…and I say the SQUAT hands down if I had to pick the best one. If you do not do any other leg work (or hate leg work as I do) then do squats. There are many variations for doing squats and this is great because it will keep your body guessing.
Why do I say squats are the best for the booty? Well, it’s the best compound exercise for your lower body period. The squat works all of your leg muscles plus your butt. When you go into a squat and come back up, you should be feeling the weight/resistance (coming back up) in heels of your feet and you will feel the resistance in all of your legs and also in your butt depending on how low you go.
Keep doing squats on your legs day and your booty will firm up, shape up, round off and sit up high. After losing 60lbs with doing no major strength training exercises my booty was gone, didn’ t think I’d get it back, started doing squats on a regular basis and voila! I am now bootiful again!
Ready for the list of squat variations I find the most effective?
- standard squat (standing position, go down into a squat, keeping your knees behind your toes with your arms out in front of you)
- plie squat (open up legs wide, toes pointing out, go down and back up - targets inner thighs and glutes)
- one leg squat (lift one leg off the floor and squat with the other - encourages balance)
- half squat (back leg elevated knee height on an object and squat with one leg)
- prisoner squats (squat all the way down to your feet, holding your hands behind your head, keep back straight and come back up)
- one leg prisoner squats (same as prisoner squats, but only using one leg - tough!)
And that’s it.
bK what about my aching knees? Well, beginners will have some knee pains because 1. most of them do squats incorrectly, 2. you may be heavy and yes, you will feel the weight in your knees until you start shedding the extra pounds, or 3. you just may have bad knees.
3. Bad knees, anyone?
I’ll start at the bottom of the totem pole. If you have bad knees then you shouldn’t be doing squats at all - check with your doctor for advice. There are some floor exercises that target the glutes and in my opinion, here are the best ones (in my opinion)…
- outer thigh leg lifts (get on all fours and lift your leg to the side with a bent knee - works outer thigh and works the glutes)
- donkey kicks (get on all fours and kick your leg up with your knee bent - feeling should be in the hamstring and in the glutes)
- glute squeezes (lay on the floor, lift your butt and squeeze, feet flat on the floor, hold position,bring your butt down and do it all over again)
- plank (holding a plank strengthens your core, your arms AND your glutes)
Another great glute exercise (that is not a floor exercise, but I highly recommend it) is the Firewalker. I do firewalkers ALL the time…ooh it burns! If you do not feel a burn then your band is not tight enough, period. This exercise hits your outer thighs and glutes heavy! Instead of me trying to explain how to do it, I’ll show you…you will need a tight resistance band in order to perform it…
Doesn’t it look easy? Do NOT be fooled! Tough. Several sets of these your bottom will be on fire.
2. I’m too big to be doing a squat!
WRONGO!!! This topic shouldn’t even be an issue, but it’s one of the biggest issues as to why a lot of people do not workout because it hurts. Think about it this way, if you are heavy (overweight) and are not used to lifting your own weight up off the ground continuously then some body parts and bones are going to hurt. You will need to bring down your intensity and speed to NOT hurt yourself and to complete your workouts in full.
For example, I remember being 220lbs doing jumping jacks. Not only did my belly hurt, my knees, feet hurt and I had a few mishaps where I needed to run to the bathroom? Over share? Maybe. But I’m just trying to keep it real. Again, you will need to bring down your intensity. So, instead of doing standard jacks you will want to flap your arms as you would do during a standard jack and move one leg from side to side alternating until you body is able to handle your body weight.
How do you bring down the intensity when doing squats? How about not squatting so far down. Another way you can do squats without hurting yourself is by doing chair squats. You hold your arms out in front of you, legs positioned a little wider than shoulder width, go to squat down and sit in the chair and go back up never dropping your arms. This modified way of doing squats work.
NOTES ABOUT FORM/POSTURE!!! Remember, never let your knees go over your toes and make sure your arms are straight out in front of you parallel to the floor. Everything should be aligned correctly in order to pull off any squat. Also, you don’t have to go all the way down in the chair to sit, you can just go half way down and then back up. There is no excuse why someone should not being squats if he or she is overweight.
1. Squats make my knees hurt, why bother?
Have you checked your form / posture doing while doing squats. I like to have a mirror around so I can every so often take a look at my form while I’m doing squats.
When performing a squat…
- you will need to look straight ahead and not up in the sky and not down on the grassy knoll
- you will need to plant your feet into the ground (no feet movements at all), spread legs a little more than shoulder width apart (for a standard squat - go wider if you want to do sumo squats) while holding your balance as you go into a squat
- you will also want to, again, hold your arms straight out in front of you making them parallel with the floor
- you will need to start lowering yourself down as if you are going to sit into a chair and this means that your chest is moving slighty foward while you are keeping your back flat (no arching!) and at the same time you will need to move your butt back away from your knees
- you will only need to go down as far as knee height (unless your are going for an Olympic squat and only then will you need to lower your butt down to your ankles)
- you will need bring yourself back up into a standing position by moving all of the resistance/pressure/body weight, prior to return, into your the heels of your feet
- lastly, you will need to just push up into a planted feet standing position
In conclusion, Coming out of a squat you should be feeling resistance in your quads and glutes. Secondary muscles being worked are the calves, hamstrings and your lower back. The more you do the squat the burn in your legs and butt will start to fire up. That means your legs are working, means you’re burning fat, means your building muscle, means your sculpting and shaping your lower body.
I think I covered everything…hmmmm. Oh and if you want to use added weight to your squats you can by using a weight vest and/or a barbell or dumbbells see Stumptuous.com HERE for instructions (this is the website where I learned how to squat as a beginner).
If anybody has any feedback or comments to add to this post do so below. 
Enjoy doing squats!!!
Popularity: 6% [?]
Don’t forget the deadlift! This is especially good if you lack a booty so to speak (like me)!
On my list of 1-10 for good booty exercises, one leg deadlift would be at #3 because I find that doing one leg deadlift (with or without weight) is supper for building nice booty muscles. As far as regular stiff leg deadlifts goes, I would say that half squats are better because it’s so much easier to get into those internal glute muscles…deep down in there as well as the outside and surrounding areas. You get more variations out of a squat than you can for a still leg deadlift as well. And for those who do not know, the stiff leg deadlift hits the lower back, glutes and hamstrings and the deadlift hits all of the back muscles. So for glutes you want to do stiff legged deadlifts and with very good form.