that many other exercises fail to do.
How to perform a donkey kick:
- Get into an all-fours position on the floor. Keep your knees in line with your hips and your wrists in line with your shoulders.
- Your resistance band should go around your thighs, just above your knees.
- Kick your right foot up towards the ceiling, focusing on engaging your glutes.
- Return your knee and foot back down to our starting position to complete 1 rep.
- Do all your reps on one leg, then move to your other leg.
Complete 15-20 reps on each leg. When doing this exercise, try to keep your leg in line with your hip as you kick up in order to avoid opening your hip too wide.
Fire Hydrant
The fire hydrant is similar to the donkey kick exercise. This not only focuses your glutes, but works to open your hips at the same time.
To complete the fire hydrant exercise:
- Get yourself into an all-fours position with your wrists in line with your shoulders and your knees in line with your hips.
- Put your resistance band around your thighs, just above your knees.
- Using the core to keep your body stable, lift your right knee out to the side.
- Return your knee back to the starting position to complete 1 rep.
- Complete all your reps on one leg, then switch to the other leg.
Perform 15-20 reps of the fire hydrant exercise on each leg.
How the Resistance Band Benefits Your Glutes
The resistance band intensifies all these simple exercises to make them even more effective at building muscle and toning your butt. If you’re brand new to regular workouts, using a resistance band is a great way to get started and get you noticing some amazing results pretty quickly.
If you’ve been doing these exercises for some time, you may have hit a wall seeing results, adding a resistance band to these exercises will give your body that extra push so you can begin seeing the results you work so hard for.