Sit Less and Work Your Butt More Often to Lift and Tone your Glutes!
At my Woodland Hills Fitness Studio, I use a reformer for resistance exercises. You can target every muscle in your body on the Pilates Reformer!
Here’s a great butt exercise from Woodland Hills Fitness Trainer, Kelly Newkirk
Using spring resistance from the reformer and ankle weights, you can target your glutes. Sweep your leg all the way back until you get a complete glute contraction, hold it for a couple seconds, and then slowly lower your leg. Keep the spring and weight resistance on the glutes on the decline. This process gives you concentric, isometric and eccentric work on your glute fibers.
I like to do up to 25 reps and then add a little pulse to burn it out. We can add resistance by adding springs to make the exercise more challenging as long as we are able to maintain proper form.
This is a great exercise to lift and tone your butt for several reasons:
1. The glutes have maximal load on them when they are in full contraction. 2. There are alot of muscles working to perform this exercise, such as the abs, shoulders, back, hamstrings, and abductors.
It’s so important to reverse all the sitting we do in any given day. When we sit, our glutes are relaxed and stretched out! Sitting does the opposite of lifting and toning! Our hip flexors get tight when we sit, which tilts our pelvis forward, arches our lower back, and tightens our hamstrings. This alignment makes it hard to wake up our glute muscles and they have a difficult time contracting fully during exercise.
Try to sit less, stretch your hip flexors more, and do butt exercises a few days a week to get a lifted and toned butt!
For more information about Woodland Hills Fitness Training, check out my personal training page.
Disclaimer: Please check with your doctor and have it cleared before beginning any new exercise or diet program. I am in no way a doctor or registered dietician, my blog is opinion based and I do not claim to diagnose, treat, or cure any cause, condition or disease. All information provided is for informational purposes only; it is not medical advice and has not been approved by the FTC or FDA. Please always communicate with your doctor to make any decisions or changes regarding your health, as your doctor is the only one who knows what is right for you.