How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
In this article, I’m going to show you exactly how to grow glutes without growing legs.
Here’s probably why you’re here…
Maybe you’re someone who is “quad dominant” and has an easy time building their legs, but your glutes are struggling to keep up.
Or you just want a nice round pair of glutes, but without all of the extra baggage of thick thighs.
(But if you do want to grow those legs, I have an entire article you read about HERE.)
Either way, I’m here to help.
We’re going to break this all down step by step.
So don’t go skimming around, make sure to read this article from top to bottom because I want you to get the most information out of this article.
We’re going to cover every single thing you need to know about how to grow glutes without growing legs including:
- What Most People Get Wrong About How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
- Real No BS Advice On How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
- Sample Workout For How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
What Most People Get Wrong About How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
First up, before we even talk about what to do, we need to talk about things most people get wrong.
Just like a wound, we need to clean it out and mend it first before we put a bandaid on top of it.
Otherwise, it’s like adding a gold plating on top of a pile of shit.
But just a fair warning, I’m a “rip the bandaid off” kind of guy and don’t like beating around the bush. I’ll tell you exactly what I think because I care and want what is best for you…
And the truth is that you’ve been lied to by a lot of the people you probably follow and look up to.
The secret to growing your glutes without growing your legs is NOT:
- Doing endless amounts of “glute activation” exercises
- Taking a wide stance for your squat and pressing movements
- 30+ rep burnout sets
(The list goes on, but I don’t want you to be here for weeks.)
Now, before you grab your pitchforks and leave here angry and confused, let’s break this all down.
“Glute Activation”
The first myth to bust is glute activation.
No matter what anyone tells you, you don’t need to do any glute activation and your glutes aren’t “asleep and need to be woken up.”
Otherwise, you’d need to wake your glutes up every time you tried to stand up and walk, but you don’t seem to have a problem with this, right?
And to further support my point, here’s a systematic review comparing a bunch of common gym exercises and how well they activated the glutes (Macadam et. al., 2015).
As you can see, these exercises below showed a “low activation” of <20% (Figure 5).
Whereas, these exercises showed a “very high activation” of >60% (Figure 2).
So what’s the key takeaway from this?
It’s that if you doing effective glute exercises, these are going to be good glute activation exercises themselves.
“Wider Stance = More Glutes”
Another myth that has run rampant and that is repeated time and time again with no supporting evidence is that “using a wider stance for your squats and leg press will be more glutes.”
This is simply untrue as backed by science again.
This time, a study examined the difference in muscle activation between different leg muscles when performing different squat variations (Coratella et. al., 2021).
As we can see in the figures above, sumo (wide stance) resulted in less overall glute activation and more overall adductor and quad activation.
The key takeaway from here is that a wider stance is not more glutes. In fact, it’s less.
30 sets of 30+ Rep Burnout Sets
Now, there’s nothing inherently bad about doing these burnout sets.
However, from an efficiency and effectiveness standpoint, you’re not going to see as much (or if any) results as if you were to lift heavy weights at a lower rep range.
As discussed in one of my previous articles, How Many Sets And Reps To Build Muscle And Lose Fat, the main driver of muscle growth isn’t doing as many sets and reps as you can or how much you can get your muscles to “burn.”
It’s about lifting with enough intensity and training close enough to failure to stimulate your muscles to grow and then letting them recover to adapt and then repeating that process over and over again until you get your desired amount of growth.
So while there’s nothing wrong with burnout sets especially if you are limited on equipment and/or if you enjoy that kind of pain and suffering, as long as you’re training close enough to muscle failure and progressively overload in some manner, you’re going to see progress.
But if you’re just going in for a booty pump, then I have some bad news for you…you’re just pumping it up temporarily and as soon as you leave the gym, it’s back to pancake city.
(By the way, if you are limited on equipment, I do have a completely FREE fitness guide if you get on my email list or you can check out my other article here on The Complete Guide On How To Build Your Strength Training Workout Routine.)
How You Do Your Exercises Matter Too
Look, maybe you do have all the right exercises in your program, but how you do your exercises just as much as what kind of exercises you do.
The most common mistake I see people when trying to grow their glutes is that they get too much knee flexion when they’re performing their glute movements.
What is that?
It’s when you get too much forward knee travel.
The red line represents the force from the imaginary barbell on his back.
The blue line represents the distance from the force to the knees.
The green line represents the distance from the force to the hips.
So if you wanted to target and grow your quads? Your squat should look like something on the left.
But if you wanted to target and grow your glutes? Your squat should look more like something on the right.
Simply put, the muscle you want to target should have a longer distance (moment arm for you physics nerds).
This graphic also goes to show that deeper doesn’t automatically mean more glutes.
The goal of a glute dominant squat is to drive your hips as far away from the bar path as possible.
The same thing goes for split squats.
The glute dominant is pictured on the left and the quad-dominant is pictured on the right.
