The Ultimate 12 Week Glute Building Workout Plan (Free PDF)

In this 12 Week Glute Building Workout Plan, you’ll find a routine that concentrates on classic no BS exercises for developing a firm and shapely backside.

This program was developed after lots of experimentation and review of resistance exercise and biomechanics research. It will work.

Jump to the workout plan now!

Alternatively, you can download the free PDF using the link below:

The 12 Week Glute Building Workout Plan In a Nutshell

Program style	Resistance training
Program duration	12 weeks
Target Gender	Male and female
Target Muscles	Gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus
Workout duration	1-2 hours
Scheduling	3 day split
Goal	Build and shape glutes
Level	Beginners to advanced
Equipment	Dumbbells (DB), Barbell (BB), hex bar, resistance bands, cable machine

What to Expect From This Program

Getting right to it, you can expect to work your glutes like never before.

You’ll see some familiar exercises, some new ones that will surprise you, and others will be conspicuous in their absence.

You can trust that all the exercises here, the rep ranges and progressions, aren’t just pulled out of Wonder Woman’s patoot.

Personal experimentation and review of the clinical research on muscle building and glutes specifically were brought to bear.

Who Should Do This Program?

Women and men who want better developed–and healthier–hip muscles should do this program.

No question that the ladies are caring a lot more about their glutes these days than the guys.

However, the men should be caring more than they do. There’s the cosmetic benefit – how a dude looks in jeans–and then there’s the functional component too.

One of the most cringeworthy moments in any commercial gym locker room is the old dude with the elephant ear backside.

Let’s put it this way: if you can’t get out of a chair without using your arms, or you need a belt to keep your pants up, you need to be doing this program. You can add Glute Day 1 or Glute Day 2 to any leg day when you’re not already working glutes.

Workout Plan Structure

Our 12 Week Glute Workout Plan breaks down like this:

The program separates into three days of glute work per week:

• The first workout is the heaviest of the three.
• The third is the lightest followed by a 100% rest day so you’re ready for that heavy Day 1.
• The second Glute Day provides a nice bridge between the two.

Glutes max, medius, and the gluteus minimus (invisible from the surface) get attention.

Can I Work Out Other Body Parts Than Just Glutes?

Yes. You can do other workouts if you like as long as you’re not working glutes or fatiguing the glute muscles on the other days.

The one exception is Day 7. Stay out of the gym on that day and take it easy on the physical activity. If you don’t, you won’t be recovered enough to blast it on Day 1, your heavy day.

For the interval Days 2, 3, and 5, you shouldn’t do compound leg exercises that require your glutes to work. And don’t work back on the day before Glute 1 when you’ll need your back muscles fresh for RDLs.

You’ll be getting some quad work with the Bulgarians and Reverse Lunges. Hope that makes sense.

Working arms, chest, shoulders on other days…no prob.

Do NOT do any ballistic exercises while doing this program. That means:

• No box jumps
• No cleans
• No snatches
• No burpees

I’m sure there are others in that list; those are the ones that come to mind.

Doing leg isolators like Leg Extensions, Sissy Squats, Sissy Hack Squats, or Leg Curls is fine. They do not involve nor fatigue the glutes.

The 12 Week Glute Building Workout Plan

You’ll work glutes 3 days a week with this program. You get to pick which day is Day 1. It doesn’t have to be a Sunday or Monday. The important piece is the spacing of workout days.

Why We Chose the Exercises We Chose

By now, you may be scratching your head and questioning why some of the popular glute exercises aren’t in this program?

The exercises that made it into this program share these things in common:

• Biomechanically isolate the glutes
• Provide a wide range of motion
• Introduce very nominal risk of injury

At some point it’s good to realize that a person doesn’t need dozens of exercises for a muscle group. Either an exercise works the muscle efficiently or it doesn’t. And if it does, why add one that doesn’t?

Apply progressive overload to keep the muscle challenge and subsequent adaptations. There is no such thing as “surprising a muscle” with a new movement, unless you go from a subpar exercise to one that really does the job.

Single Joint / Single Side Over Multiple Joint / Bilateral

“I don’t need a clinical study to convince me that jumping out of an airplane with a parachute is better than jumping without one.”

Anonymous

Our program prescribes mostly single-joint and single-side exercises. There are a few bilateral (both limbs) moves here. I like bilateral when I program heavier loads for the stability they offer, like the RDLs for example.

