7 Gluteus Minimus Exercises for Hip Strength & Butt Size

Regardless of being the smallest glute muscle, the gluteus minimus drammatically impacts how your decrease physique seems and performs.

Particularly, it stabilizes the hips, permitting you to maneuver with most effectivity, and it provides width to your butt, giving it a full, proportional look. 

Unbeknownst to most, widespread glute workouts like squats and hip thrusts don’t successfully prepare the gluteus minimus. 

And that’s why many weightlifters have a decrease physique that’s much less robust, secure, or well-balanced than it may very well be.

To right this imbalance, it’s essential to embrace focused gluteus minimus workouts in your exercises. The most effective ones are:

1. Bulgarian cut up squat
2. Reverse lunge
3. Single-leg Romanian deadlift
4. Curtsy lunge
5. Single-leg hip thrust
6. Cable hip abduction
7. Lateral band stroll

On this article, you’ll study why these workouts are efficient, how one can carry out them accurately, how one can embrace them in your program, and extra.  

Glute Anatomy

The gluteal muscle groups, or “glutes,” encompass three important muscle groups: the gluteus maximus, the gluteus medius, and the gluteus minimus.

The gluteus maximus is the most important of the three. It extends the hip, which implies it helps transfer your thigh backward. Due to its dimension, it offers the butt most of its form.

The gluteus medius is on the facet of the hip. Its important perform is hip abduction (transferring the thighs away from one another), although it additionally performs an important position in stabilizing the pelvis.

The glute minimus sits beneath the glute medius and has the identical major features. 

Right here’s how the glutes look in your physique:

The 7 Greatest Gluteus Minimus Workouts for Power and Dimension

Many weightlifters assume the squat and hip thrust are the one workouts it’s essential to develop huge, robust glutes. 

Nevertheless, research exhibits that whereas squatting and hip thrusting are unbelievable for gaining dimension and power within the gluteus maximus, they’re awful at coaching the gluteus minimus. 

Regardless of the shortage of particular research on the most effective gluteus minimus workouts for progress, analysis exhibits which workouts activate these muscle groups essentially the most, which helps us perceive the most effective methods to coach them.

In accordance with this information, unilateral exercises (workouts that prepare either side of your physique independently) are most effective, possible as a result of they require extra hip stability than bilateral workouts (workouts that prepare either side of your physique concurrently). Workouts that contain hip abduction additionally yield good outcomes. 

With this in thoughts, listed below are the most effective workouts for gluteus minimus dimension and power:

1. Bulgarian Break up Squat

The Bulgarian split squat is among the finest “facet glute workouts” as a result of it’s an inherently unstable unilateral train that greatly entails the glutes. 

Find out how to:

1. Whereas holding a dumbbell in every hand, stand about 2-to-3 toes in entrance of a bench. 
2. Along with your proper foot (and heel specifically) firmly planted, place the highest of your left foot on the bench behind you. 
3. Take a look at a spot on the ground six-to-ten toes in entrance of you and decrease your butt towards the ground by bending at your proper knee.
4. Hold reducing your self till your proper knee bends to 90 levels. 
5. Get up and return to the beginning place.
6. When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, change sides and repeat the method.

2. Reverse Lunge

The reverse lunge is an ideal train for the gluteus minimus as a result of it’s dynamic, trains the glutes to a excessive diploma, and requires stability, stability, and coordination.

Find out how to:

1. Holding a dumbbell in every hand, arise straight with each toes about hip-width aside.
2. Step again about two-to-three toes along with your left leg, putting most of your weight in your proper foot.
3. Decrease your physique by bending each knees till your left knee touches the ground. 
4. Push off the ground along with your proper foot and lean barely backward, permitting your legs to straighten.
5. When you’re standing, convey your left foot ahead in order that it’s subsequent to your proper foot, then repeat in your left facet.

3. Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift

The only-leg Romanian deadlift requires stability and stability and trains the glutes in a stretched place, which benefits progress.

