How often should you train your Glutes?

By: Stijn van Willigen

Click HERE for part II
What you’re getting yourself into:
~5000 words
15-20 minute read time

Key Points
1. Muscle SRA (Stimulus, Recovery and Adaptation) is the primary underlying
principle that dictates how often you should train the Glutes to grow them as fast as
humanly possible.
2. Muscle protein synthesis increases during Recovery and Adaptation. According to
science, muscle protein synthesis stays elevated for up to 4 days (Damas et al.,
2016; Miller et al., 2005). How many days exactly depends on multiple factors.
3. Exercise type, one of these factors, influences the time it takes for the Glute SRA
process to be completed. Which in turn determines the best time to work them again.
4. Exercises have 4 aspects to them that influence recovery/adaptation time: (1)
muscle activity, (2) range of motion, (3) emphasis on eccentrics, and (4) muscle
length at peak tension. Based on these aspects, the following Glute exercise types
can be identified: Stretchers, Activators, and Pumpers.
5. Glute exercise type dictates how often you should train the glutes, and how to
design your training program.
The best training frequency for muscle growth is a controversial topic. Most elite
bodybuilders swear by training a muscle only once a week (Hackett et al., 2013). A
recent meta-analysis concluded that working a muscle group twice per week was
superior for hypertrophy compared to once per week (Schoenfeld et al., 2016). Still,
modern progressive lifters argue that training a muscle multiple times per week gives
better results. Bret’s client Erin is a perfect example of this. She’s seen amazing
results training the Glutes a whopping 6 times per week! How often should you train
the glutes for maximum results? The short answer is 2-6 times per week. The long
answer requires you to read on, as there are variables you will need to adjust in order
to optimize your recovery and ability to train effectively at a given frequency.
On StrengthandConditioningResearch.com, an encyclopedia of science-based
information, Chris Beardsley states:
“training with a specific volume-matched frequency might be more effective
than another volume-matched frequency because the distribution of the
hypertrophic stimuli over the course of a training week are optimal in one
case and not in the other.”
Basically, it’s saying that spreading out 15 sets for a muscle over several workouts
during the week might grow more muscle than doing all 15 sets in one go. Some
well-respected experts in the field hypothesize there’s indeed a maximum growth
stimulus a muscle can get per workout (Dankel et al., 2016). Say for example the
maximum growth stimulus would happen at 6 sets. Any sets beyond that point could
be regarded as ‘wasted sets’.
Going from this logic, with a traditional ‘bodybuilding’ split (frequency of training a
muscle 1x per week) a lot of these 15 sets would be wasted. Full body routines
typically spread the 15 sets out over several days. This may results in less wasted
sets per workout. ‘Wasted’ might not be the best wording for these sets. They could
even be labeled as counterproductive, as the extra sets might hamper your recovery
from the growth stimulus! More on that later.

If indeed it’s more optimal to train a muscle multiple times per week, over how many
days should these 15 sets be spread? 2? 3? 4? 5? 6 days?
According to science, it depends on multiple factors. In this article, I’m going to
primarily talk about one of those factors: Exercise Type. By the end of this article, you
will understand how exercise type influences how often you should train the Glutes. I
will end by giving some practical advice on how to apply this knowledge to your
training.
First, we have to understand the primary underlying concept that dictates the
relationship between Exercise Type and training frequency: muscle SRA.

The muscle SRA curve

The S in muscle SRA is for Stimulus. During a training session you break down the
muscle, the Stimulus for growth. Because of this, the muscle’s functional size – the
part of the muscle that’s still able to contract – decreases. The body will then rebuild
the broken down muscle. This is called Recovery, the R in SRA. After the body is
done rebuilding, it prevents future breakdown of the muscle from happening. It does
this by building the muscle bigger than before. This is called Adaptation, the A in
SRA. The muscle is now more resistant to a future Stimulus (a thicker wall needs a
bigger sledgehammer to break it down). The following image illustrates this process.
However, if this sledgehammer is too big, it can cause trouble in the
recovery/adaptation process. I briefly talked about this in the introduction: doing too
many sets per workout might not only be a waste of effort, it might even hamper your
overall muscle growth (Dankel et al., 2016). The image below shows how too big of a
stimulus can potentially deform the SRA curve, removing the adaptation part.

