A stronger (dare I say ‘perkier’) butt leads to a better quality of life. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true. The glutes are the muscle of youth. They are the powerhouse of your body propelling you forward in the world during these uncertain times. If your butt would be a person, it would be a train.

Strengthening the glutes can alleviate back tension, knee problems, and even ankle issues. Sure, it’s not always that straight forward. But you can often see huge improvements in how the body feels and performs by honing in on the butt.

Here’s a progression to make you butt-abled. Start with the 1/2 kneel lift and work your way to 1-leg deadlift. Once you have progressed from one exercise to the next (without butchering the technique) you don’t have to keep coming back to the earlier ones. Unless you feel like your butt needs some reassuring.

I’ve added notes to make these exercises home-friendly, where necessary. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a cable column stacked in a lounge-room corner.

1/2 kneel lift
x 8-12 reps x 2-3 sets

Use a band or just a weight of any sort. Keep most of your weight on the down leg, drive the down knee into the ground and keep ribs to hips. Powerful exhale at the top. Work up to an inline stance.

Golfer
x 3-5 reps x 2-3 sets

Front leg does the work. Push the front knee towards your little toe. Keep ribs to hips (starting to see a theme?), and push the ground away with your heel on the way up. Those exhales are important.

1-leg hinge reverse reach
x 8-12 reps x 2-3 sets

Keep hips level. Most of your weight is on the front leg.

1-leg hinge swing
x 12-15 reps x 2-3 sets

Keep hips level. It helps to look at a point a meter in front of you on the ground.

1-leg deadlift
x 8-12 reps x 2-3 sets

I’ve had success with looping a resistance band under the foot on the ground. Try it if you don’t have weights. Keep hips level.

You don’t have to do all these in a single workout. Well, you can. But you could also keep doing your usual training and plug an appropriate progression to where you would normally do a hip dominant single leg exercise.