So, you want to grow your glutes, but you can’t get to the gym.

Or maybe the gym is the worst thing imaginable, like being teabagged by Donald Trump.

Well, your only option is to grow your glutes at home.

It’s pretty simple and can be done with very little equipment.

All it takes is a clever approach, a little know-how and a lot of hard work (on your part).

Bodyweight home workouts can still grow your glutes when done properly (but a few bands and weights would be even better).

So let’s dive straight into it.

Get Your Glutes Activated

No, I’m not talking about glute activation warm-ups because they suck.

I’m talking about mastering the Posterior Pelvic Tilt (PPT).

To do a PPT, tuck your pelvis forward and under slightly.

And squeeze your butt.

This will help you to stop arching your back on movements like glute bridges and hip thrusts.

It might feel a little weird, and your range of motion may feel less, but trust me, you’ll feel your glutes like never before.

That means more gains.

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How To Train Your Glutes At Home

There are a few key elements we need to master to grow your glutes without heavy weights.

Add More Weight
Do More Sets & Reps
Increase Time Under Tension
Single Leg Exercises Are Your Best Friend

Add More Weight

Everything weighs something.

Without any weights or gym equipment at home, you can throw a load of heavy things into a backpack.

Books, cans, bottles, a pet cat, whatever you can scrounge up.

Now you can use the backpack for extra weight on movements like Squats, Bulgarian Split Squats, Lunges, Hip Thrusts, Step-ups etc.

And don’t forget about resistance bands and glute bands. Both are cheap, easy to buy online and can make a big difference in growing your glutes at home.

Do More Sets & Reps

It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing three sets of 10 reps or using traditional sets and rep structures you’ve seen in the gym.

But growing your glutes at home differs from growing your glutes at the gym.

You need to throw away the rep counts.

Chances are you don’t have enough weight to push your glutes hard enough at lower reps, like 8-12.

Instead of thinking about a number to hit, we want to aim for one to two reps from failure.

That could be ten reps; it could be 50 reps!

I go into more detail on training to failure here.

You want to keep going until you hit that point where everything has slowed down.

You’re struggling, shaking, and it feels like you’re about to fail.

That’s when we have pushed the legs and glutes hard enough that they’ll grow.

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Increase Time Under Tension (TUT)

Time under tension is an important tool in building muscle and is often overlooked for ego life or just “getting it done”.

The science is simple - muscles respond and grow due to mechanical tension. The longer the tension we can put them under, the more we increase our chances of growth.

The simplest way to increase tension on the glutes when training at home is to slow down your reps and add pauses/squeezes.

A rep is made up of four main parts:

The Concentric - Lifting the weight.
The Pause/Squeeze at the top
The Eccentric - Lowering the weight.
The Pause at the top

The eccentric is the half of the rep we want to slow down, and we can throw in pauses/squeezes at the top of hip thrusts and glute bridges for maximum glute contractions.

More damage is done to a muscle on the eccentric, so it gives us a better result.

Slower eccentric and pauses also mean you won’t have to do as many reps to reach failure, which is great when we train at home with lighter weights or bands.

Why do 50 uncontrolled, fast reps when you could do 15 slow, controlled, challenging reps instead?

Go slow; let it burn.

Focus on fewer, higher-quality reps.

Single Leg Exercises Are Your Best Friend

Ok, we don’t have a lot of weight to use.

And we don’t want to be doing hundreds of reps.

Doing one leg at a time is the simplest way to make leg exercises harder.

A bodyweight squat is easy, but a bodyweight Bulgarian Split Squat is not.

Add a little weight and a slow eccentric to a Bulgarian Split Squat, and you are in Hell (but your glutes will thank you).

I want you to focus mostly on single-leg glute exercises to maximise our glute growth at home.

Your weapons of choice are:

Bulgarian Split Squats
Single-Leg Hip Thrusts
Single-Leg Glute Bridges
Single-Leg Deadlifts
Deadlifts (Sumo/Romanian)
Step Ups on a chair or your staircase.
Side Lunges
Deficit Reverse Lunges
Curtsy Lunges
Squats (Sumo, Goblet, Back, Front)
Single-Leg/Pistol Squats
Banded Donkey Kicks
Banded Frog Pumps
Lying Leg Lifts (Bodyweight or Banded)
Banded Kickbacks
Banded Clams/Fire hydrants
Side Lying Hip Raises - and any other banded abduction movements (there are many)

Putting It All Together

A home workout for the glutes doesn’t have to be 10+ exercises and takes 2 hours (like many people do in the gym).

Pick 4-5 exercises from the list above and perform 3-5 sets of each exercise close to failure.

Here’s an example:

Bulgarian Split Squat: 4 Second Eccentrics - 4 Sets X 1-2 reps from failure

Single-Leg Hip Thrusts: 2 Second Squeeze - 4 Sets X 1-2 reps from failure

Curtsy Lunges: 3 Second Eccentrics - 3 Sets X 1-2 reps from failure

Banded Donkey Kicks: 2 Second Squeeze - 3 Sets X 1-2 reps from failure

Banded Clams: 2 Second Squeeze - 2 Sets X 20 Per Side

Trust me; this is better than ANY home glute workout you’ll have tried before.

Finally, we need to talk about nutrition.

If you don’t eat to grow your glutes, you’ll be doing hard work and getting little to no results.

Luck for you; I have already written a detailed post on how to eat to grow your glutes.

And to make life easier, I’ve got a brilliant and handy CALORIE CALCULATOR on my website that will give you custom calorie targets, advice on macro splits, and either building muscle or burning fat; make sure you check it out.