A question I get often is how to grow a booty without building up the quads. It’s a valid concern with some of the women I coach who may already be satisfied with their quad development and want to create balance with bigger glutes.
I have to assume in this situation that the “thighs” someone is referring to when they ask this is the entire upper leg musculature – quads, abductors, adductors, and hamstrings. This is a critical distinction because if we’re talking about all these muscles, you end up cutting out a lot of beneficial exercises – bulgarians, squat variations, split squats, lunges, trap bar deadlifts, step-ups, step-downs, pistol squats, and so on. Even hip thrusts are off the table because it involves a considerable amount of quad activation in addition to targeting glutes.
Other times I’m asked this question, women are referring only to their quads, which provides a bit more wiggle room in terms of exercise selection.
Where does this leave your booty aspirations?
By now we know that there’s no such thing as “spot reduction,” but with adequate stimulus to a muscle group, we can create adaptations and muscle growth in a particular area. This is what we often see in traditional bodybuilding split programs.
Exercises that will help you grow the glutes without targeting the quad musculature:
- Barbell Glute Bridge
- Banded hip abductions and adductions
- Standing and kneeling glute kickbacks
- Bodyweight or banded single leg hip thrusts with shoulders elevated*
- Double elevated bodyweight or banded hip thrust*
- Hyperextensions
- Cable pull-throughs
- RDLs
*Has high degree of quad acitvation but using bands or bodyweight makes it less likely that it will cause the quads to grow large in size.
Exercises that will build up glutes without growing the adductors (inner thigh area – another concern some women have):
- Barbell Glute Bridge
- Standing or kneeling glute kickbacks
- Bodyweight or banded single leg hip thrusts with shoulders elevated*
- Double elevated bodyweight or banded hip thrust*
- Hyperextensions
- Cable pull-throughs
- RDLs
- Side lying leg raises
- Clamshells
Your body is a functional unit. Act accordingly.
I’m a big fan of all lower body exercises, especially those that improve knee and hip function – two areas where the majority of people tend to suffer.
Even when glute development is the main goal, I encourage my ladies to continue other lower body exercises in order to maintain the quad or adductors’ health, shape, functionally, and strength. You may not aspire to have thick inner thighs, and I can assure you that training them won’t make them grow in size when it’s programmed intelligently.
The adductors serve a distinct purpose: to provide lower body stability during walking, squatting, going up the stairs, or climbing up a ladder. It also supports explosive activities like jumping running, or moving laterally. Are you really going to stop doing doing these things to avoid targeting the adductors? Probably not.
The body functions as a unit, so while you may not want to develop the size of the adductors it’s still important to target them in ways that keep you healthy and injury-free during normal daily activities.
As a coach, I may program isometric Copenhagen planks or banded adductor exercises while eliminating wide-stance squats.
The quads serve to help you straighten the knee, extend the hip, and moves and stabilizes the kneecap. To avoid all quad exercises would put you at greater risk for injury long-term. Keeping this muscle group strong and healthy is necessary, but I may program split squat, goblet squats, or single leg box squats at a moderate weight/low volume to prevent growth. Ultimately, a good nutrition plan will prevent body fat increasing in these areas which is what contributes to the illusion of “big quads” or concerns of too much inner thigh development.
No ‘Bad’ Exercises
Social media fitness influencers love to demonize certain exercises for likes and shares, but after 13+ years of coaching a variety of men and women at all ages and seasons of life, I feel confident in saying that there are no “bad” exercises.
There are exercises that are a better fit for specific goals and individuals, and there are other exercises that won’t be as helpful to meet someone’s needs. It doesn’t make an exercise “bad”; it’s simply not right for you right now.
If you want to grow your glutes and make your lower body more proportional, then yes, avoid quad exercises for some time and hammer out those glutes for a cycle or two. Keep in mind though that some of the best physiques in the world – the professional bikini/bodybuilding competitors – are still squatting and deadlifting and doing exercises that target the quads. But they keep their body fat at an appropriate level that reduces the appearance of “large legs.”
In my professional opinion, training the quads with progressive overload will enhance the look of your physique and make your legs look smaller or more shapely as long as body fat is maintained at a decent level. High body fat will keep the quads looking bigger even if you’re avoiding the quad exercises mentioned above. This is why spot reduction doesn’t work and progressive overload is king.
It’s helpful to have a coach writing your programs and guiding you along on your fitness journey so that you can eliminate all the guesswork. This is where a lot of women get lost. They try to piecemeal a training session based off what “bad” exercises they should avoid and get frustrated when things aren’t changing.
It’s time to stop that frustration and start training with intention and purpose.
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