The Top 2 Exercise’s to Work Your Glutes & Quads

Most people think of squats when it comes to lower body workouts, and how to target the legs and butt. This isn’t technically wrong, but how you do them can target specific areas and change what muscles you are focusing on. When it comes to growing the glutes specifically, squats tend to be the first thought still. While you are clearly using them quite a bit during a squat, they are not the main targeted muscle in this exercise no matter how you are doing them. The main muscle you are working during a squat would be your quads or the front of the legs.

This brings us to our first exercise of what to do when trying to grow or target the quads and glutes specifically. Doing squats in all variations will target the quads, however the Front Squat will load and target them more than other variations. The Front Squat can be done with either barbell or dumbbell’s, essentially you are putting the weight on the front of the shoulders and body, making you have to use the quads and anterior leg muscles even more. Doing a back squat targets the quads still too, but because the weight is behind us on our shoulders we use our glute’s a lot more to hold the weight up. The prime movers during this exercise are still the quads and glutes, but where you put the weight will make a big difference in what muscles are being used before the movement even starts.

The second exercise I wanted to mention would be the hip thrust. This is similar to a glute bridge but not quite the same, and is a bit more challenging, so if the hip thrust is too much for you that is where you will want to start. The hip thrust is the same motion as a bridge but you will have your back elevated to increase the range of motion. Like the quads during the squat, the glutes are the prime movers here during this exercise and do almost all of the work. Most people can do heavier than they would expect during this exercise, as our quads are being worked heavily here as well because of where and how we are loading the weight. The movement itself when executed properly should fire the glutes first, and you should feel like you are creating a j like motion with your hips so you are engaging the core as well. When done improperly hip thrusts can mostly be felt in the quads, so try a bit lighter weight and focus on just the movement if this sounds like you.

All that being said there are many exercise’s that targets these area’s, these are just the 2 I have found that seem to work best. When it comes to growing your muscle and becoming stronger we obviously want to be trying to lift heavy, this being compound movements that recruit a lot of motor units and will work a lot of muscles at once. When trying to become stronger and build muscle, doing single sided exercises are important too. If you are trying to target the quads and glutes and GROW them, I recommend doing this two exercises and then some type of single leg exercise that is also similar, like a walking lunge and/or a single leg glute bridge.

I hope this helps and I didn’t forget about deadlifts don’t worry - we have talked about those in a previous email and we know already they are GREAT for working the glutes too, but today we are talking about the glutes and quads together.