Exercises to Enhance Muscle Tone in Butt

Here we are going to talk about how you can enhance the muscle tone in your butt. Rather than simply targeting muscle mass I believe that muscle tone in the butt is more important as it brings out the real shape of a butt and also adds a certain edge to the rounded character normally associated with the butt. This is true for both males and females, both sexes can benefit significantly by following the exercise guidelines that I’m going to outline for you below.

Our main goal here is to define the butt better and not simply add mass to the butt. The art of carving out a beautiful butt shape with multiple layers of silhouette is difficult to do and requires much more work than simply building butt mass overall. There are three main muscles in the butt area, namely the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. The explanation of each is available here: Explanation of Butt Muscles

The problem with conventional exercise routines is that most of the work of bringing the femur and leg back in-line with the body is done by the gluteus maximus and thus most exercises that work the butt often overwork the gluteus maximus and doesn’t provide enough resistance and weight to the rest of the gluteal muscles for proper development of definition. In order to get a butt that is nicely proportioned with an equal balance of your gluteal muscles is absolutely necessary. The main focus will however be the development of your gluteal medius as this is the muscle that can help significantly in giving definition to your butt.

The most important thing to do is to get a basic work-out regiment going to actually build your butt muscles strength and flexibility first. Most people that are looking to build their butt’s muscle tone don’t start off with a strong butt and actually start from zero. It is thus important that you do some basic exercises to get your butt muscles primed and ready for the sculpting at a later stage.

You should start off with some basic overall building exercises like squats, deadlifts and lunges to get you going. You should attempt to get down to your local gym at least 3 times a week to start things off and do these exercises with small weights slowly building up the weight as you progress over the weeks. You should attempt to do these exercises for about 2 months. At that point your butt muscles would not necessarily have grown in size or definition but would definitely have increased in strength and would be primed enough to receive specific exercises to build both the gluteus medius and gluteus minumus. This initial stage is necessary to enable your butt muscles to get accustomed to the training regiment that will be set up later for the cutting.

The next stage is interval training for standing side leg raises, an exercise that is regularly used by ballerinas but poorly understood and thus rarely adopted by mainstream exercise professionals. This is one of the only exercises that can target the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus without allowing the gluteus maximus to assist too much. Initially you will need to stand facing a mirror and holding something solid to retain your balance and lift your legs to each side of your body using the natural weight of your legs first. Do this in interval sets of maybe 20-30 and 40-50. This is increase the effectiveness of the exercise so that results can be had faster. As you progress and find that you are able to do too many sets without much effort then you must consider purchasing a set of ankle weight which can offer proper resistance to your efforts. As you progress over the weeks you can start putting more and more weights on to work your gluteus medius and minimus muscles even further. Keep the interval resistance training up and soon you will be able to see a clear definition in your butt muscles as your gluteus medius and minimus develop and start to show themselves.

If you are doing these exercises but still feel like you can’t see the definition then it is more than likely that you might have too much fat on your butt which is making it hard for the muscles to show themselves. In this case it would be wise to go for a fat loss diet and exercise routine too. The basics to fat loss are to maintain a caloric deficit meaning that you are using more energy than you are consuming in the form of food. You should aim to have no more than 10% caloric deficit where your body will turn to fat for its power requirements. If you have a deficit larger then 10% then your body will turn to muscles to burn which is less than ideal. For further information on fat loss refer to our: Exercises to Slimmer Butt and Thighs and Diets to Slimmer Butt and Thighs sections.

Remember that enhancing muscle tone in your butt is not an easy endeavor; you will need to target different muscles and also loose appropriate levels of fat in your butt in order for the true muscle tone to show itself. The task is not easy but if you follow these recommendations then you will eventually get the results you are looking for.