Loosen Your Tight Hip Flexors: Roll Your Quads

Tight hip flexors, the muscle group on the front of the hips that works in opposition to your glutes, can interfere with your butt muscles engaging. The hip flexors, part of your quad and psoas, are shortened by sitting for long periods of time as well as sleeping in the fetal position. You have to lengthen and loosen your hips before even attempting to fire up your booty. Here's how to do just that.


Roll Out Your Quads
Grab a foam roller [4] — most gyms have them — and roll out your quads. Foam rolling is like a massage; it gets the blood flowing and it preps muscles for stretching.

• Resting on your stomach, place the roller under the front of your thighs, lifting yourself into a basic plank position on your elbows.
• Pull with your arms to roll up and down the length of the quad. Do not roll over your knee joint. It is even more effective to do one leg at a time and to hold the roller in really tight spots.
• Continue this movement for 30 to 60 seconds.

Loosen Your Tight Hip Flexors: Stretch Your Quads

You need to lengthen the rectus femoris, the central muscle of the quad, that affects both the hip and knee joints and acts as a powerful hip flexor.


Kneeling Quad Stretch

• Begin in a lunge with your right foot forward. Slowly lower your left knee to the floor. If your knee is sensitive, place a towel under it.
• Take a few moments to find your balance, and once you're stable, reach your left arm back to grab your left foot. Pull your foot toward your pelvis to increase the stretch. Squeezing your left glute will increase the stretch, too.
• Hold for 30 seconds. Slowly release your hold on your left foot. Come back to the high lunge position, then switch sides with your left foot forward to stretch your right hip.

Loosen Your Tight Hip Flexors: Stretch Your Psoas

Once you've rolled and stretched your quads, you also need to lengthen your psoas, one of the powerful hip flexors, which, when tight, can seriously inhibit the glutes from working.


Lunge With Reach and Twist

• From your runner's lunge, place your right hand on the outside of your right foot. Reach your left hand to the ceiling, increasing the stretch on the left side of the body. Hold for 10 to 15 seconds.
• Then place the left hand at the inside of your right foot. Twist to the right and reach your right arm to the ceiling. Hold this position for 10 to 15 seconds.
• Repeat this sequence on the other side.

Work Your Butt: Single-Leg Bridge

One you have loosened up your hips by rolling and stretching, you want to start working your butt. Working one leg at a time helps fire up the glutes, and holding one knee into the chest makes it harder use your back muscles, which is cheating in this exercise, so it's easier to feel the butt working.

Single-Leg Bridge

• Lie on your back and bring your left knee into your chest with your hands clasped just below your knee. Lift your right toes up, and press your right heel into the floor (this helps trigger the glute max to work) to lift your pelvis and torso off the floor.
• Lower your back and pelvis to the ground to complete one rep.
• Do 12 to 15 reps on each side.

If you want a more challenging variation, try this advanced variation of the single-leg bridge [5].

Work Your Butt: Basic Squat

Squats are a classic leg and butt exercise, but if you tend to overwork your quads, you need to really focus on your glutes throughout the motion by lifting your toes and concentrating on pushing through your heels.

Basic Squat

• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart or slightly wider. Extend your hands straight out in front of you to help keep your balance. You can also bend the elbows or clasp the fingers.
• Sit back and down like you're sitting into an imaginary chair. Keep your head facing forward as your upper body bends forward a bit. Rather than allowing your back to round, let your lower back arch slightly as you descend.
• Lower down so your thighs are as parallel to the floor as possible, with your knees over your ankles. Press your weight back into your heels to fire up your glutes.
• Push through your heels, feeling the glutes engage, to return to standing.
• Do 12 to 15 reps to complete one set.

Hold a set of dumbbells to make this exercise more challenging.

Work Your Butt: Romanian Deadlift

This move is a great way to activate the back of the legs and the glutes. Adding a little squeeze of the butt when you return to standing helps remind your backside to work.


Romanian Deadlift

• Holding the barbell (or two dumbbells at your sides), keep your arms straight and knees slightly bent.
• Slowly bend at your hip joint, not your waist, and lower the weight as far as possible without rounding your back, which should remain straight. Looking forward, not at the ground, will help you avoid rounding your back. Keep the weights close to your legs, almost touching.
• Squeeze your glutes to slowly pull yourself up. Be sure not to use your back or round your spine!
• Do 12 reps to complete one set.

Work Your Butt: Single-Leg Toe Touch

This move combines all the booty benefits of single-leg squats and single-leg deadlifts, but is much kinder to the knees. You can hold medium weights to the move to make it more challenging, but even without the weights, you will feel your butt working.


Single-Leg Toe Touch

• Begin standing with all your weight on your left foot.
• Keeping your spine long, reach forward, bending your left knee and touching your fingers to the floor a few inches in front of your toes. Keep your abs engaged to stabilize your torso. Your right leg will go behind you to help you balance.
• Press your left heel into the ground as you lift your torso to stand, bringing the right foot to touch next to the left foot. This completes one rep.
• Do 12 to 15 reps per leg for one set.

Work Your Butt: Side Stepping Squat With Band

The previous exercises focus mainly on the glute max, but this move is great for working the glute medius, located on the sides of the pelvis, and this muscle can "go to sleep" too. The glute med stabilizes the pelvis and prevents it from swaying side to side. All that swaying can wreak havoc on the knees, hips, and lower back too.


Side Stepping Squat With Band

• Place a resistance band around your ankles. Start with a lighter band and work your way up to a heavier band.
• Begin standing with feet directly underneath your hips and your hands on your hips.
• Squat halfway down and sidestep to the right, leading with your heel to make the glute muscles engage as far as you can manage without allowing your knees to rotate toward each other. Bring the left leg toward the right with enough space to keep some resistance in the band. Concentrate on keeping your pelvis level as you move sideways.
• Step to the right 10 times, then reverse, stepping to the left 10 times. Repeat for three sets.