Finally, the SRA principle doesn’t exclusively apply to muscle. For example, the
nervous system and connective tissues (such as muscle tendons), also have SRA
curves. However, that’s beyond the scope of this article. Here, I will focus on muscle
SRA.

Muscle Protein Synthesis

In scientific terms, the rebuilding (recovery) and ‘building bigger’ (adaptation) of the
muscle happens through muscle protein synthesis (article by Trommelen,
2016; Damas et al., 2016). During the course of the muscle SRA curve, muscle protein
synthesis is constantly elevated (Brook et al., 2015; Damas et al., 2016; Franchi et al.,
2015). When it gets back down to baseline, recovery and adaptation are completed.
That is the perfect time to stimulate the muscle again to restart the muscle SRA
curve. This is illustrated in the image below.

When should you train again?

Muscle SRA partly answers this question: when the muscle SRA curve is completed.
Train too frequently, and the muscle will actually decrease in functional size over time,
because you constantly stimulate before the muscle has completed recovery and
adaptation. Train too infrequently, and you are unable to use the peak of the SRA
curve as a new starting point for further muscle growth. You can see both situations
in the image below.
 So,
ideally you want to train again as soon as recovery and adaptation of the muscle is
completed. This will grow them as fast as possible.

How long does the Glute SRA curve

take to complete?
With a new technique to measure long-term muscle protein synthesis, researchers
have shown that muscle protein synthesis can remain elevated for a maximum of 72
to 96 hours (3 to 4 days) (Damas et al., 2016; Miller et al., 2005). As we now know,
muscle protein synthesis underlies the rebuilding (recovery) and building bigger
(adaptation) of muscles.
Now let’s focus on the muscle group of our interest: the Glutes. It takes a maximum
of 72 to 96 hours (3 to 4 days) to complete a muscle SRA curve. That means waiting
for 120 to 144 hours (5 to 6 days) between Glute workouts wouldn’t make sense if
you want them to grow as fast as possible!
But how long should you wait? 1 day? 2 days? 3.36 days? Well, it depends. According
to science, the following factors are important:
• Type of Glute Exercise
• Glute Training Experience
Now let’s talk about the first of those factors: Type of Glute Exercise. In a later article,
I will cover Glute Training Experience.

Type of Exercise and muscle SRA: 4

aspects
Particularly for the Glutes, you can choose from an impressive collection of
exercises: external rotations, hip thrusts, hip abductions, squats, lunges, step-ups,
deadlifts, and all of their variations; each of them stimulate the Glutes.
However, some exercises have longer muscle SRA curves than others. Imagine this:
You’re doing 4 sets of Band Side Walks on Tuesday, and 4 sets of heavy Bulgarian
Split Squats on Friday. Do the Glutes take equal time to Recover and Adapt from
these 2 training sessions? Heck no! Muscle recovery and adaptation from the heavy
Bulgarian Split Squats takes much longer.
But.. Why? There are 4 well-documented aspects of an exercise that influence the
length of the muscle SRA curve.

