Cardio for Your Booty
Strong hips are important for the strength of your knees and back. Science also supports that cardiovascular exercise is critical for the health of your heart. For those of you who are busy and need to multi-task your workouts, it’s helpful to know that you can strengthen your heart, burn body fat, and tone the gluteal muscles simultaneously.
A program that includes the following booty-busting activities will target and develop the buttock muscles very well.
Booty-Busting Activities
Hiking
If you analyze the body’s movements during hiking (especially a steep hike), you’ll notice that you’re basically performing non-stop, repetitive step-ups. To further involve the glutes on your hikes, be sure to fully extend at the knee and hip with each step and push off from the entire surface of the front foot. Fortunately, there are plenty of hiking opportunities here in the Northwest including Whipple Creek, Forest Park, the Gorge, Mt. St. Helens and Mount Hood to fire up your glutes!
Incline Walking
Get on a treadmill, increase the incline and get ready for your glutes to burn. If you don’t have access to a treadmill, find a local hill and perform walking hill repeats for the same benefit.
Skating
Have you ever checked out a hockey player’s glutes? They have such strong rears because their sport effectively targets the gluteal muscles. Get the same benefit by strapping on a pair of ice skates or inline skates and get ready for an excellent workout for your hips.
Swimming
Most think swimming is just a great upper body workout – think again. Grab a flutter board and do back-to-back lengths of flutter kicks. If you want to engage your glutes even more, put on some flippers.
Stairclimbing
Head to your local stadium and climb up and down the bleachers. Not only will you experience an amazing cardio workout, but your glutes will be on fire. You can accomplish the same benefits indoors on a Step machine.
To further extend the benefits to your glutes, incorporate movements such as deadlifts, lunges, squats, step ups, leg press, bridging and hip thrusts.
Yours in health & fitness,
Sherri McMillan
Sherri McMillan
Sherri McMillan, holds a master's degree in exercise physiology and has been inspiring the world to adopt a fitness lifestyle for more than 33 years. She has received numerous industry awards including 2010 CanFitPro International Presenter of the Year, 2006 IDEA Fitness Director of the Year, 1998 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year, 1998 CanFitPro Fitness Presenter of the Year and 2005/2006 ACE Fitness Educator of the Year - Runner up. She is a fitness trainer, fitness columnist for various magazines and newspapers, author of five books and manuals including "Go For Fit - the Winning Way to Fat Loss" and "Fit over Forty" and the featured presenter in various fitness DVDs. She has presented hundreds of workshops to thousands of fitness leaders throughout Canada, Australia, Mexico, Jamaica, New Zealand, Germany, England, Spain, South America, Asia and the U.S. She is the owner of Northwest Personal Training in downtown Vancouver, the founder of WHY Racing Events & WHY Community, participates in various community fundraisers and can be found running, biking, or hiking around the community. Find more information at nwpersonaltraining.com.