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.