4 Exercises to Tone Your Butt

Get your ass into shape with these incredibly easy, super-quick butt-toning exercises from Amanda Butler of The Fhitting Room, a New York City fitness club known for its high intensity workouts.

1. The Squat.

Why do We Squat
Strength / Muscle Building – If you want to get stronger and/or build muscle, the squat is a great choice! The squat is a movement where (provided you’re healthy and have good form) you can add on some serious lean weight. As a compound movement allowing you to recruit multiple large muscle groups under heavy load, you’ve got yourself a recipe for stimulating muscle growth and increasing strength, triggering the release of anabolic hormones and providing a strong stimulus to the muscles for adaptation in increased size and force production.

Fat loss – Your resting metabolic rate is directly related to the amount of fat-free or lean mass you have. Including resistance exercises in your programme like the squat, can help you preserve this lean mass and keep your metabolic rate high. The versatility of being able to alter loads and reps can help you tailor the squat to help achieve your goal.

General health – The basic, unloaded air squat can provide an all in one means of training your: balance, coordination, stability, strength and flexibility. These are all essential components for full fitness and function. Performing unloaded full range of motion squats can aid digestive health due to the intermittent compression of the colon in the bottom position and even help keep your spine healthy by facilitating rehydration of our intervertebral discs which rely on pressure changes to absorb fluid.

Taking your joints through their full range of motion can not only help to strengthen the supporting muscles around your knees, hips and ankles but prevent the loss of this range of motion. As the old saying goes “if you don’t use it, you lose it” and with so many of us in sedentary jobs and lifestyles, we could all benefit from breaking that pattern and squatting more!

2. The Squat Hold and Pulse.

Stand with your feet hip width apart, pushing your hips back so that your weight goes down into your heels again. Squat down to a 90 degree angle just as you did before. Stand back up while pressing down through the heels, but do not stand up totally straight! Make tiny up and down movements, pulsing to get that burn! Again, 2 sets of 20 reps will do it.

3. The Bridge-Up.

How to perform the glute bridge.

1. As shown in photo A above, lay flat on your back with your knees bent and feet on the floor (semi supine position)
2. Flatten your back on the ground before you lift – “Pull your belly button down.”
3. Brace your core
4. Shins should be in a vertical position
5. Drive hips and chest up at the same time, finishing as shown in photo B above.
6. Squeeze your glutes at the top of the movement and hold.

Repeat this exercise for two sets of 10 repetitions with a 5-second isometric hold at the top of the movement. Actively engaging your glutes at the peak of the contraction will ensure that you avoid any hyperextension (excessive backward movement of your thigh), and increase the neural drive to your glutes.

4. The Bridge-Up With Leg Lifts.

Take turns extending one leg at a time as you push up into bridge mode. Keep your extended leg as straight as possible for maximum toning

The results will be worth it.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images, Yoga Mat: Gaiam Yoga