Ever since I was younger, I’ve admired women with a defined hip to waist ratio. I loved curves and this was the shape that I wanted to achieve for myself.
Now, I was genetically blessed when it came to the bust area, but the booty… ehh… not so much.
One day, I was watching Modern Family, and watched as Sophia Vergara paraded around in the episode I was watching and thought, “I wanna be her!”. She is well known for her colourful, vivacious character on the show. And let’s face it, she’s super hot!
Watching her motivated to workout and get in shape, for once in my life. (PS: I HATED phys ed in school. This was going to be a challenge)
Obviously one of the main goals was to lose excess body fat and get healthy, but I also wanted to be able to gain those lower half curves I’ve always wanted!
Is it even possible to grow a booty with exercise?
At this time, I was working with a lot of people in the fitness industry. Amazing trainers and fitness models. I expressed that I wanted I to gain a booty, and they all told me the same thing: YOUR GENETICS WON’T LET YOU.
Wait, what????
The responses I got from most fitness experts were:
“Why would you want a bigger butt?” (this was before the booty craze that’s taken over Instagram)
and
“You can’t grow a butt, you can only grow your legs.”
My Saving Grace
I searched online to see if there was any info on this. The ONLY resource I could find (back then) was Bret Contreras.
He was the one that made me believe it’s totally possible. He is super passionate about glutes and actually gets into the science behind building muscle.
Since then, there have been hundreds, even thousands of fitness models and gurus who have proven that it is possible to dramatically change your lower body.
It Takes Time
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to working out and changing your body, is that it takes time and commitment.
For me, in the beginning, I saw changes to the shape of my bum, but I didn’t gain too much size in the first year. I was also brand new to this whole working out and lifting weights thing, so I was getting used to all of it.
I then injured myself and took a good while off from any training.
I didn’t see much change until about 2.5 years after I first started working out. This is when I started understanding my body a little bit more.
I had to develop that mind to muscle connection, and learn how to really activate the muscle I wanted to work out.
That was my issue before. My muscles weren’t activated. I had a hard time growing them because I wasn’t working out properly, and also probably one of the reasons why I injured myself.
Activation is KEY
Barely anyone talks about this. Everyone thinks that all they have to do is squat heavy, and as long as you squat more reps or weight every week, your booty will grow.
You will see a difference, definitely.
But if you learn to activate your muscles properly, I promise you will get much better results, in a shorter amount of time.
What Is Activation?
How do I explain this… It’s like you’re really consciously trying to use/work that muscle.
We walk everyday, and involves using our leg and glute muscles, but it doesn’t feel like a workout.
Well what if with every step, you really try to SQUEEZE your glute muscles. You can feel that you’re really trying to work that out.
You have to learn to do this when working out, to have that mind-muscle connection. With every move, you have to feel the glutes do the work.
The best way to activate (the muscle group of your choice) is to do isolated exercises for those muscles. I talked about hip thrusts and kick backs in this post, which are great isolation movements for the glutes.
Squatting heavy weight and getting stronger is great, but it won’t reshape and grow your booty if you’re not properly activating the glutes! (if your goal is to grow your glutes)
My Results (so far)
I started noticing more dramatic results in my fifth year (this year) of working out. I worked out on and off during these 4-5 years, so I am guessing I could have done this in less time if I was more consistent.
But every time I came back to my workouts, since I had learned to fire my glutes properly and better each workout “phase”, my results came back quicker (thank goodness for muscle memory!) and BETTER than the last.
I am not even close to where I want to be, but I am SO proud of the progress I’ve made.
And I proved, to myself and the naysayers, that yes, you can totally grow a booty. Even if your mama didn’t give you one 🙂
