What is the most common exercise that you will see women doing in the gym that want to grow a bigger, curvier bum? Glute kickbacks. While it is not a bad exercises by any means, it is an extremely ineffective exercise for those that actually want to add some size to their glutes. Reason being, that kickbacks are an isolation exercise.
Isolation exercises are single-jointed movements that only work one muscle group at a time, which in this case, is your glutes. More so, kickbacks are usually done using cables and machines that make it difficult to use any significant amount of weight. This limits the stress/overload that we can place on our target muscles. Lastly, glute kickbacks are a unilateral exercise; you are exercising one limb at a time, which again, will radically limit our capacity to overload our glutes using heavy weights.
Now, does this mean that we NEED to lift heavy weights to build muscle in our glutes? No. But at the very least, using exercises that allow us to lift heavy will result in more muscle being built across multiple muscle groups, as well as increase the intensity of our training, which is pivotal in stimulating muscle growth. By far the best exercise to do this, is the Barbell Hip Thrust.
The BB Hip Thrust is a compound movement. These are multi-jointed exercises that work multiple muscle groups simultaneously. The Hip Thrust particularly, thoroughly works both the glutes and hamstrings; the two muscles that allow for hip extension (straightening the hips). Because multiple muscle groups are utilized, we can much more effectively load both the hamstrings and glutes, which actually prefer to work in tandem (together) with one another rather than in isolation, resulting in a much greater growth stimulus overall.
Barbell compound exercises will usually give you the most bang for your buck. Just as the Barbell Bench Press is King for building massive chesticles in men, the Barbell Hip Thrust is Queen for building massive glutes in women.
Lastly, I can assure that your favourite fitness model that looks thicker than a snicker, did not build her curves by doing kickbacks for hundreds of reps, rather, she got there by focusing on progressively getting stronger on the various compound exercises that primarily target the glutes, such as the BB Hip Thrust.
So push the kickbacks to the end of your workout. They are the icing on the cake.
In order to build said cakes, thrust accordingly, intensely and often.
Happy thiccening ladies. 😀