Continuing on with my love affair with butts, I’ve put together another lower body workout for you, this time with emphasis on single leg work coupled with some plyometrics to help target your rear.
A couple of things to note about this workout:
We are incorporating a lot of single leg work here. I find that single leg work is not only great for improving your balance, which actually means you have to work your nervous system a little bit too, but is also great for strengthening the glute medius and other lateral stabilitzers (meaning the musles in your hips and thighs that help you from falling over).
I am also coupling many of the exercises with an explosive plyometric to take advantage of what is known as post activation potenation which is a training technique that’s used a lot in the strength and conditioning world to help athletic performance like jumping and sprinting. PAP as it is known, is the theory that you can increase muscle power output by combining a heavy loaded exercise with a lighter, more explosive movement.
For instance, you would do this by combining a heavy loaded squat follwed by a jump squat. However, I should point out by saying, that this workout is based on my interpretation of PAP. Meaning, you will not see any heavy back squating here. Although many of the studies that I researched used heavy loaded exercises, I personally feel you can still get the benefits of PAP using lower load exercises that keep tension on the muscle for a long period, like an isometric-esque exercise.
You may notice that I have grouped the Bowler Squat and the Reverse Lunge with the plyo jump. The Bowler Squat and the Reverse Lunge focuses on keeping tension on the muscle fibers for a longer period of time, resembling an isometric exercise. (Isometric exercises include planks and wall sits. Your muscles are working but you’re not moving.)
Now, do I know for sure that this really works? Not exactly. I’m not in a lab hooking up my clients to EMG machines and taking muscle biopsy samples. However, I do know that my clients not only see improvement in their workout performance, but also in re-shaping and developing nicer looking butts.
And really, isn’t that all that matters?