If you want to grow your glutes without growing your legs then focus on pushing your hips back and not letting your knees travel too forward.
This isn’t to say that this is a bad thing and that “yOu sHoUlDn’T LeT yOuR kNeEs gO pAsT yOuR tOeS”, but for the purposes of targeting your glutes, this is true.
And one more time for leg press.
The leg press is a bit harder to visualize but it’s going to be the same concept with the force line coming down the midfoot.
Real Advice On How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
Now that we’ve covered the things not to do, let’s talk about what you should do instead so that we can start having your hard work, time, and effort pay off.
Exercise Selection For How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
First and foremost, we need to make sure you have the right exercises to grow your glutes without growing your legs.
This is going to be your foundation for everything else.
The basic principle of exercise selection is this: we want to choose exercises that place the most tension on your glutes while minimizing the amount of tension to your other leg muscles.
More tension = more growth.
I’ll start with pure glute dominant exercises and then make my way to glute-biased squat and pressing movements, that way it goes from:
Most Glute Dominant <—> Less Glute Dominant
Here are some of my favorite staples I program for my online coaching clients:
KAS Glute Bridges
Points of Performance:
- Setup so that bottom of shoulder blades are at edge of box (this is going to be the “pivot point” of the movement)
- Chin tucked, stare at your crotch
- Neutral spine, brace core
- Make sure shins are 90 degrees from floor at top position
- Don’t come down so low that knees start to travel toward you
- Use stance width that allows you get the most amount of extension (toes slightly pointed out as well)
KAS Glute Bridges function really well because you’re only focusing on the pure hip extension portion of the movement which is powered by all glutes. It’s just about the only movement where you get pure glute activation (yes, even more than hip thrusts).
Glute Medius Kickbacks
Points of Performance
- Don’t bend over too much
- Use something to stabilize
- Keep knee straight and kick back and out 30 degrees
Kickbacks are pretty straightforward. Done correctly, these should be a pure glute movement. These are specifically for glute medius. If you want to target the glute max, just straight back.
45 Degree Glute Raise
Points of Performance:
- Think “push hips into pad” as you come up
- Neutral spine
- Don’t go so far down or up that you flex your lower back
- ROM is smaller than you think
- Turn toes out slightly
Another movement that allows you to train the extension and squeeze movement of the glutes. One more thing to note is that you don’t want to be going too high or low with this movement. Too high and you’ll start to feel your lower back and too low and you’ll turn this into a hamstring movement.
Romanian Deadlifts (RDLs)
Note: These can be done with dumbbells, barbells, or a trap bar with the same cues.
Points of Performance
- Chin tucked
- Dumbbells in front and off to side
- Slight knee bend
- Neutral spine
- Push hips back as far as you can
- Once you can’t push hips any farther back, ROM ends there
- Don’t go so low that you get lower back flexion
RDLs are also a great staple hip dominant movement. One thing to note here is you want to have a slight knee bend to disadvantage the hamstrings and make this a more glute dominant movement. I see a lot of people keep their legs too straight which will involve more hamstrings. Again, not a bad thing, but our goal here is to grow your glutes without growing your legs so perform the exercise accordingly.
Good Mornings
Points of Performance:
- Chin tucked
- Slight knee bend
- Neutral spine
- Push hips back as far as you can
- Once you can’t push hips any farther back, ROM ends there
- Don’t go so low that you get lower back flexion
Personally, I much prefer RDLs > Good Mornings because you’re able to load it heavier and get more tension to the glutes, but good mornings can be a good alternative if you don’t want to load your upper body or if you just want to switch things up. But RDLs and Good Mornings is the same exact movement pattern.
Glute Biased Split Squats
Points of Performance
- Longer stride length
- Drive back foot down to stabilize hips
- Lean forward
- “Sit back” into movement
Single leg movements generally offer you the ability to get a better stretch on the glutes than bilateral (double leg) movements.
The main difference between split squats and lunges is that split squats offer up a bit more stability so slightly less glute medius activation than a dynamic lunge, but the difference is minimal so don’t overthink it.
Just swap each one out with each other from time to time and do the one you feel most comfortable with.
Reverse Lunges
Points of Performance
- Lean forward
- Start with one side at a time, don’t alternate
- Maintain weight over mid foot, don’t put weight on heels or ball of foot
- Make sure knee stays in line with toes
- Push hips back and think about “driving forward” rather than “up”
Walking Lunges
Points of Performance
- Lean forward
- Long stride
- Drive forward, not up
With these last three movements, again, because these will involve the quads, we want to longer stride to really stretch those glutes and think about sitting back for the split squats and driving forward for the walking lunges.
Alright, so now that you know all of the exact movements you should be doing to grow your glutes without growing your legs, that is only half the battle.
The other half is knowing how much and how hard you should be training your glutes.
