Beginner help

[Iwannabeamartian]

Hi all…after some advice please.

So I’ve rejoined the gym with the intention of trying to grow my glutes ( I know I know!)

anyway….ive found it’s super easy to get wrapped up in watching a million different exercises etc in social media and then just wandering around the gym looking lost

so I went along for the first time again tonight. I did my sets of hip thrusts (machine not barbell), leg press (both single and double) Bulgarians and abduction

i was thinking of just sticking with these for a while, and working in upping the weight etc before adding in some barbell squats, and later deadlifts.

Does this sound like a reasonable plan or would you advise differently?

I will be going 3 times a week, plus I play football (goalkeeper) twice a week and throw in a parkrun for fun on saturdays

As ever it depends on your goals... if you literally just want to grow your glutes your plan looks good - progressive overload and consistency (and protein) are what you need. I wouldn't go adding squats and deadlifts in though without then doing work to strengthen your core and back. They're not going to target your glutes in the same way but they will place extra stress on the parts of you that are less strong so I'd be concerned about getting injured.

Personally I wouldn't just focus on glutes without it being part of overall strengthening as I don't think being imbalanced is a great idea. But that's me, and plenty of people do do stuff like that.

I'd agree with RayKray. I can understand wanting to change something about how you look - we're all human at the end of the day - but bear in mind it takes time to do that, and if looks are your only motivation you might find it difficult to keep the motivation up long enough. To be consistent you'll need to find a secondary motivation, such as wanting to learn a new skill, get stronger, beat last week's numbers etc.

Deadlifts and squats are brilliant exercises though not going to make a vast difference to glutes specifically. But they are compound movements, ie they use multiple muscle groups at once and generally use higher weights and put quite a lot of stress on the body. That's why they are effective at increasing strength, but it also means that you don't want to be doing lots of compound movements together. I would be careful about putting deadlifts, squats, hip thrusts, Bulgarian squats together as that'd be a lot of stress on the lower back. Most experienced lifters still limit how many compound movements they do in one session, because you need the recovery time in between.

Does this sound like a reasonable plan or would you advise differently?

It's very unbalanced if that's all you do. Just 'growing glutes' isn't particularly functional, and depends as much on your genetics as all the Insta fitness influencers supposed formulae for 'growing glutes.' - I have very strong glues but a flat bottom - it's just the way I'm made.

If you're going 3 days, you should do some push/pull & upper body work as well, as general mobility and stretching.

Think function, and as @RayKray says, what's your overall goal? I find this current fad for a particular shape of bottom a bit weird - it's like those men who only train arms & have chicken legs. If you want strong functional glutes you need to look at core, hips, and leg functionality. But if you're in the gym for 3 sessions a week, why not get strong as fuck all over? Just working on glutes isn't particularly functional, and it won't help you to sling your suitcase into the overhead locker with ease, or help you up off the floor when you fall at 80 years old!