Building The Butt And Legs You Desire

I was asked if I would do a fitness tip of the day on Building the Butt and Legs:

1) You can do all the bodyweight squats in the world or no weight stepups, and single leg kickbacks until you die. Without using weight you will not overload the glutes, hamstrings and quads with enough stress to force growth. Understand that your lower back, glutes, quads etc combined are a very very strong group of muscles even if you are not. They support the weight of your body every day, all day.

2) Extensive cardio will absolutely inhibit lower body development. I get all these emails from men and women telling me they squat and train their lower body so hard but cant seem to build their legs or butt. Then I see they are doing 45 minutes of cardio everyday or other day. Well no shit. There ya go. More and more professional bodybuilders have turned to doing 10-12 mins of high intensity cardio each day as they cut down for a show, the same with figure and bikini competitors. That is it!! The truth is all that cardio will costs you the precious muscle you have built. Jay Cutler had a great article in Official Muscular Development Magazine talking about when he switched from doing all the LISS cardio to HIIT for max 10 minutes per day, he not only retained more muscle but got leaner faster.

3) Train your lower body 2-3 times per week. Yes i said it!! Your lower body can handle far more stress than you realize. Doing one leg workout per week is living in your comfort zone. You want results? Get your booty int he squat rack 2-3 times per week. Especially you women. Thank me in 60 days when you are proud of that ass you have built!!

4) Focus on these core lifts to develop the glutes, quads and hamstrings. ESPECIALLY YOU WOMEN. Barbell squats, strait leg deadlifts, walking weighted lunges, weighted bench stepups. Doing just these exercises alone will give you dramatic results. Stop wasting your time in booty sculpt classes using no weight and doing 30+ reps.

5) The stance you use when you squat. Squatting with the feet paralell and toes strait ahead targets the outer part of the quadriceps. To hit more of the glutes and your VMO, turn your feet so they point at 10 and 2, feet at shoulder width or slightly wider. We call this an “athletic stance” squat.

Hope this helps, keep grinding

-JD