Find out how to:

1. Get up straight and maintain a dumbbell in your proper hand in entrance of your proper thigh.
2. Flatten your again and decrease the burden towards the ground in a straight line whereas preserving your proper leg principally straight, permitting your butt to maneuver backward and your left leg to straighten behind you as you descend.
3. As soon as you are feeling a stretch in your proper hamstring, bend your proper knee barely extra and proceed reducing the burden till your decrease again begins to spherical.
4. Reverse the motion and return to the beginning place.
5. When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, change sides and repeat the method. 

4. Curtsy Lunge

As a result of your stepping leg strikes throughout the midline of the physique, the curtsy lunge entails a rotational aspect that trains the glute minimus in a novel manner. That is helpful as a result of coaching your muscle groups by totally different ranges of motion and at varied angles produces extra balanced and full progress than coaching with much less variation. 

Find out how to:

1. Holding a dumbbell in every hand, stand along with your toes about hip-width aside.
2. Step diagonally backward along with your left leg in order that it crosses your proper leg. 
3. With many of the weight on the fitting leg, decrease your physique by bending each knees on the similar time till the left knee touches the ground.
4. Reverse the motion and return to standing place.
5. When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, change sides and repeat the method. 

5. Single-Leg Hip Thrust

The only-leg hip thrust is a top-tier gluteus minimus isolation train for people who find themselves new to training or working round an injury, or for many who wish to do gluteus minimus muscle exercises at residence.

Find out how to:

1. Sit on the bottom along with your shoulders resting in opposition to a bench perpendicular to your physique.
2. Place a dumbbell in your hip crease.
3. Plant your toes on the ground about shoulder-width aside and 12-to-18 inches out of your butt so your knees are bent to about 90 levels.
4. Straighten your left knee to elevate your left leg off the ground.
5. Push the dumbbell upward by urgent by your proper heel till your higher physique and proper thigh are parallel to the bottom and your proper shin is vertical. 
6. Reverse the motion and return to the beginning place.
7. When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, change sides and repeat the method.

6. Cable Hip Abduction

7. Lateral Band Stroll

Lateral band walks generally is a helpful “activation exercise” for the glute minimus that helps you warm up and set up a robust mind-muscle connection. Alternatively, incorporating high-rep units of lateral band walks on the finish of your exercise generally is a enjoyable method to get a glute “pump,” which can aid growth in some eventualities.

1. Wrap a brief resistance band or booty band round each legs simply above your knees.
2. Place your toes about shoulder-width aside to create pressure within the band, then bend your knees barely and press your fingers collectively in entrance of your chest.
3. Take a step to the left along with your left foot, then a step to the left along with your proper foot, ending along with your legs about shoulder-width aside once more.
4. Proceed taking small, managed steps to the left for a set variety of steps or a specified distance. 
5. Reverse the route and do the identical variety of steps or distance to your proper. 

Find out how to Incorporate Gluteus Minimus Workouts into Your Routine

Don’t simply take my phrase for it. Bret Contreras, one of many world’s main specialists on glute coaching, defined this effectively on a current episode of my podcast, Muscle for Life:

I’ve this rule of thirds, that means a 3rd of your volume for glutes must be vertical hip extension workouts. These maximize this pressure within the stretch and people contain squats, lunges, split squats, step-ups, deadlift variations, and good mornings. One other third must be horizontal. That features your hip thrust, glute bridge, kickback, again extension, and reverse hypers. After which the remaining third must be abduction.

In different phrases, even if you wish to emphasize the glute minimus, your exercises ought to nonetheless embrace train for all of the glute muscles.

With that in thoughts, right here’s a balanced glute exercise that emphasizes workouts for the gluteus minimus:

The Advantages of Gluteus Minimus Workouts

1. Enhanced Decrease Physique Aesthetics: Growing the gluteus minimus helps so as to add width to your butt, making a extra rounded, full look.  
2. Improved Athletic Efficiency: A powerful gluteus minimus improves hip stability and motion effectivity, which possible boosts running and sprinting efficiency.
3. Might Scale back Harm Danger: Some specialists consider strengthening the hip abductors, together with the gluteus minimus, can stop weaknesses that result in knee valgus, iliotibial band syndrome, ACL accidents, and patellofemoral ache syndrome. In addition they assume it could cut back the danger of decrease extremity accidents attributable to poor power absorption and instability.