1. Muscle activity
Muscle activity during an exercise is closely linked to producing muscle tension
(Alkner et al., 2000; Miller, 2014). Muscle tension is important in Stimulating a muscle
to grow (Schoenfeld, 2010). If you don’t believe me, try growing your Glutes by doing
biceps curls (which show close to zero Glute activity).
As we know, a muscle grows by recovering and adapting to a stimulus. Low muscle
activation equals low muscle tension, which leads to a small stimulus that has a short
recovery time. High muscle activation equals high muscle tension, which leads to a
bigger stimulus that has a longer recovery and adaptation time. The following image
illustrates a study that’s demonstrated this (Soares et al., 2015). Bret has studied the
activity of the biceps during both of these exercises in the past.
2. Range of motion
When an exercise brings a muscle through a bigger Range of Motion (ROM), the
muscle does more work (muscular work = muscle force/tension x
excursion/distance). This muscular work is often incorrectly called ‘training volume’
(read my article on calculating training volume to see why).
As we would expect, studies show that the more heavy work (training volume) a
muscle performs, the longer recovery takes (Lieber & Fridén, 1993; Nosaka et al.,
2002; Nosaka et al., 2003). This indicates that exercises with a bigger ROM take the
muscle longer to recover (and adapt) from, probably because there’s more muscle
breakdown due to increased heavy muscle work.
An example of a Glute exercise with a big ROM would be a Lunge or Bulgarian Split
Squat. A Band Side Walk, however, has a small ROM, and takes shorter time to recover
and adapt from.

3. Emphasis on eccentrics
Early research shows that heavy eccentrics break down the muscle more than heavy
concentric movements (Clarkson et al., 1986; Gibala et al., 1995; Gibala et al.,
2000; Nosaka et al., 2002).
As expected, the participants from these studies also took much longer to recover to
their old performance levels after the eccentrics. However, they took only 1 day to
recover from the concentric movements. The following image illustrates this in terms
of muscle SRA.
An example of a Glute exercise with an emphasis on eccentrics would be the Full Squat.
You really have to control the weight while going down, while tension on the Glutes gets
greater and greater. On the other hand, Band Hip Thrusts are only heavy at the top, and
increasingly lighter when going to the bottom (because the elastic resistance decreases).
It’s clear that Full Squats emphasize the eccentric part of the movement, and Band Hip
Thrusts don’t. Because of this, Squats probably take longer to recover and adapt from.

4. Muscle length at peak tension

More recent studies also show that firing muscles
hard when they’re lengthened causes more muscle breakdown compared to when
they’re shortened. As expected, these exercises also took longer to recover and adapt
from (McHugh & Pasiakos, 2004; Nosaka et al., 2005; Soares et al., 2015).
The image below shows two versions of the partial Biceps Curl. If you only do the
bottom portion of the exercise (top of image), there is peak tension in the biceps
when it’s lengthened. This results in more muscle breakdown, and a longer SRA
curve. If you do only do the top portion (bottom of image) there is peak tension when
it’s shortened, resulting in less muscle breakdown, and a shorter SRA curve.
To further clarify how this works for Glute exercises, consider the Parallel Squat and
the Barbell Hip Thrust. For the Squat, peak tension happens at the bottom, when the
Glutes are lengthened. For the Barbell Hip Thrust, peak tension happens at the top,
when the Glutes are maximally shortened. The image below illustrates this.

Back to the Glutes

Now let’s apply these 4 aspects to some Glute exercises…
Full Squats take long to recover from, because they show moderate Glute activity
(1), bring the Glutes through a big ROM (2), with an emphasis on the eccentric phase
(3) and there’s peak tension when the Glutes are lengthened (4). Combine these,
and you have a lot of muscle breakdown, which needs more time to recover (and
adapt) from. Hence, the SRA curve takes the longest time to complete (3-4 days).
We could categorize the Full Squat as a Stretcher type of exercise.
Barbell Hip Thrusts take less time to recover from, because the ROM is smaller (2),
and there’s peak tension when the Glutes are maximally shortened (4). However, the
Barbell Hip Thrust shows tremendous Glute activity (1) (Contreras et al., 2015) with a
heavy-loaded eccentric phase (if you control the weight down, which a lot of people
don’t do) (3). High muscle tension particularly stimulates the ‘building bigger’
(adaptation) part of the SRA curve (Schoenfeld, 2010). As a result, the SRA curve
takes moderately long to complete (2-3 days). We could label it as an Activator type
of exercise.
Finally, Band Side Walks have a very small ROM (2). The average Glute activity is
low (1). They show peak tension when the muscle is shortened (4). Hence, the SRA
curve probably takes a short while to complete (1-2 days). We could categorize it as
a Pumper type of exercise. That’s because the short range of motion and varying
tension on the Glutes (band elastic resistance changes) allow for more reps to be
performed, which causes a lot of “metabolic stress” (more on this later).
The categories of exercises, their related aspects, and estimated SRA completion
times are summarized below.