How Much And How Hard You Should Be Training
As mentioned before, one of the most common mistakes I see a lot of people make is that when they want to grow their (insert target muscle here) they’ll train that muscle group 5x a week and do 30 sets of 30+ rep burnouts.
When in reality, most of our muscle groups recover at similar rates.
Yes, the stimulus of weight training is very important for muscle growth, but your ability to recover from the stimulus for the necessary adaptations of building more muscle is just as important.
When you train too much and don’t allow your body to recover properly, this is called overtraining.
So as a general recommendation, start with 1-3 sets close to or to muscle failure (muscle failure being the point where you can’t perform another rep with good form no matter how hard you tried) per workout while training that muscle group 1-2 times per week.
For most people, you’ll be able to make phenomenal gains without feeling like you destroyed your body.
As for intensity, a general rule of thumb to know when you’re close to muscle failure is when it feels like you’re struggling to maintain good form, but you also know you can keep going.
Here’s a video I made on my TikTok for reference:
Your Diet For How To Grow Glutes Without Growing Legs
Now that we’ve covered your training, let’s talk diet because how you fuel your body is just as important.
This is another common mistake I see with a lot of people who want to build muscle.
They want to build a lot of lean muscle but are afraid to eat more to support that growth when in reality that is the answer.
As explained in my other article, The Best Diet Plan To Build Lean Muscle, you can’t expect to build a noticeable amount of muscle by constantly being in a deficit.
Think about it, your body is literally trying to create more tissue, and it’s going to need that energy from somewhere.
Now, this isn’t to say that it’s impossible to build muscle in a deficit, but this is only reserved for people who are:
- Relatively new to weight lifting (<1 year of consistent, progressive training experience)
- Have a lot of body fat to lose (30+ lbs)
- Coming back after a long layoff from lifting (detrained from injury, time off, etc.)
But also, don’t expect to be doing this forever. At some point, you’re going to have to eat more if you want more muscle size and definition.
Putting It All Together
After reading all of that, we’re going to put everything together into one nice package so that you can apply this immediately into your routine and finally start growing those glutes without growing your legs.
Sample Training
Glute Focused Workout A
- 45 Degree Glute Raise – 1-3 sets of 8-15 reps (close or to failure)
- Glute Leg Press – 1-3 sets of 8-12 reps (close or to failure)
- Glute Biased Split Squats – 1-3 sets of 8-15 reps (close or to failure)
- Glute Medius Kickback – 1-3 sets of 12-15 reps (close or to failure)
Glute Focused Workout B
- KAS Glute Bridge – 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps (close or to failure)
- Good Mornings – 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps (close or to failure)
- Walking Lunges – 1 set of 50 reps (left leg + right leg = 1 rep)
Glute Focused Workout C [SS = Superset; done back to back with minimal rest]
- [SS] Glute Biased Squats – 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps (close or to failure)
- [SS] KAS Glute Bridges – 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps (close or to failure)
- Glute Biased Split Squats – 1-3 sets of 6-12 reps (close or to failure)
- Single Leg Glute Bridge – 1 sets of MAX bodyweight reps each leg
Now I know what you’re probably thinking, “That’s it?”
Yes, that’s it. You honestly don’t need more than 4-5 exercises per workout granted you’re training at an adequate intensity.
Give these workouts a try and I guarantee that your cheeks will be screaming for the next week.
Note: If you are properly following these workouts, you should only be running them 1-2 times per week with at least 3-4 days of rest in between workouts. Again, the goal here is to get that stimulus from lifting, but also have enough days to allow your body to recover.
Alright, now let’s talk nutrition.
Sample Nutrition
For nutrition, it’s honestly not rocket science.
Stick to mainly whole, nutritious, minimally processed foods and leave room to be flexible with your fun foods and treat foods (this concept is called flexible dieting).
Once you have your food choices set, it’s all about hitting your calories and protein.
For protein aim for 0.5 to 1g per lb of current body weight (the leaner you are, the higher on this scale you will use).
For calories, use my calorie calculator HERE (if your goal is to lose fat and build your glutes, then the slow the weight loss, the better. However, if you are want to build your glutes as fast as possible I recommend eating at least at maintenance or even at a slight surplus following the calculator’s guidelines).
Final Thoughts
Alright, and that is it!
That covers about everything you need to know about how to grow your glutes without growing your legs.
It really is that simple.
Not a single “glute activation” exercise, pair of booty bands, crazy-looking fitness influencer exercise needs to be done, and definitely no magical “booty building foods” needs to be eaten.
Just keeping it simple with time-tested and proven to work exercises, training those exercises at high intensities with a focus on getting stronger, and eating right and eating enough to facilitate muscle growth.
It won’t be easy to show up for yourself and put the hard work in, but it is that simple and you will be so glad and thankful for doing it months and years later down the road.
As always, please reach out if you have any questions or need help with anything at all!
Let’s get it.
Until next time,
-Aus