The glutes cross only one joint, the hip. Moving the knee to work the glutes involves other muscles.

The glutes do not articulate the knee. Other muscles do. So if the knee is moving, it’s not the glutes that are doing it.

Our program ensures the glutes work as exclusively as possible, otherwise, you’ll have absolutely no concrete idea how much the other muscles contribute. (See the quote above).

Now, there are people I respect a great deal who emphatically advocate for multiple joint exercise for glutes. Won’t mention who. I’ll just say they’re very respectable resistance training coaches, and they cite research for multiple exercises like the hip thrust as the “best” glute exercise.

Blend of Single-Side and Bilateral Exercises

Our 12 Week Glute Building Program includes a blend of single-sided (unilateral) and Bilateral resistance exercises.

Bilateral exercises provide a greater degree of stability. For that reason, I like them when stability is required for safety, and for the broader base of support on exercises where the lifter can potentially go heavier like with hex bar RDLs.

Unilateral exercises are great for the isolation they provide and for working on imbalances between the right and left sides of our bodies. Almost everyone has one side that’s stronger, and better developed, than the other.

There’s debate in the science about which one is “better”. For some fun, informative reading, check out the Point-Counterpoint article by Mullican and Nijem in the Strength and Conditioning Journal (Feb 2016).

The hip is a complex joint that can move the leg in a lot of different directions:

• Extension (move leg backward)
• Flexion (leg raise)
• Adduction (bring leg toward you and across)
• Abduction (move leg outward to the side)
• Internal rotation (rotate upper leg inward toward the middle)
• External rotation (rotate upper leg out toward the side)
• Circumduction (make a circle with your leg).

Exercises Not Included

Hip Thrusts

No question that the glutes have to do work for a hip thrust to be performed. The inconvenient observation is that so do the knees, the abs, and the spinous erectors. The latter two act as isometric stabilizers.

The other knotty problem is that the load rests directly over the active joint instead of away from it. The farther away a load is from the active joint, the more the force is magnified, so the load must be even greater across your lap to get the same training effect you could get from, say, a multi-hip machine. (Too bad there aren’t many of those still in captivity.)

Imagine if someone told you about a triceps exercise that was “the best” at building big triceps, and then they described placing a dumbbell in the crux of your arm and then straightening and bending the arm while holding onto a post in front of you to make the dumbbell rise and fall.

Who would do that? And how is that any different than putting a barbell across the lap and moving the pelvis up and down? I must be missing something.

And then there’s the range of motion.

Hip Thrusts’ range of motion (ROM) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30° to 45°. Compare that to the hip’s anatomically possible full ROM of 120°. Maybe you don’t need to get the full ROM but for my money, I’m looking for at least 75° to 90°.

Some really serious lifters can set up the hip thrust using a bench and barbell to achieve an ROM in that 75° to 90° range.

Achieving this range of motion requires a very specific set-up using a flat bench and some way to keep your upper back from sliding forward off the bench during the hip thrust.

Then there’s the strain placed on the lower back. The abs must work overtime to protect the lumbar spine from rolling into overarching and frequently fail at the task.

After two hip surgeries and two spine surgeries, I’m not willing to take the risk. As I’ve said elsewhere in this piece, the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze, and I can’t pass the red-face test and advocate for this exercise.

EMG (electro-myography) data have shown that hip thrusts do a good job activating the glutes, especially in the fully-extended position, meaning at the “top” of the thrust.

That doesn’t mean they’re better than any other exercise, because they’ve not been compared to all available exercises for glutes.

Hip Thrusts are often compared to squats (per the link above) and the battle rages for which is “best” for glutes. But again, the comparison is just between those two exercises.

I’ve been unable to find a comparison to the multi-hip (extension) machine or the cable hip extension. My money is on cable extensions or the multi-hip machine over any other for max glute EMG activation. I’ve not found a study that’s compared them. (Please let me know if you find one.)

Lastly, hip thrust advocates typically include them in a panoply of glute exercises, while crowning them king. Not exactly sure how one exercise can be crowned king if it’s not tried for a while all by itself.

Again, I know people who swear by hip thrusts…they just do other exercises too.

For me personally (and by extension, for my clients), the big red flag on Hip Thrusts is that they’re always programmed along with other glute exercises.

