Glute Gain Secrets: Is Twice a Week Key For Glute Growth?

So, you’re on a mission to grow those glutes and unleash their full potential. But you’ve only got time to train them twice a week. Will that be enough to reach your goals? Let’s dive into the world of glute growth and discover the ideal approach to achieving your goals.

The glutes are already worked out enough if you do heavy lower body workouts so a separate glute workout is not necessary for slight growth for most people. Adding glute isolation exercises twice a week will produce significant growth if following a solid workout program.

Keep reading below to find out why two workouts is enough and more isn’t necessarily better.

Is Training Glutes Twice a Week Enough For Muscle Growth?

So let’s say you want to grow your glutes. Are two workouts a week enough to grow your them?

That means adding two extra glute workouts with exercises that heavily targets them to your normal leg workout is going to produce significant muscle growth. It’s not necessary for most people to actually add extra glute work if you’re already doing squats, deadlift and lunges. However, some people really want to prioritize growing glutes and in that case adding exercises like glute bridges is a good idea.

Most muscle growth happens in the first 24-48 hours after a workout. Muscles usually recover fully in about 48 hours. The glutes are large muscles and are trained in combination with other large muscles. That means it can take a bit longer to fully recover them back to their original strength. This means it would be quite hard to fit in more than 2 glute workouts per week for most people.

Adding on extra workouts that heavily target the glutes will mean that you might get a bit of extra growth out of the glutes but you start diminishing the results you can get from quad and hamstring workouts. That’s because the exercises that heavily target the quads and hamstrings also heavily use the glutes. That means if your glutes aren’t fully recovered, you can lift less weight/do fewer reps on other exercises and so your quads and hamstrings get less training.

Two workouts a week strikes the right balance between training and recovery, not only for the glutes but also the other lower body muscles. However, if you really want to prioritize the glutes, you could do three workouts per week with direct glute work as long as you manage the recovery. That means you have to be careful selecting your exercises for every workout because deadlifting or squatting heavy 3x a week is not something most people can do long term.

Also, don’t forget the mental part. Most people don’t enjoy leg day. It’s heavy, painful and generally not very enjoyable. Most people are happy to get one leg day a week, let alone two. People like to skip leg day because it’s not fun. Keep track of what you can handle mentally. Also because a heavy leg day will likely reduce the amount of energy you can give to a workout the next day even if it’s another body part.

The whole lower body is one system that works together and the glutes are at the center of the body so they’re used for many movements. That means they do get some stimulation if you follow a full body workout routine, even before targeting the glutes directly.

That means a separate glute workout is probably not necessary. Just add on 1-2 glute isolation exercises after a workout where you train the lower body. That way you can skip the warm up sets and save some time. I would recommend doing the isolation movements at the end of the workout otherwise you might not be able to properly do the other lifts.

Optimal Frequency for Glute Growth

For most individuals that are including intense lower body workouts into their routine, that provides sufficient glute stimulation. This means a separate glute workout may not be necessary for slight growth.

However, many people want to develop their bum more than the rest of their legs. I wouldn’t recommend completely skipping all other leg exercises but adding extra glute exercises on top.

If you want to prioritize significant glute growth, incorporating targeted glute isolation exercises twice a week can work wonders, especially when part of a well-structured workout program. That means two workouts aside from another intense leg workout.

People that want to just focus on the glutes and disregard everything else, you can get away with three workouts a week.

Unleashing the Power of Glute Isolation Exercises

If you’re eager to see substantial glute gains, adding two extra glute workouts to your regular leg training regimen with exercises that heavily target the glutes can lead to remarkable muscle growth.

The glutes are the strongest muscle in the body and the exercises will have to be quite heavy and/or use high repetitions to get significant growth.

Consider exercises like glute bridges to focus on those prized glutes.

Balancing Glute and Other Muscle Workouts

While adding glute-focused workouts can promote extra growth, be mindful of not diminishing the results from your quad and hamstring workouts. Many exercises that target the quads and hamstrings also heavily engage the glutes. If your glutes aren’t fully recovered, it can impact your performance on other exercises, reducing overall training effectiveness.

The Sweet Spot: Two Workouts a Week for Glutes and Beyond

Training your glutes twice a week strikes a harmonious balance between growth and recovery, benefiting not just your glutes but also other lower body muscles. However, if glute growth is your primary goal, three workouts per week with direct glute work may be considered, as long as recovery is carefully managed. Keep in mind that maintaining heavy deadlifts or squats thrice a week is often unsustainable for most individuals in the long run.

Mental Fortitude and Leg Day Fun

Leg day is known for its intensity and challenges, and not everyone enjoys it. Striking a balance between physical and mental strength is vital. Remember, pushing through multiple leg days may not be enjoyable for everyone. Listen to your body and consider your mental well-being when designing your workout routine.

The Integrated Lower Body System

The glutes are essential for numerous movements as the center of the lower body system. A full-body workout routine can provide some glute stimulation even before targeting them directly. This may make a separate glute workout unnecessary.

Streamlining Your Glute Workouts

For efficient training, consider adding 1-2 glute isolation exercises after your regular lower body workout. This allows you to skip warm-up sets and save time. To ensure proper form and performance on other lifts, perform the isolation movements at the end of your workout.

