Training all of your muscles is essential, but let’s be honest, everyone has their favorite to train.
Lauralie Chapados, an IFBB competitor and 3x Ms. Bikini International, is no different. As a bikini pro and fitness model, she focuses on a specific muscle group – the glutes.
Chapados was more than happy to share her top five glute exercises in a recent video on her YouTube Channel for anyone looking to get their rear-end beach-ready.
For Chapados, it all starts with a mindset.
“My methodology [for working out my glutes] really hasn’t changed much over the years,” she says. “My intensity and intention have.”
She starts every glute workout with the hip abduction machine to warm up, as she feels it’s an exercise where you can really go for “volume” (i.e.: high reps). While many think they shouldn’t go for more than 12-15 reps on any workout, Chapados bucks that trend by shooting for 15 reps on the low end of any set on this machine and going up to as many as 50 reps to truly warm up her glutes.
From there, it’s the tried-and-true of any lower body workout – squats.
“It doesn’t matter what squats – hack squat, pendulum squat, goblet squat,” Chapados says. “You can vary it up, but you need to have squats in your workout.”
In the video, she opts for squats on the Smith machine to help her focus on her form and glute contraction, especially when it comes to positioning her feet to hit the right area of her glutes and upper legs. She’s learned over time that her second exercise of the day for any muscle group tends to be her strongest. This is when she’ll go for more weight because “that’s where the money is” with squats.
With her glutes exhausted from pressing, it’s time to switch it up and go with hip thrusts. While there are machines, Chapados loves to keep it simple with barbell hip thrusts. Her tip is to focus on the contraction, even if it means lowering the weight to really feel it in the glutes from the bottom to the top, with a pause at the top of every thrust for extra emphasis.
“For exercise four, we have RDLs, which are a staple of mine,” Chapados says.
RDL stands for Romanian deadlifts, which are deadlifts in which the legs stay straight and the weight is lowered by hinging at the waist. Chapados likes to use dumbbells and stresses that you do not need to lower the weights all the way to the floor to perform the exercise correctly. Again, it’s about the contraction, which, when done right, can be felt without touching the weights to your toes.
Finally, she finishes with cable leg kickbacks because it’s a unilateral movement where you work each leg individually. It can take a bit longer than the other exercises, which is why she tends to leave it to the end. That said, the opportunity to isolate each glute is a great way to finish off the workout.
“It’s a simple workout, but if you do it, three to four sets of 15-20 reps, your glutes will grow,” Chapados says.
Full glute-day rundown
- Hip abduction machine
- Squats
- Hip thrusts
- Romanian deadlifts
- Cable leg kickbacks
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