Doug Brignole showed that the single leg loaded extension performed on the Multi-Hip machine is all that’s needed to build a world-class set of glutes.

If Hip Thrusts are so great, why don’t more coaches (and influencers) do them as their one and only glute exercise? I’m willing to change my mind if presented with evidence.

Banded Side Walks

Banded Side Walks are actually pretty good exercises for the glutes, especially glute medius and minimis.

The problem with them is that they’re really hard to do right, so much so that I don’t even include them.

I have literally seen *one* person do these correctly, which means I’ve seen dozens doing them badly…and embarrassingly badly, to the point of epic gym fail bad.

A proper Banded Side Walk should:

• Have the band secured below the knees.
  • The farther down the leg (and of course the heavier the Thera-Band) the more challenging it gets.
• Toes should be pointed forward. Lead with your ankle bone.
• The step out to the side should be done with the sole of the foot parallel to the floor and the leg should be held rigid from the hip all the way to the foot. If the sole begins to point outward, you’re doing it wrong. Think like walking sideways Frankenstein-style.
• The trailing leg should follow the same strict movement pattern. Sole of foot parallel to the ground. Control the eccentric portion of the movement by a slow and controlled following step.

Here’s where almost everyone (and based on observational math, probably you) get this wrong:

The glutes do NOT attach below the knees nor do they move the knees.  That means that if your leg is bending to the side, your form is bad.

If your lower leg from the knee down is getting out in front of your upper leg, you are 110% wasting your time and taking up gym floor space from someone who might actually be doing something worthwhile.

Also, please please do not turn these into a dance, taking one step left and one step right, like you’re doing the Fox Trot. Again…waste of time. And it looks dumb.

Finally, bands are end-phase loaded. The resistance increases with the band’s stretch.

You’ll get better results with Cable Hip Abductions, which are in the 12-Week Glute Program. Cable Hip Abductions work the same muscles, remove all the foo-factor, and cables offer resistance from the beginning to the end of the motion, unlike bands.

Back Squats

Back Squats are a skill. Doing one properly requires a lot of practice. Due to anatomical variation in hip joints, femur length, femur-to-tibia ratio, and trunk length, some people aren’t even able to execute a glute-dominant squat.

Powerlifters need to train them for their sport.

Back squats do involve the glutes to some degree, regardless of anatomical variations. However, they do not isolate the glutes.

The quads, hams, adductors, and lumbar spine are also involved. Those muscles all help lift the weight, so arguments on the amount of weight as a reason to do back squats don’t hold much water.

It’s impossible to know how much weight any of those muscles are lifting at any given point during the back squat.

If you feel you absolutely must squat, I’d suggest doing wide stance bodyweight squats with long isometric holds in the bottom on Glute day 3. Look up Alexander Cortes’ video on Horse Stance to see proper form for these.

Kickbacks

Kickbacks using a cable machine or the dedicated-to-purpose Glute Kickback machine don’t make the program because of the necessary involvement of the quads.

Any time the leg straightens it’s the quads that do that, not the glutes.

There is one kickback machine design that requires that the knee stay in a 90° bent position without the leg ever straightening.

Some call this the donkey kick machine. Whatever its name, it’s not bad.

Either way, because the force is delivered by the foot regardless of machine design, keeping the knee (and ergo, the quads) out of the glutes’ business is too challenging. There are too many other killer glute moves you can do that reliably deliver effect.

I personally have gotten the best results from five glute exercises, two I do every week; I alternate in the others.

All five are here in the program along with others. You can pick the ones that work best for you.

Program Guidelines

1. Warm Up and Stretch!

Warm up before your workout to prevent injury and practice the movements. Warm-ups are important for anyone and even more crucial for older adults. If you’re a newcomer to the gym but a veteran in another sport, you’ll already understand the value of a good warm-up.

The warm-ups included in this workout program are composed of very light sets of the movements you’ll be doing during the workout, an application of the SAID Principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands).

You should also get in the habit of stretching the target muscles before actually targeting them. This program will target basically every single muscle you have in your body, so getting those muscle loose is crucial.

There’s nothing worse than getting started on a heavy set of RDLs and pulling your glutes, which could have easily been prevented with some simple stretches.

2. Apply Progressive Overload

Apply progressive overload as you move through the program.

Do the specified number of reps with a weight you can move with excellent form until you can do more reps than written, and then increase the load. Simple yet effective.