Amount Of Workouts And Training Volume

As you might understand from above that one or two leg days (possibly with glute isolation exercises) is enough to build muscle in the glutes. One more workout a week might help you grow more but you’ll notice potential recovery issues. More than 3 workouts a week is going to be problematic for many people if you do a decent amount of volume per workout. If you do more workouts, you’ll have to reduce the amount of heavy sets you do per workout to make sure you can recover properly. However, that means every workout is going to be less effective so you’re spending your time less efficiently.

One thing to understand is that the amount of workouts doesn’t say much. Compare two people working out the same body part in any gym and there will be big differences in amount of sets, repetitions, weight and effort. Working out a body part twice a week by doing a 1 bodyweight squat isn’t going to be enough for anything. Even doing that every day of the week isn’t going to do anything because that’s not something your body isn’t used to so there is no need to adapt. However, if you use heavy weights (for you), perform 8 heavy barbell squat sets aside from warmups and do that twice a week, you’ll see big results.

Everyone has to balance their training with the recovery. The more workouts you do, the fewer sets you should do per workout so you can recover in time for the next workout. In total you can still do more sets per week with more workouts but then you also start running into the problem of time. There are only so many days in the week. Focus on one body part too much and it starts cutting into the training time for other body parts.

Especially with glutes, you’ve got to think about what else you’re doing during the week. Playing soccer twice a week? Your glutes will take a beating there already, adding more than one glute workout is likely to result in too much fatigue and makes recovery difficult which means injuries become more likely.

So What Do You Actually Need To Grow Your Glutes?

There are four main factors you should get right;

Exercise selection
Amount of sets
Amount of repetitions per set
Resistance
Progression

Exercise selection

Image of a woman deadlifting — The barbell deadlift is one of the best lower body compound movements

As said above, there are many exercises that use the glutes. Most leg exercises will use the glutes to some degree. But to really grow the glutes (more than the rest of the leg), you have to do some isolation exercises on top of that. Look at exercises like the glute bridge.

The bulk of your glute training is still going to come from the compound exercises. Think about deadlifts, lunges, squats, leg pressing, etc. Pick 1-2 compound lower body exercises and add (barbell) glute bridges on top of that if you really want to focus on the glutes. You can change up the exercises between workouts.

It’s difficult to train the glutes in a full range of motion with heavy load. Most exercises, even the glute bridge, use quite limited range of motion. For that reason it’s a good idea to do at least one exercise a week that uses a longer range of motion (knees further towards the chest.) Lunges with long steps are a good option for this.

Sets

4 heavy sets per week (spread out over the workouts) is considered the minimum effective dose of volume for glutes. That’s the minimum amount to see some growth. On the other hand it’s also not recommended to do more than 12 heavy sets per week and probably less if you’re a beginner. That is sets of direct isolation exercises or exercises that heavily target the glutes as part of a compound movement. That’s why most people don’t actually need the isolation exercises since they already get the stimulation they need through other exercises.

If you want one lower body workout per week, aim for 8-10 heavy sets that target the glutes (spread out over different exercises.) If you want to do two workouts per week, aim for 10-12 sets per week. If you do more than that, recovery could become a problem. If you don’t recover fully before the next workout, the extra work can be detrimental. You might not notice this the first or second week but in the long run it will become an issue.

Repetitions

Glutes should be trained with 5-20 repetitions per set, like most other muscles. Lower repetitions (with higher weight) tends to build more strength while higher repetitions (with less resistance) build more muscle.

Using a combination of sets with low and high repetitions is a good idea to give the muscle different training impulses. This would be a good use of two workouts: one workout with heavy weight and low repetitions, the second workout with lighter weights and high repetitions.

Also, in general it’s a good idea to do the compound exercises like barbell deadlifts with heavy weights/low reps and isolation exercises like a leg curl with higher repetitions. If you only have one workout a week, it’s a good idea to change the amount of reps between exercises.

Resistance

The last part of the puzzle is the weight or resistance to use. Most people will use dumbbells or barbells to work out the glutes but DIY solutions, bodyweight or resistance bands are also an option. In the end it doesn’t matter that much what you use, it’s all about how difficult it is for your to move that weight.

You want to use a resistance level/weight that you can complete the wanted amount of repetitions in a set with while keeping about 2-3 repetitions in reserve. Don’t go to failure on every set or even the last set of every exercise. There are several research papers about the results of training to failure but they have conflicting results. Some conclude it’s beneficial for muscle growth, others say it doesn’t matter and others yet say it’s detrimental.

Besides results the injury risk of going to failure is higher which is not worth it in my opinion. Especially not on exercises where you are under a heavy barbell. In a machine the risks are lower.

This means you have to balance between the weight being heavy enough to be challenging but not too heavy so you can’t finish all the sets. It’s a fine line that will take a while to find.

Progression

Possibly the most important thing for getting sustained muscle growth is progression. Muscle growth is the bodies way of adapting to the stress of the last workouts. That means the next workout should be a bit heavier than the last one to give the body a new level to adapt to.

The easiest way to do that is to add a small amount of weight to the exercises every workout. In the beginning, this will be pretty easy although after a while, adding weight becomes more difficult. Trying to increase the amount of repetitions can also be a good way to progress if a weight increase isn’t possible.