The Best Glutes Hypertrophy Guide You Will Find

The glutes are incredibly important and yet many athletes don’t train them properly. Check out the best glutes hypertrophy guide so that you are not one of those people.

This guide was developed by someone who knows about hypertrophy and getting stronger: Dr. Mike Israetel.

Dr. Mike Israetel, PhD in Sport Physiology and co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, made a video to talk about the best glutes hypertrophy guide. Check it out, or read down below the main points of the video.

Best Glutes Hypertrophy Guide

Dr. Mike Israetel explained in detail the best glutes hypertrophy guide. He divided his talking points into 7 parts:

• Volume
• Intensity
• Exercises
• Frequency
• Periodisation
• Special metabolite

Volume

According to him, if you don’t want to lose strength in your glutes, you don’t need to focus on training this muscle group. That is because typical leg exercises such as leg presses, squats, deadlifts and some of its variations, will already work on your glutes.

The maximal recoverable volume is 16 sets per week. The maximum adaptive volume is 4-12 sets per week.

* maximum recoverable volume: most amount of hard working sets you can do and still benefit from the exercise.

* maximum adaptive volume: the amount of work required to make your best gains.

Source: Photos courtesy of CrossFit Inc

Intensity

“Six to 20 reps per set is a great intensity range you should be working all the way through it for glutes,” Israetel says.

Exercises

The best glutes hypertrophy guide exemplifies the best exercises that you can do to grow your butt muscles.

For higher reps and lower weight (12-20 reps), Israetel says two exercises are optimal:

• Dumbbell/barbell walking lunges
• Glute bridges / frog pump

For heavier exercises, in the rep range of 6-12, other exercises will result in a better outcome:

• Sumo squat
• Deficit deadlift
• 25’s deadlift
• Sumo deadlift
• Deadlift

Read More: 5 Glute Workouts for a Powerful Functional Booty

Variation

For a muscle group to increase in size and strength you need to train it in different ways along the way. You can use pick and choose one of the exercises listed above as your main glute exercise and change for a different one after a couple of weeks.

You can also do loading variation, training heavy one week and lighter the following week.

Frequency

Between 3 and 4 days per week is a good rule of thumb for most people who are looking to strengthen their glutes.

Keep in mind that your glutes need time to recover and training more than 3 times a week could be detrimental. “The glutes are so strong, so big and can take so much damage,[they] need a bit more recovery,” Israetel says.

Periodisation

Moderate reps and heavy weights for the glutes. After a few weeks increase the number of volume and variations that you are using and do higher sets reps (16-20 reps). After a couple of months, do a month of lower volume training in which your glutes will recover.

Perhaps on the recovery month, you can stop doing glutes isolation exercises altogether and just keep doing your squats and normal deadlifts and only after that use isolation exercises and variations.

Source: Courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

Special Metabolite

According to Dr. Mike Israetel, there really isn’t anything helpful about special metabolite techniques when it comes to glutes.

The best glutes hypertrophy guide is based on working your glutes regularly in the sets and reps mentioned above. “Stick to good technique, compound heavy basics, pepper in some glute bridges, frog pumps, isolation work like that, machine glute kickbacks, make sure that you’re getting stronger and you will have bigger glutes.”

Read More: The Ultimate Guide for Bigger and Stronger Glutes (Exercises and Workouts)