Tons of data support progressive overload. No need to go looking for another exercise to break a plateau.

Do more reps, then do more weight. Get rest between so your muscles and central nervous system can recover and adapt. Again… simple.

3. Control Level of Intensity

The last few reps of any working set (not including your warm-up) should be hard without your form going to crap.

The program is written intentionally with the target reps decreasing over its course. Total rep quantity goes down, but the same principle holds: the last few reps should be grinders.

So for sets of 10 to 12, reps 8 through 12 should be hard. And for sets of 6 to 8, reps 3 through 8 should also be hard.

Work with perfect form. When your form’s not perfect, practice it with light weight or body weight until you master the exercise.

I regularly quote a 2021 study (Sports, Schoenfeld et al) that looked into the assumptions about rep ranges for strength, size, and endurance. It tested the notion of low reps for strength and higher reps for size and endurance.

Turns out that there’s not a sweet spot rep range for any of those training objectives.

4. Me Mindful of Rep Cadence

Perform all your reps in a rhythmic, controlled fashion to maximize time under tension. That means no explosive concentric moves and no AMRAP or anything that smells like it.

Mechanical tension and its duration is one of the cornerstones of resistance exercise.

Don’t rob yourself of muscle-building benefit by rushing your reps.

Weights should be sufficiently heavy to require relatively slow, rhythmic reps. You should be pushing (or pulling) like crazy even though the weights won’t be moving fast.

5. Rest!

Recovery is as important to physique development as your actual lifting is.

This is the period when your glutes grow in response to the stimulus. Ratio imbalances between stimulus (training) and recovery leads to overtraining and chronic overuse injuries.

Rest between workouts

For this routine, Days 2, 3, and 5 are “off” days from glute work. Work other unrelated muscle groups–shoulders, arms, chest–if you like. Just stay away from leg or back work that involves the hips. Examples would be lunges, squats, deadlifts.

Leg or back work you could do without overtraining would be leg extensions, sissy squats, calf raises, cable pulldowns, Kelso shrug – any exercise that doesn’t load or move the hips.

Rest between sets

How long should you wait before doing your next set, or your next exercise? It may be longer than you think.

Research says that longer rest periods between sets beats shorter rest times when it comes to hypertrophic effect.

Personally, I’m not a fan of watching a clock. I tell my clients to do the next set once they can do it with intensity that meets or beats the previous sets’ intensity. Turns out that’s usually 2 to three minutes.

If you are a clock-watcher, 3 minutes between intense sets is a good rule of thumb. It’s much better to condition yourself not to rely on external cues like apps or clocks. The best learn to read their internal cues to know when it’s time to get after it again.

6. Have Reps In Reserve (RIR)

Reps “left in the tank” is RIR, Reps In Reserve.

Knowing exactly how many more reps you really could do takes a long time. Not something newbies are good at. They either pull up way short, or do a bunch of shitty reps at the end of a set in the name of doing more.

The only rep worth doing is a perfect rep.

For this glute program, try weeks 1 through 3 with 2 RIR, weeks 4 through 9 with 1 RIR, and weeks 9 through 12 with no RIR.

If you’ve got a few years in the gym under your belt, go ahead and lift to mechanical failure for the last two sets of every exercise throughout the program. This assumes you’re getting the rest you need between workouts.

A Few Final Thoughts

Glute development may be the hottest topic in physical fitness right now. Strong opinions abound.

Because of the emotional attachment many have to their glute routines and what they believe works, we tried to follow the simple rules described above:

• The glutes don’t straighten the leg. The quads do. If an exercise requires the leg to straighten, it is not a glute isolation exercise (and why would you *not* want to isolate the muscle you’re trying to develop?).
• More joints, less effect. If a joint other than the hip is moving, another muscle is stealing the glutes’ show.
• There is such a thing as a “best” exercise. And “best” can be determined by alignment with functional purpose and biomechanics.
  • Because the glutes serve the hip joint, and because the hip moves in so many different directions, you’ll need more than one glute exercise to cover them. But you don’t need 20. Beware junk volume out of fear of not working your buns thoroughly.
• Rest is key to muscle development. Resist the temptation to add exercises.

Finally, a pro tip. Sit less, stand more, and walk more. Sitting lengthens and deconditions the glutes. Standing and walking require low degrees of work for the glutes.

Download our 12-week Glute Glory Program PDF here.