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, steady, or well-balanced than it may very well be.

To appropriate this imbalance, you should embrace focused gluteus minimus workouts in your exercises. The very best ones are:

Bulgarian cut up squat
Reverse lunge
Single-leg Romanian deadlift
Curtsy lunge
Single-leg hip thrust
Cable hip abduction
Lateral band stroll

On this article, you’ll be taught why these workouts are efficient, learn how to carry out them appropriately, learn how to embrace them in your program, and extra.  

Glute Anatomy

The gluteal muscle mass, or “glutes,” include three predominant muscle mass: 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 aspect of the hip. Its predominant operate is hip abduction (shifting the thighs away from one another), although it additionally performs a vital 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 Finest Gluteus Minimus Workout routines for Energy and Dimension

Many weightlifters assume the squat and hip thrust are the one workouts you should develop huge, robust glutes. 

Nevertheless, analysis reveals that whereas squatting and hip thrusting are implausible 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 perfect gluteus minimus workouts for development, analysis reveals which workouts activate these muscle mass probably the most, which helps us perceive the perfect methods to coach them.

In line with this knowledge, unilateral workouts (workouts that prepare either side of your physique independently) are most efficient, possible as a result of they require extra hip stability than bilateral workouts (workouts that prepare either side of your physique concurrently). Workout routines that contain hip abduction additionally yield good outcomes. 

With this in thoughts, listed here are the perfect workouts for gluteus minimus dimension and power:

1. Bulgarian Break up Squat

The Bulgarian cut up squat is likely one of the greatest “aspect glute workouts” as a result of it’s an inherently unstable unilateral train that tremendously includes the glutes. 

Find out how to:

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

2. Reverse Lunge

The reverse lunge is an excellent 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:

Holding a dumbbell in every hand, rise up straight with each ft about hip-width aside.
Step again about two-to-three ft together with your left leg, inserting most of your weight in your proper foot.
Decrease your physique by bending each knees till your left knee touches the ground. 
Push off the ground together with your proper foot and lean barely backward, permitting your legs to straighten.
When you’re standing, deliver your left foot ahead in order that it’s subsequent to your proper foot, then repeat in your left aspect.

3. Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift

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

Find out how to:

Rise up straight and maintain a dumbbell in your proper hand in entrance of your proper thigh.
Flatten your again and decrease the load towards the ground in a straight line whereas protecting your proper leg largely straight, permitting your butt to maneuver backward and your left leg to straighten behind you as you descend.
As soon as you are feeling a stretch in your proper hamstring, bend your proper knee barely extra and proceed reducing the load till your decrease again begins to spherical.
Reverse the motion and return to the beginning place.
When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, swap 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 includes a rotational component that trains the glute minimus in a novel manner. That is useful as a result of coaching your muscle mass by means of totally different ranges of movement and at numerous angles produces extra balanced and full development than coaching with much less variation. 

Find out how to:

Holding a dumbbell in every hand, stand together with your ft about hip-width aside.
Step diagonally backward together with your left leg in order that it crosses your proper leg. 
With a lot of the weight on the appropriate leg, decrease your physique by bending each knees on the identical time till the left knee touches the ground.
Reverse the motion and return to standing place.
When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, swap 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 coaching or working round an damage, or for individuals who need to do gluteus minimus muscle exercises at house.

Find out how to:

Sit on the bottom together with your shoulders resting in opposition to a bench perpendicular to your physique.
Place a dumbbell in your hip crease.
Plant your ft 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.
Straighten your left knee to elevate your left leg off the ground.
Push the dumbbell upward by urgent by means of your proper heel till your higher physique and proper thigh are parallel to the bottom and your proper shin is vertical. 
Reverse the motion and return to the beginning place.
When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, swap sides and repeat the method.

6. Cable Hip Abduction

Cable hip abductions are one other excellent isolation train for the gluteus minimus muscle. Their predominant advantages are that they prepare hip abduction and that through the use of a cable, there’s fixed stress in your glutes all through every rep, which taxes your butt barely otherwise from the opposite workouts on this record.

Find out how to:

Set the pulley on a cable machine to the bottom setting and connect a cuff attachment. 
Safe the cuff round your proper ankle, then stand a few foot from the cable machine going through perpendicular to the cable together with your left foot closest to the pulley.
Seize the metallic column that holds the pulleys together with your left hand.
Whereas sustaining a slight bend in your proper knee, elevate your proper foot out to your proper aspect.
Return the motion and return to the beginning place.
When you’ve accomplished the specified variety of reps, swap sides and repeat the method. 

7. Lateral Band Stroll

Lateral band walks generally is a helpful “activation train” for the glute minimus that helps you heat 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 technique to get a glute “pump,” which can help development in some eventualities.

Wrap a brief resistance band or booty band round each legs simply above your knees.
Place your ft about shoulder-width aside to create stress within the band, then bend your knees barely and press your palms collectively in entrance of your chest.
Take a step to the left together with your left foot, then a step to the left together with your proper foot, ending together with your legs about shoulder-width aside once more.
Proceed taking small, managed steps to the left for a set variety of steps or a specified distance. 
Reverse the path and do the identical variety of steps or distance to your proper. 

Find out how to Incorporate Gluteus Minimus Workout routines into Your Routine

Regardless of what some “gurus” declare, doing exercises that focus solely on coaching the gluteus minimus isn’t a good suggestion.

Whereas your glute exercises ought to embrace gluteus minimus workouts, they shouldn’t include solely these workouts.

Why?

As a result of this strategy neglects the opposite glute muscles which are important for general power, stability, and dimension.

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

I’ve this rule of thirds, which means a 3rd of your quantity for glutes ought to be vertical hip extension workouts. These maximize this stress within the stretch and people contain squats, lunges, cut up squats, step-ups, deadlift variations, and good mornings. One other third ought to be horizontal. That features your hip thrust, glute bridge, kickback, again extension, and reverse hypers. After which the remaining third ought to 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 Workout routines

The primary advantages of coaching your gluteus minimus are:

Enhanced Decrease Physique Aesthetics: Growing the gluteus minimus helps so as to add width to your butt, making a extra rounded, full look.  
Improved Athletic Efficiency: A robust gluteus minimus improves hip stability and motion effectivity, which possible boosts working and sprinting efficiency.
Might Scale back Harm Threat: Some specialists imagine 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. Additionally they assume it could scale back the danger of decrease extremity accidents brought on by poor drive absorption and instability.