Exercises to Get Bubble Butts

You want strong glutes for several reasons. Your glutes protect your lower back, providing power for many of your daily activities. However, many men also want strong glutes to improve overall appearance, causing people to their heads after you walk past, just to get a glimpse of a butt that looks great in your favorite jeans. Really strong glutes and a nice butt are a package deal. The glutes are big muscles that can handle a lot of stress, and to make them grow, you're going to have to lift heavy, too.

Some of these exercises, such as deadlifts and squats, are difficult and serious lifts. If you do them wrong, it's very easy to hurt yourself. Start light and concentrate on form. Have someone experienced help you at first, and watch yourself in a mirror. If you have back problems, you may not be able to perform them at all.

Deadlift

Serious arguments happen over whether the deadlift or the squat is the king of lifts, but the deadlift is definitely the best exercise for building your glutes. Deadlifts also engage more muscles than any other single-movement lift, which is why it's one of the best indicators of overall strength, and one of the big three lifts in powerlifting. Both the traditional and sumo stance are legal in powerlifting. Sumo takes some of the strain from the lower back and puts it in your glutes and hamstrings, so although you should do whichever style you're comfortable with, give sumo stance a try.

Stiff-Legged Deadlifts

Once you get strong, you'll find that it's very difficult to perform a lot of big exercises on the same day. You might not be able to perform leg press and deadlifts during the same workout, because each requires so much energy. Stiff-legged deadlifts isolate the glutes more than the traditional deadlift, so you'll use much less weight. This makes stiff-legged deadlifts excellent for warming up before or burning out after bigger lifts. To perform a stiff-legged deadlift, stand with a barbell hanging from your arms before your thighs. Keep a slight bend in your knees for balance, and maintain the same bend throughout the exercise. Lean forward, going as low as you can without rounding your back forward. Stand back up. Perform sets of eight to 12.

One-Legged Deadlifts

To target your hamstrings, butt and lower back, perform the one-legged deadlift up to 12 times. This exercise also strengthens your stabilizer muscles. Hold one dumbbell in both hands, using a weight with which you can comfortably complete 12 deadlifts. Stand up, take your left leg back behind you about a foot and rest on your toes. With the dumbbell in front of your right thigh, hinge from your hips and lower the weight as low as your flexibility allows. Keep your abdominal muscles contracted with your back flat or a natural arch. Contract your buttocks and rise back up. Repeat with the right leg.

Squats

For exercises that build up the glutes, squats come in second. Still, squatting down with all that weight across your shoulders and then standing back up will pack muscle on your legs and butt in no time. Besides the fact that they utilize the glutes heavily, both squat and deadlifts allow you to move big weight. A study by Dr. William Kraemer in the February 1998 "European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology" states that "Heavy resistance exercise (HRE) has been shown to be a potent stimulus for acute increases in circulating hormones in younger men." The bodybuilding range of 8 to 12 heavy squats will put much more muscle on your butt than a hundred bodyweight squats.

Leg Press

The leg press lets you move a lot of weight by taking your lower back out of the equation. Load the machine up and grind out some reps, and don't stop until you have to. Without having to worry about your lower back, you'll find that you can perform reps well after your muscles begin to burn with lactic acid. Stay safe, but push yourself. This is a great way to build strong glutes and quads if you have back problems. A tip to avoid back pain is to only lower the weight to just before the point where your lower back rolls off the seat. Don't worry about trying to touch your knees to your chest.

Step Ups

Step ups are a great exercise that almost everyone overlooks. Holding dumbbells in your hand, step up onto a bench or box of a height that puts your knee at a bit less than a 90-degree angle. Step down; repeat. This is the lift that led to Eastern Europe's domination of Olympic lifting. They abandoned the squat and replaced it with step ups. One benefit of the step up is that you can start doing this exercise at home with minimal equipment. Another is that it puts very little strain on your back, because it requires only about a third of the weight of squatting, and with proper form your shoulders should stay almost over your hips.

Hip Extensions

Position yourself on your elbows and knees, with your elbows directly under your shoulders and knees under your hips. Place your forearms with your palms face down on the floor and look down at the floor. Keeping a flat back, raise your left knee so that it is in line with your hip and form a 90-degree angle with your knee. Your foot should be flat and facing up toward the ceiling. Squeeze your buttocks and raise your foot toward the ceiling a few inches and back down so that your knee is in line with your hip. Repeat up to 12 times. To make this exercise more challenging, place a dumbbell behind your knee or use an ankle weight.
You won't get a big butt by doing lots of bodyweight squats and lunges. The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the body and also one of the strongest. The glutes will grow quickly if given enough reason to, and the best way to accomplish that is very heavy exercise. Perform the right exercises strictly, consistently, carefully and with maximum effort and you'll quickly see progress.

Lunges

Lunges aren't a very heavy exercise, but because they primarily work one leg at a time, they can be very effective. "Strength Training Anatomy" explains that you can target the gluteus maximus by stepping out with a larger-than-usual step. To perform lunges, stand with your feet together, holding dumbbells at your sides. Step forward, kneeling down until your forward thigh is parallel to the ground, but not allowing your rear knee to touch the ground. Press with your forward leg and either step forward with your rear leg, or step back with your forward leg. Do the same with your other leg. Perform sets of eight to 12 reps per leg.



Source: http://www.livestrong.com