There are some experts, such as Stuart Phillips, who think that categorization
between muscle damage, muscle tension, and metabolic stress (the basis for the
categorization below) is overrated. He and others hypothesize that they all come
down to one underlying factor: motor unit recruitment (Burd et al., 2012). Still, I stick to
Brad Schoenfeld’s notion of damage, tension, and metabolic stress to categorize the
Glute exercises below, as there’s a logical framework of scientific evidence
supporting it (Schoenfeld, 2010). Also, for every exercise, you can see which part of
the Glutes it emphasizes. Don’t take this as a black/white distinction, but more as a
grey area where upper and lower Glute activation overlap.
Pumpers, metabolic stress and SRA
High-rep sets of pumpers often lead to a muscle pump due to the occlusion of veins
via constant tension on the muscles and a serious burning sensation in the muscle
due to a build-up of certain metabolites (Schoenfeld & Contreras, 2014). This is also
called metabolic stress, one of the 3 proposed drivers of muscle growth, along with
muscle tension and muscle breakdown (Schoenfeld, 2013). Sadly, we don’t know
much about how long muscle protein synthesis stays elevated after doing
metabolically stressful exercise (Schoenfeld, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2013). However,
muscle recovery and adaptation from pumpers, which are related to muscle protein
synthesis, probably takes between 1 to 2 days. That’s because multiple studies show
strength is back to baseline within this time (Loenneke et al., 2013; Thiebaud et al.,
2013). Anecdotally we can confirm this. 5 sets of heavy Deadlifts can leave you
smashed for multiple days after. This simply isn’t the case with Frog Pumps.

Some further anecdotal evidence…

Remember how I mentioned Bret’s client Erin at the introduction of this article? She’s
a great example of someone who perfectly matched exercise type with
recovery/adaptation time.
After some time as Bret’s guinea pig in the Glute Lab, Erin discovered that she
responded a lot better to pumper-type of exercises, such as the Band Side Walk and
the Band Deadlift. During the next couple of months, she was doing pumpers 6 days
a week. The results were incredible! In terms of SRA, the following probably
happened:

For Erin, the high workout frequency was just what she needed to take her Glutes to
the next level. However, the key point here is that she did pumpers to achieve this. If
she had chosen to do stretchers, her muscle size progress might have looked
something like this…
Sure, her muscle protein synthesis would get elevated all this time (at first). But her
Glutes would be shrinking (maybe they wouldn’t shrink but they certainly wouldn’t be
growing), because she wouldn’t allow proper time to pass before training them again.
As a result of the decrease in Glute size, she would also get weaker and weaker
every workout. At some point, she wouldn’t be able to have an overloading workout
anymore. No overload, no stimulus, no elevated muscle protein synthesis. Stretchers
take more time to recover from than pumpers because they create more strain and
damage. Damage and soreness is good up until a point, but it can quickly become
counterproductive (Schoenfeld & Contreras, 2013), so you need to keep stretcher
volume in check and make sure to include ample pumper volume in your program.

