better butts: a how-to on thicccness
Ever see those influencers on instagram with the tiny stomachs and huge butts and wonder: that looks fake? Trust your instincts, it often is. Brazilian Butt Lifts + Fat grafts are a real thing, where fat is removed from unwanted areas (stomach, low back, thighs) and transferred to your butt with some thoughtful shaping. A good ol’ two birds with one fat stone.
I’m not here to judge, seems like a good investment if you’re monetizing that fat transfer. What does bother me is when I see them advertising their workout plans, especially their glute exercises, giving thousands of people the impression that they worked for what their momma (surgeon) gave them.
Aside from the fact that their workouts aren’t the cause of their bubble butts, they often lack even a simple understanding of the science of thicccness. So, here’s a brief scientific review on thicccness:
Your butt is made of muscles: your glutes. There are only two ways to make your butt bigger, add muscle or add fat. Seeing as we can’t target fat addition without surgery, and that most people wouldn’t want to risk adding fat anyway, let’s talk about adding muscle.
Your body makes muscles thicker when it feels too weak to do something, not when it doesn’t have the endurance to do something.
Why? Muscle cross sectional area (aka muscle thicccness) increases force production, i.e. strength, for short term exercise.
For super high reps or endurance (like 30 min on the stairs, or 60s of bodyweight squats), increasing thicccness isn’t beneficial for my body - improving oxygen delivery is, so my body responds by improving the blood flow to the area instead of getting thicccer.
That means if I want a bigger butt I have to challenge my butt with weights that it has a hard time doing, not adding 20 reps to an exercise I can already do 30 times or spending an hour on the stairs.
There are two ways to manipulate weights to get this thicccness: metabolic stress and mechanical stress. The technical terms don’t matter, but the weight, duration, rest, and reps do.
Metabolic Stress
Not your “metcon” or “HIIT” type of metabolic exercise. Though those are great workouts, sets are often too long or too high in reps to be useful for building a butt.
Essence: moderate-heavy weight with medium-high reps.
Here’s what metabolic stress looks like in practice:
3-5 sets per exercise
8-20 reps
Heavy enough weight where you can barely do your last rep
30-90 seconds of rest.
Example: Goblet Squats for 4 sets of 12 reps at 35 lbs with 45 seconds of rest.
Mechanical Stress
Also known as classical “strength training”, this is the tougher option to adopt if you’re weight-shy.
Essence: Very heavy weight with very low reps.
Here’s what it looks like in practice:
4-7 sets per exercise
1-8 reps
Heavy enough weight where you can barely do your last rep
3-5 minutes of rest
Example: 5 sets of hip thrusts working from 8 reps down to 2, increasing the weight each time from 75% up to 95% of the max weight I can do.
Though lifting more weight may not interest you it’s a measurable indicator that you’re building a bigger butt. It’s just quick maths.
More weight = Bigger butt
Bigger Butt = More weight
How I incorporate both:
For my clients, I’ll either combine the two types of stress in a given workout or I’ll cycle a few weeks at one type of stimuli and switch. For the first approach, that would mean a heavy strength exercises to start a workout on followed up with your higher rep exercises in the same workout.
For cycling, 4-6 weeks of metabolic stress then 4-6 weeks of mechanical. Cycle back and forth till you need a new pair of jeans.
Exercises
I’ll be posting some of my go to butt exercises I use for myself and clients to my instagram (@vicesfitness) weekly. There’ll be a weekly Hump Day series posted on my story/highlights as well as a “Better Butts” video series going over exercise technique. Follow a long for the ride.
