The 5 Best Glute Exercises With Resistance Bands

Looking for a great booty? Well, you’re in the right place. In this article, I will describe you all the essential exercises you need to build the glutes you’re looking for.

Sadly, there are many misconceptions about working your glutes right, especially when it comes to the right exercise selection that will make you leave a lot of results on the table. Don’t make the commonly spread mistakes and do it right.

How To Build Your Glutes

Building your glutes, often times, is just about doing isolation exercises and neglecting the base lower body development. In the below exercises you will find everything you need to train your glutes without neglecting everything around it.

Important Tips For Glute Exercises With Resistance Bands

Here are some general point you should keep in mind when training your glutes with resistance bands.

Emphasis On Compound! Focus on compound exercise when training glutes instead of isolation. This will make sure that you train your whole lower body and will let you create enough resistance to stimulate your glutes.

Go Hard and Heavy! The glute muscles is one of our strongest and biggest muscles. That means they can produce a lot of force. Think about it…they are moving all of your body weight through space. That’s why when training your glutes and wanting them to grow you need to use a resistance that will stimulate progress. So grab a band that will allow you to perform around 10 clean reps (but not more).

Time Under Tension! Don’t just do your reps as fast as you can, you need to put your muscles under tension long enough to gain. Squeeze at full contraction and hold for a second there and then slowly return instead of “letting go” quickly. This will add more gains to every workout.

The Best Glute Exercises To Do With Resistance Bands

I have here all the exercises from compound to isolation exercises, the order is not a ranking from “best to worst”.

Exercise #1 – Hip Thrust

Let’s be honest, the hip thrust is the exercise you can’t ignore when you build your glutes. It will not only give your glutes a great workout, but it will also train your stability.

1. Find something that is about knee-height (couch or whatever)
2. Place your upper back on it and place the resistance bands under your feet in the middle of your foot
3. Now wrap each side of the band around your thighs
4. When doing the movement, make sure to also move your upper body and don’t keep it stiff, this can put a lot of additional stress on your lower back
5. When you push up, imagine you would press a penny between your butt cheeks to get the maximum contraction of your glutes
6. Hold the position for 1 second before you lower your hips back down

Important! Please also add a compound exercise along with hip thrusts like deadlifts or squats. They will also work your glutes but also the other muscles in your lower body.

You can find more about doing deadlifts with resistance bands here and also about how to do squats right with resistance bands here.

Variations

You can also overload more when doing the hip thrust either with one leg at a time or with a door anchor. Alternatively, you can also do pull-throughs instead of hip thrusts, especially when you don’t have any bench or something comparable to do hip thrusts on.

Exercise #2 – Donkey Kicks

This is probably the next popular exercise for building solid glutes. You can do them either with small loop bands or regular resistance bands as well.

1. Get on the floor with your arms directly under your shoulder and your knees below your hips in about 90-degree angle
2. Take the band between your hands and wrap it around one foot
3. Now stretch your leg back, without leaning back and forth and without raising your leg up, try to keep it extended
4. Hold the extracted motion for about 1 second before lowering your leg back down

Find more tips to do this exercise in perfect form here.

Variations

You can also do donkey kick by using a door anchor. This variation lets you be more stable since you are standing instead of kneeling.

You can find more details on the different variations for donkey kicks here.

Exercise #3 – Fire Hydrants (Isolation)

The fire hydrants are great for some isolation work on your glutes. Perfect after finishing your main compound or heavy exercises.

1. Put a mini band right above your knees
2. Get on the floor with your arms directly under your shoulder and your knees below your hips in about 90-degree angle
3. Now lift one leg to the side until it is parallel to the ground (or almost at least)
4. Hold this top position for about 1 second before lowering your leg back down

Find more tips to do this exercise in perfect form here.

Variations

The clams are a great variation to donkey kicks. You are basically are doing the same movement, but you’re lying down on your side. This will allow you to put greater focus on contracting the glute muscles.

You can find more details on the different variations for fire hydrants here.

Warm-Up Exercise #1 – Glute Bridge

The glute bridges are perfect to get ready for a lower body workout or to pre-exhaust your glutes for some heavy work. They won’t be enough to stimulate your glutes for some serious growth.

1. Lay down on the floor and place your arms to the side of your body
2. Bend your knees and place your feet half a foot away from your butt
3. Now lift your butt until your upper body and your thighs form a straight line
4. Hold this position for a second
5. Lower your butt until it touches the ground and lift it up again for the next rep

Find more tips to do this exercise in perfect form here.

Variations

Also try these great variations of glute bridges. These are way more challenging and require more coordination.

You can find more details on the different variations for glute bridges here.

Warm-Up Exercise #2 – Monster Walks / Lateral Walk

Yes, despite many recommendations this is actually more a warm-up exercise. I know that many use it for building glutes, but honestly, it’s no exercise that really will work your glutes enough to get long-term progress.

My personal most favorite routine goes like this:

1. Take 4 steps forward and then 4 steps backwards – repeat that for 5 times
2. Straight after take 4 lateral steps to the right and the 4 to the left – repeat that for 5 times
3. Do those 2 cycles twice and your lower body will be ready for anything

Find more tips to do monster walks in perfect form here. And don’t forget to check out lateral walks right here.