What’s the Best Butt Exercise?

Studies that have been done on electrical activity (EMG) of muscles in the butt show that two different exercises cause your glutes to grunt the hardest:

1. Prone bent leg hip extension against manual resistance. Yep, that’s a mouthful. Basically, the move involves getting into a crawl position with hands and feet on the ground and then kicking out behind you with one leg – against a partner who is manually resisting your kicking force. Of course, you could also do this exercise against resistance such an elastic band, but it’s not quite as effective as having a partner resist your kicking force.
2. Standing butt squeezes with a wide stance and feet turned out. This one is a bit hard to describe, but I’m going to give you the description from one of my favorite butt-experts, Bret Contreras, who says:

“From a standing position, take a moderate to wide stance and flare the feet out slightly. Now squeeze the glutes as hard as possible for 30 seconds. Make ‘fists’ to increase the neural drive through irradiation. Just do this one time.”