Spaniard Mimi Macias is an IFBB Pro Bikini athlete who has crafted a legendary booty with her training approach.
In this exclusive interview, this rising fitness star and qualified personal trainer shares with us her five top tips to crafting a bodacious booty.
1. Push with your heels
When training glutes focus on pushing with your heels; it will engage the glute and hamstring muscles significantly, which maximises the effectiveness of the exercise.
You’ll always find me telling my clients “toes off the floor heels only!”
2. Warm up to activate the glutes
I always start my glute session warm-up with a high-rep, light or no-weight exercise before the planned workout. For example, I would perform different activation exercises such as jump squats, glute bridges, or kickbacks 25 times each with little to no rest in between. Hip thrusts are my ultimate favourite to get the glutes firing.
3. Stretch to unlock the full potential of your glutes
A tight fascia, short and stiff muscles, and immobile joints can limit your muscle growth. But by including stretching and mobility work into your routine, you’ll elongate your muscles, improve joint function, and you’ll realign your fascia to ensure it slides smoothly and more effectively for a better range of motion.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but you have to loosen up the muscle in order to increase the tension it can generate. And increasing the tension will cause an increase in your strength, which enables you to lift heavier weights to add more muscle.
4. Don’t stick to the same routine – mix things up
Performing a variety of glute exercises helps target different aspects of the glutes. For example, mixing up the reps and sets, adding in some band work, pause reps, or constant tension imposes different stimuli on the muscle.
Working across different movement planes also targets different different glute muscles.
I’m a big fan of applying plyometric exercises when training glutes, because it helps tone and tighten those muscles. Treat your glutes like any other muscle.
And don’t neglect your diet. On the days I train glutes I take one scoop of glutamine before training and drink whey protein with some carbohydrates afterwards. I usually drink amino acids during training.
5. Shape that booty
Everyone has a different body type, which means that shape is what ultimately makes a beautiful buttock. I realise that the first thing most women want to focus on is building their butt, but having big glutes won’t necessarily mean they’re ‘nice glutes’, as this depends on your proportions and overall shape. This has led to scenario where we often see someone with large glutes, but they lack the shape needed to define this prominent muscle group.
My advice is to identify the areas where improvement is needed. For instance, some women may need to develop the gluteus maximus, while others may need to focus more on the medius or minimus to craft the ideal shape. Once your buttocks start to grow you may also consider performing exercises that will round or lift your glutes, which happens when you strengthen them.
And don’t be afraid to do cardio – you won’t ‘burn’ your glutes if you select the right style of training. I suggest walking on the treadmill at an incline of 15 and speed of 3.4. Otherwise, work the Stairmaster to get that divine definition.
Author: Pedro van Gaalen
When he’s not writing about sport or health and fitness, Pedro is probably out training for his next marathon or ultra-marathon. He’s worked as a fitness professional and as a marketing and comms expert. He now combines his passions in his role as managing editor at Fitness magazine.
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