Best Glute Exercises You Need!

As the world continues with this crazy time, we wanted to keep giving you great ideas to focus on doing positive things in your life. With that said, we thought we would hit on glute exercises that are very powerful, but often get overlooked! While many think they are stuck with glute exercises like single leg hip bridges and that’s it, hopefully this opens up a big world of options and solutions.

Hip Bridges

A pretty obvious choice with your glute exercises are hip bridges (hip because there is a lot more to them than just your glutes!). However, I just said most feel stuck doing at best single leg hip bridges off their couch or something. So, how can we do more?

Well, for one, we need to know that the BETTER way to do these glute exercises is to make sure we connect the lats/core/and glutes which make up our powerful Posterior Oblique System (POS). This chain is what allows us to be strong and stable while we perform every day actions that are far more complex than what we often see in the gym!

Why don’t more people do hip bridges the way we will be showing? Well mostly because they fail to focus on how the body moves. When you understand how our body is designed to function (hence the idea behind functional training) then how you use drills like your glute exercises change dramatically!

DVRT Master Cory Cripe explains why most people do these popular glute exercises are actually miss the point. 

Once we understand concepts like where we should place the weight and HOW we should use the weight a big door opens to building progressions. We don’t need to change the weight at all to build some serious strength in the glutes. That is obviously good for times like now so let’s go through some smart options for your glute exercises.

Physical therapist, Jessica Bento explains one of our first progressions that really surprise people in how challenging these glute exercises can be!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8J9TcmnUVC/

Make sure to scroll through some of the great DVRT progressions DVRT UK master, Greg Perlaki shows that really helps us be stronger and build great functional glute strength!

Deadlifts

Our glutes are made to help us move standing up, so it makes sense that we want to get to standing exercises as much as possible. Last week I broke down A LOT of deadlift progressions (you can read HERE) so I’ll focus on some important concepts.

Cory is back to really break down how we build better deadlifts. Understanding the differences and unique features of the Ultimate Sandbag allows us to set-up for way more success! A great example is the deadlift matrix that Jessica shows below.

Moving your deadlifts in these patterns isn’t just to do something different. Our glutes are designed to produce and resist force at the same time. We only train ALL the glutes (including minimus and medius as well) through such motions. It IS about using smarter glute exercises.

Band Walks

Band walks are either used as quick warm-up exercise or scoffed at by “serious” lifters. The truth is they can be very powerful in building connection in the body, but like the hip bridge, we have to make the right connections. What we did on the ground with the hip bridge becomes even MORE important when we get standing in more complex environments. So, when we use the Ultimate Sandbag with our band drills, it isn’t to do something new and “cool”, but rather it is engaging the core to work with our glutes and the lats too!

Robin Paget jumps in to help us show you how we can use band walks to not only be awesome glute exercises but to help jump start muscles that rarely get trained in fitness programs that have a profound effect on our knees and low backs.

Squat

Most people associate squats with glute training, but HERE is the thing…you only get the glutes to be really involved at a high level when you go deep into the squat. Why? Dr. Stuart McGill explains that as we go deeper the hips have to externally rotate more and it is this that helps make squats into great glute exercises.

However, a lot of people struggle to go deep so again, this is where the Ultimate Sandbag can really shine. We can use it to help teach people how to go deep as Jessica shows below.

We can also use the different positions of the Ultimate Sandbag to not only load our body to get stronger glutes and legs, but to create tension that provides us stability. By having that stability we can get deeper into the squat as I explain below.

DVRT Master James Newman also explains the common mistakes in drills like our front loaded squats that we see ALL the time!

Lunges

Lunges are one of those funny drills. How do I mean? People do them but they often think of them as secondary to drills like squats and deadlifts. However, as I have written about many times, especially when it comes to great glute exercises, lunges out perform such drills all the time. The study on female college volleyball players demonstrates this point.

In DVRT we have A LOT of different squats between the different patterns and loading positions we can use. So this is just a few of the great ways you can build better glute exercises with minimal equipment and space!

If you don’t think we go heavy on lunges, Cory shows you would be wrong and missing out!

Split squats and our front loaded positions are ways to torch your core and build incredible glute exercises!

Shoulder lateral squats are an impressive way to build mobility, stability, strength, and power all at the same time!

Drills like Up Downs LOOK simple, but that can be very deceiving in how effective they can be in your workouts!

Power Movements

Power training is probably one the things that I have been most surprised by to be honest. Starting off in strength and conditioning with athletes, I never thought in my wildest dreams that non-athletes would have any interest in power training. Fortunately, I’ve been proven wrong.

Why fortunately? Power is not great just because it can get you huffing and puffing. Power is one of the first qualities we lose as we age and has an influence over so many every day and recreational activities. However, we do have to be smart because power doesn’t allow us to make adjustments within a movement. So, knowing where to start is key.

High Pulls can be very important in helping us teach the weight to “float” rather than trying to muscle it up as Cory explains…

Once you get the foundations, how we can progress the high pull has no limits as Cory shows!

Greg shows some of these great ways to get more from glute exercises like high pulls that give us MORE than just strong glutes!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8ZsbXFH-aE/

If I had to point to one of our TOP DVRT exercises people perform incorrectly it is our power clean. That is because most assume they do the same thing on an Ultimate Sandbag as they would a barbell. The hard reality is that there are significant differences, so Jessica and I break down what you have to consider in proper technique.

So, how, how do you put this together? Jessica and I along with our Ultimate Sandbag Instagram (You can find mine HERE, Jessica’s HERE, and Ultimate Sandbag HERE) have been trying to show you how to make incredible workouts with little equipment like you see below.

Listen, I am heart broken for so many people right now. The reason we keep putting out information right now is that it is the only thing we can think of doing to offer people a distraction from the horrible things going on right now both from a health, mental, and financial aspect. If a good workout and feeling good for a bit can do wonders for people, that’s a win in our book.

Please let us know how it goes and if you have any questions. You can ask via our Instagram or even better, join our Facebook community HERE and we can help guide you!

Be Strong, Be Resilient!

Tomorrow we are aiming to have more NEW FREE Workout programs for you, so stay tuned! You can also continue to save 30% all throughout DVRT with code “save30” HERE