How to start actually feeling glute exercises in your glutes

Not feeling glute exercises in your glutes is something a lot of women in the gym struggle with.

And it’s really frustrating too.

However, just because you can’t feel exercises in your glutes doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anything wrong.

The biggest, most likely culprit here is you lack a mind to muscle connection in your glutes.

In this post, I want to talk about how to enhance your mind to muscle connection and target your glutes more effectively.

In this post you’ll find:

Why so many women struggle to feel exercises in their glutes

If you struggle to feel glute exercises in your glutes, you’re not alone!

It’s actually extremely common for weightlifters to struggle to engage their glutes during glute exercises.

Especially beginner weightlifters.

So why is it so difficult to feel glute exercises in your glutes, where they’re supposed to be targeting?

The answer to this is simple.

You most likely haven’t developed a mind to muscle connection yet!

Why many women lack a glute mind to muscle connection

Lacking a mind to muscle connection is usually the result of a lack of mature muscle in an area.

Which in this case, would be your glutes.

Mature muscle comes with having been lifting and training for a longer period of time.

As a result, the more you train a certain muscle, the more mature it becomes.

Because of this, it makes sense that it’s more common for beginners to struggle with developing a mind to muscle connection.

Because beginners typically they have less experience, practice, and mature muscle.

However, even experienced lifters can struggle with a mind to muscle connection, especially in their glutes.

Because it’s a MIND to muscle connection, you have to be focusing on developing this connection in your MIND in order to actually develop it.

As a result, if you’ve never learned about this connection or never actively focused on developing it, then it’s possible to still not have it.

Even after years of lifting.

However, the more experience you have lifting, and the more muscle you have, the easier it is to feel exercises in the muscles you’re targeting.

As a result, the more you train and the longer you’ve been lifting, the more likely you are to develop a better mind to muscle connection.

Do you only feel glute exercises in your quads?

I remember this feeling, and it’s so frustrating!

If you find that you only feel glute exercises in your quads, don’t give up!

This is actually the case for almost everyone who struggles to feel glute exercises in their glutes. They’re quads end up stealing the show instead!

The reason for this is because your quads are most likely much stronger and more mature than your glutes.

This is called being quad dominant.

Being quad dominant basically means that your quad muscles are the strongest muscles in your legs, so they take over every exercise.

However, just because your quads always take over every exercise, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re excessively strong.

It could also mean you have weak muscles in your glutes.

What causes weak glute muscles and quad dominance

More likely than not, you haven’t done any exercises in the past that directly targeted your glute muscles.

Because of this, your glutes are a lot weaker than your surrounding muscles. And they lack that muscle maturity we were talking about earlier.

As a result, when you go to do glute exercises, your glutes aren’t as easily activated as your surrounding muscles.

On top of that, they’re also much weaker and can’t contribute to lifting the weight.

So your quads take over!

When this happens, surrounding muscles that are stronger, like your quads, automatically jump in and start carrying the weight during the exercise.

These muscles take over before your glutes even have the chance to engage in the exercise.

Glute-activation exercises increase glute engagement

Glute activation exercises are an extremely effective way to increase your glute engagement in the gym.

For even the most experienced lifters, it’s extremely hard to jump into any exercise without preparing your muscles before-hand.

Doing this makes it so much harder to engage the correct muscles during an exercise. Because they don’t get to prepare for the motion before-hand.

Glute activation exercises are basically a warm-up for your glutes.

They help you activate your glutes and get them ready for the exercises you’re about to do.

This helps tremendously increase glute engagement and your mind to muscle connection.

The best glute activation techniques

There are a lot of glute activation techniques out there, so you’ll want to try out the ones that are best for you.

Resistance band exercises

For example, one glute activation technique is to do resistance band exercises at the beginning of your workout.

Doing this helps warm up and engage your glute muscles before you jump into your exercises.

Additionally, resistance band activation also helps warm up your hip flexors, which play a huge role in your glute engagement as well.

Warming up before an exercise

What I believe to be the most effective glute activation technique is simply strategically warming up your glutes for the exercises to come.

What I mean by this is you warm up by going through the exact motion of the glute exercise you’re about to do, but with little to no weight.

For example, if you were warming up to do rdls, then what you’d do is practice the motion of hinging at your hips.

You’d focus on squeezing and engaging your glutes, with very light weight or no weight at all.

And you don’t just do this before your first glute exercise. You do this before every glute exercise you do.

Occasionally, I even do this before every set I do, if I feel I need more glute activation that day.

This is the most specific way to activate and engage your glute, since you’re activating them for the exact motion of the exercise you’re about to do.

Then, when you go to do your first working set, all you need to do is mimic that motion and engagement.

