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3 Quick and Easy Ways to Fix a Flat Butt.By: Joe Brammer,

Today I want to talk to you about 3 quick and easy ways to Fix a flat butt. I’ve been a personal trainer for over 15 years and this questions always comes up.

Flat Butt Fix #1 Activate the glutes with the mind muscle connection. When most people do glute exercise aka “butt exercise’s” they are not focusing on the “butt muscles”. When we are training our butt we must also train our mind to focus on creating and holding tension in the glutes.

Have you ever bench pressed and your shoulders hurt instead of your chest and triceps being fatigued ? This can be fixed by using proper form, and concentrating on activating the muscle you are working. Think of doing a plank you can hold a plank with a lose core and you may feel pain in your lower back instead of activation in your core. If you squeeze your core and brace as if someone is going to hit you in the stomach suddenly you are working the core muscle and additionally keeping your lower back safe. Not only that but the exercise immediately becomes more intense. I will get into some specific butt exercises later and where to place your attention when you are doing them.

Flat Butt Fix #2  Lift heavier weight. People think doing a ton of repetitions and “feeling the burn” will stimulate muscle growth the truth is we have to lift heavy weight to make any muscle grow. You should shoot for reps of 5-12 with a weight that is challenging for each set. I often see people just go through the motions using a weight that is not challenging enough to stimulate growth.

Flat Butt Fix #3 Recruit The Glutes! What I am about to say may sound like I am contradicting myself but I am not. So please read the entire article so you really understand what I am saying. Under developed muscles are usually one’s you have trouble feeling (mind muscle connection) and therefore recruiting during exercises.

Thinking more weight means bigger muscle and more growth is a common misconception. How many people do you know who strength train spend time learning how to recruit their glutes as much as possible when they squat? Generally people just try to use heavier and heavier weights in hopes that eventually they will be able to build the butt they want. Sometime this works and sometimes it doesn’t. This applies to any exercise not just squats and glute exercises. Just because a exercise is supposed to work a certain muscle does not mean that it will automatically be recruited.

Recruitment competition occurs in your muscles when you do a compound exercise like the squat which recruits, quads, hamstrings and glutes. The most developed muscles are always recruited first. So most people will recruit the quads and hamstrings before the glutes ever get recruited. That is why you see many women squat tell the cows come home but never see any growth in their butt.

In addition the more you do a exercise the more it leaves a mark on your muscles and your central nervous system. This pattern becomes ingrained even more every time you do it. Once you have a bad habit, it is not going to correct itself by chance.

So how do we fix this ? I will try to explain this as quickly as possible and without all the scientific jargon.

Discover your Butt. You have to discover the muscle contraction that you want to develop. You need to learn to contract the glutes as powerfully as possible. Once you have found your butt muscle with the mind muscle connection then try to hold the contraction as long as possible. Do not worry about anything else, forget the weight, the sets, the reps focus only on holding the contraction and imbedding this new pattern or habit in your “muscle memory.”

The mind muscle connection like anything develops the more you do it. You can speed this up with specific training, through a process called transfer. Transfer is simply performing one exercise that will in turn help you to perform another.

By using light isolation exercises (remember I said I was going to contradict myself) you can cultivate the mind muscle connection in a specific muscle. For example you can improve your ability to feel your glute muscles working with some butterfly bridges, this ability will then transfer to Kettlbell Swings, stiff leg deadlifts and other compound exercises. As a result the compound exercises will be even more effective. That is why if you ever training with me I always start my training sessions with “muscle activation exercise’s” to activate the muscle so my main lifts will be more effective.

So to put this in effect before you do your main compound exercise do some isolation exercises this will teach you to recruit your glutes and get them to contract. If you can succeed in isolating a muscle that you have never been able to contract before you will be helping it grow even with light weight. Over time the butt muscles will start to participate more and more in the compound exercises.

You must choose the right isolation exercises to get your nervous system to recruit your glutes better. Isolation exercises are important because they simplify the movement and reduce the number of muscles involved. Once you have the right exercises you should do as many reps as you can, as often as you can, even every day. Because the exercises I am going to show you are body weight they require a small amount of recovery time.

Do 3 sets of 10 of each of these every day before you train and focus on finding your butt muscles, contracting them and creating the mind muscle connection.

  1. Single Leg Hip Bridge
  2. Double Leg Hip Bridge
  3. Fire Hydrant’s
  4. Donkey Kick’s
  5. Butterfly Bridge
  6. Bulgarian Split Squat
  7. Band Abductions
  8. Side lying hip raise

Try this routine out before you train for 1 month and see if you don’t see some growth in your butt! If you have any questions or comments please comment below and I will get back to you as I best I can.