Pro tip: turning Stretchers/Activators into Pumpers

Some of the Stretcher and Activator type exercises can be turned into Pumpers.
How? Well, let’s take the Full Squat as an example. The squat loads the Glutes the
most at the bottom part.
You can further increase the Glutes’ activity (1) by putting an elastic band around
your knees. In order to keep the tension on the Glutes, and to shorten the Range of
Motion (2), you want to bounce up and down out of the hole of the squat while only
coming half to two-thirds the way up, thereby keeping constant tension on the glutes.
For this, you want to use a light weight that you can do a lot of reps with in a rapid
fashion for high levels of metabolic stress. Also, using a light weight will ensure the
eccentrics are light (3). Taken together, these changes make for a speedy recovery
between workouts. The following image illustrates this make-over from a stretcher to
a pumper.
Applying this today
By now it is clear that Pumpers can be done very frequently… but including what we
know about Stretchers and Activators and their SRA curves, how can we incorporate
this into our training?

Example 1: mixed program

If you like to train 4 days a week, you could do some variety of ‘pumpers’ every
session, while doing ‘stretchers’ and ‘activators’ only on some of the days, because
they need more recovery. You want to include a vertical (squatting, lunging,
etc.), horizontal (hip thrust, deadlift, etc.), and lateral/rotary (external rotation, side
walk, etc.) exercise on every day. Here is an example:
Monday:
3 x 8-12 Back Squats
3 x 8-12 Romanian Deadlifts
2 x 30 Frog pumps (pumper to finish off)
Tuesday:
3 x 8-12 American Hip Thrusts
2 x 20 Band Seated Hip Abductions
2 x 20 Banded Squat Bounce
Thursday:
3 x 8-12 Front Squats
3 x 8-12 Off-bench Side Lying Hip Abductions
2 x 20 Banded Back Extensions (pumper to finish off)
Friday:
3 x 8-12 Bulgarian Split Squats (more recovery possible because of weekend)
2 x 20 Band Hip Thrusts
2 x 20 Lateral Band Walk
Example 2: holiday program
Are you traveling from place to place, have no access to weights, but want to keep
your Glutes looking top notch? This is the ideal time to do Glute Pumpers every
single day. Maybe throw in an activator/stretcher if possible. It could look something
like this:
Monday:
3 x 20 Frog pumps
3 x 20 Band Side Walks
2 x 30 Banded Squat Bouncers
Tuesday:
3 x 20 Walking Lunges
3 x 20 Feet-elevated Glute Bridge
2 x 30 Side Lying Clams
Wednesday:
(repeat Monday)
And so on…
It would look something like Erin’s 6x/week workout. See below.

Want those Pumpers to have a bigger effect? Do a lot of Stretchers and Activators the
weeks before you get on the plane. This way, the body will get very sensitive for the
period of Pumpers to come (Ogasawara et al., 2013). This ties in nicely with the next
example…

Example 3: alternating high frequency and low frequency

periods
Your body is an adaptive system. It gets used to a specific stimulus (such as training
frequencies) over time (Ogasawara et al., 2013). That’s why alternating high-frequency
periods with low frequency periods is a sensible idea.
For example, for 4 weeks you would train the Glutes 3 times per week. At the end of
that period, the muscle protein synthesis after a workout will have dropped to a
fraction of the initial amount. That’s the perfect time to start 4 weeks training the
Glutes 6 times per week, then go back to a reduced frequency.
The key point here is that your exercise type (Activator, Stretcher, Pumper) SRA time
should always match the time between workouts. In this case, pumper exercises are
a great choice during the high frequency period. You would emphasize stretchers
and activators for the low frequency weeks.