Only now with more weight.

Doing this before your glute exercises game changer for your glute engagement.

The best tips to improve your mind to muscle connection in your glutes

Now that we’ve talked about what a glute mind to muscle connection is, I want to talk about some of the best ways to strengthen this connection.

Here are some of the best tips to engage your glutes properly and have more effective glute workouts.

Focus on contracting your glutes to increase glute muscle engagement

One of the best ways to start feeling a specific muscle group during an exercise is by contracting that muscle.

As a result, contracting your glutes is a great way to improve your mind to muscle connection there.

To do this, you would want to focus on squeezing your glutes during each rep of each exercise.

Additionally, you would primarily focus on this squeeze during the eccentric portion of each rep.

The eccentric portion is the portion of the exercise when your glutes are stretching out, getting longer, and are under the most tension.

For example, if you were doing hip thrusts, then the eccentric portion would be when you’re lower your glutes down. This is when you’d want to focus the most on squeezing them.

By doing this, you engage your glutes the most in the portion of the exercise when they’re under the most amount of tension.

To make this most effective, begin squeezing your glutes before you even start your rep.

By doing this, you go into your first rep with your glutes already engaged and contracted. This allows you to focus on your form and performing an effective rep.

Additionally, it helps you feel the stretch and engagement of your glutes right from the start of your rep.

Lower the weight to strengthen your glute mind to muscle link

Like I was saying before, if you struggle to feel exercises in your glutes, then chances are you have weak glute muscles.

And if you’re glutes are weaker than your surrounding muscles, then these other muscles will most likely take over. Especially during your glute exercises.

This becomes even more likely if you’re lifting a weight that’s too heavy.

If you lift a weight that’s too heavy for a weak muscle, your body will try and protect this muscle so it doesn’t get injured.

That’s another reason why your surrounding muscles will take over, even before your glutes get the chance to engage.

You legs might be able to lift the weight, but can your glutes?

Remember, the goal is to be lifting a weight that your glutes can carry, not your other leg muscles.

As a result, even if your legs are able to lift the weight, if your glutes can’t handle being the primary lifter, then the weight is too heavy.

By lowering the weight, you give your glutes a much better chance to engage. Mainly because your surrounding muscles don’t need to step in yet.

Then, the more your glute muscles have the chance to engage, the more likely you are to develop a mind to muscle connection.

Once you start developing a mind to muscle connection in your glutes, it becomes a lot easier for your glutes to grow and get stronger.

Then in no time, your numbers, and your glute growth, will shoot up.

Increase your time under tension to enhance mind to muscle connection

As with almost every other exercise in the gym, if you’re flying through the movement, you won’t get much gain from it.

The reason for this is because you start to use momentum to help your body lift the weight.

As opposed to lifting with just your muscles.

Additionally, you never allow your muscles to go through a full range of motion and get that nice, full stretch.

Both of these stimulate maximum muscle growth.

By increasing your time under tension during your glute exercises, you can start to stimulate maximum muscle growth and engagement.

Focus on slowing down and controlling every rep

By keeping your reps very, very slow, you allow yourself more time to focus on feeling every portion of the movement.

Additionally, you allow yourself more time to fully squeeze and engage your glute muscles.

Both of these are huge for developing that mind to muscle connection in your glutes.

The more you focus on slowing down and controlling every movement you do in the gym, the better your mind to muscle connection is going to be.

The more time you spend going through a movement, focusing on slowing it down, contracting your muscles, and having perfect form, the more time you have to develop a connection with this muscle.

Be patient with your progress, results will come

Developing a mind to muscle connection is certainly something that takes time in the gym.

It’s not something that happens overnight and certainly not something that happens without practice.

It took me about a year before I was able to develop a mind to muscle connection in my glutes. And I’d say it took about the same for a lot of other women out there.

But be patient though, it’s worth it.

Once you develop a mind to muscle connection, you’ll start to see glute growth like never before.

On top of that, you’re workouts will become much more fun, once you can actually feel you’re glutes working.

So if you struggle to feel your glute exercises, but still are practicing good form, then you have nothing to worry about.

You aren’t doing anything wrong, you just haven’t yet developed the mind to muscle connection you need.

But with practice and consistency, eventually you’ll get there and start seeing the results you deserve.

Takeaways

Not being able to feel your glute exercises in your glutes is something a lot of lifters struggle with.

This can be so frustrating and discouraging, especially when your quads take over every glute exercise you try to do.

However, by activating your glutes before your workouts and practicing these glute mind to muscle connection tips, your start to see a huge increase in your glute engagement.

Eventually, you’ll start to develop the best mind to muscle connection and your glutes will grow like never before.

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