Jen Curtis
- Dec 11, 2018

Sample Glute Circuit #1

There are a million different ways to put together an effective glute circuit.

Here's a nice little banded glute activation warm-up for leg day.

Pregnancy and postpartum friendly. (Many of my trainees will recognize these). - I did the following with a "extra heavy" band (from Ali Express)

. 🍑 Airsquat X 12

🍑Monster Walk, backwards and forwards

🍑 Hip Thrust x 12 with a 10 second hold at the end

A few great things about this kind of circuit:

✔ Requires very little equipment

✔ Low impact

✔ Will get your hear trate up if you do them back to back (so can be useful as both a warm-up and a conditioning circuit at the end).

✔ Involves different TYPES of movements, activating different muscle fibres in different ways.

For those gym geeks I'm going to get a little technical. (Skip this paragraph if that's not for you). Both the squat and hip thrust involve hip extension, but the squat involves a contraction of the glutes when the fibres are stretched out (passive insufficiency) and the hip thrust involves a peak contraction when the fibres are at their shortest (active insufficiency). The monster walk involves a different movement altogether, abduction. - It could also be a great circuit for AFTER your strength work, again, heart rate goes up and glutes get extra work, but won't make you sore. - If this seems like a lot, if you haven't done strength training before, want to train at home or in a gym, it could be your strength circuit in itself.

Or if you are pregnant or just getting back into things after having a baby, you might start with exercises like this. You might only start with a half squat before increasing the range of motion.

- A lot of women ask how they can train their core during pregnancy and after birth, and almost invariably (unless they need to heal a diastasis) I tell them to leave it alone and do more glute work. - Pregnancy poses a new problem of how to maintain as much muscle mass as possible without the heavy, heavy weights. According to research done by Bret Contreras, glutes respond well to a variety of different movements and rep ranges. So these body weight movements can help build and maintain muscle.

- #legday