Individual differences
Still, there are some people who just respond better to some type of exercise when it
comes to Glute growth. You’ll have to find this out for yourself.
A way you could go about this is doing the alternating periods of high and low
frequency. See which of those periods your Glutes respond better to. If they respond
better to low frequency with Stretchers and Activators, you want to emphasize those
types of exercises. For example, you could alternate 6 weeks of low frequency
Stretchers/Activators with 2 week of high frequency Pumpers. This way, you spend
most time doing the type of exercise and frequency you respond best to. The 2
weeks of high frequency training will resensitize your Glutes for a new 6-week block
of Stretchers/Activators (Ogasawara et al., 2013). Of course, you’ll always be doing
activators, stretchers, and pumpers, but the proportion of exercise type changes
according to the training frequency.
Furthermore, Bret has observed that some people fire the Glutes a lot more during
certain exercises than what you’d expect. For example, some individuals feel their
glutes working harder during barbell hip thrusts compared to band hip thrusts and
vice versa. Some individuals feel frog pumps a ton in their glutes, while others don’t
at all and prefer wide stance dumbbell glute bridges for high reps. Some individuals
feel the Romanian deadlift heavily working their glutes while others only feel this
exercise in the hamstrings. Most individuals get very sore from walking lunges, but
some get even more sore from hip thrusts, which is strange as it seems to defy
physiology. It is your job through experimentation to discover what fires up your own
Glutes the most, but training is a lifelong journey of learning so be patient and utilize
the scientific method.

I left some stones unturned…

I want to close by saying this is not the whole story behind training frequency.
Muscles aren’t the only tissues in the body that have an SRA curve. Nerve tissue,
glycogen stores, and connective tissue also take time to recover and adapt, and this
can’t be ignored. In the next article I’ll pay attention to these other body systems. I will
also discuss the other factors in Glute SRA: Glute training experience.
However, now you should know how Glute exercise type impacts how often you
should train for the fastest growth possible. What are you waiting for? Get going and
bust your butt!

Final disclaimer
I’d like to point out that there are numerous researchers who hold muscle damage in
a very high regard (Paulsen et al., 2012). They argue that eccentric-focused muscle-
damaging exercises are the best at increasing the amount of muscle nuclei in the
muscle fibers. Why is this important? Read on…
You could see these muscle nuclei as factories with muscle-repairing workers. These
workers are to remain on stand-by to rebuild and build-bigger the muscle whenever
another ‘tornado’ of exercise arrives (Bruusgaard et al., 2010). A single factory can
only maintain a certain domain of muscle mass. In order for the muscle to grow even
bigger, more factories have to be added. As said, the researchers think exercises
that do the most muscle damage are best for this (Paulsen et al., 2012). Overall, you
could say that more factories means more workers, which means more long-term
capacity for muscle growth.

Because of this, I wouldn’t advise the people who respond best to high-frequency
training to do Pumpers year-round. That’s like keeping the amount of workers the
same, but asking them to build and maintain even more muscle mass, without any
time off. The workers will burn out.
Investing in more factories (with more workers) could possibly help this. Make sure
there are times in the year where you really go all-out on damaging stretcher
exercises. For example, you could focus on multiple heavy (or even eccentric-
emphasized) sets of Bulgarian Split Squats, Full Squats, and off-bench Side Lying
Hip Abductions for a few weeks at a time. The muscle damage they cause will likely
increase the amount of worker factories (muscle nuclei) in the Glutes. In the long run,
this possibly increases your Glutes’ capacity to increase their size.
The above reasons could possible explain why a lot of bodybuilding prefer training a
muscle only once a week. They might need 50 sets in one session to damage the
muscle enough for it to increase the amount of muscle nuclei further, in order to allow
for further muscle growth. However, there are three reasons why this practice should
be held with great skepticism. First, the recent meta-analysis on training frequency
showed a clear hypertrophic advantage with training a muscle group twice per week
as opposed to once per week. Second, anecdotally speaking, whenever a
bodybuilder is trying to bring up a weak muscle, he or she increases the training
frequency for that weak part. And third, metabolic stress exercise has been shown to
activate just as much (if not more) satellite cells as damaging exercise (Nielsen et al.
2012), which is followed up by more muscle nuclei.

This plays a strong case for high frequency pumper workouts in comparison to low
frequency stretcher workouts for the purpose of increasing muscle nuclei over the
long-run. The good news is that you don’t have to choose one over the other; you
can easily incorporate all 3 types of exercises into your training by following the
advice I’ve included in this article.