Fitness Fridays are Still here No Worries

Fitness Fridays are still here no worries! I just had a crazy busy week and little motivation myself last week!

The subject of the next few weeks is toning up for summer! I’m going to show you guys some of my favourite moves for different parts of my body. Most of them are small movements so my basic routine is:

Small effective movements + lots of reps = pain of the pleasurable sort ?

Today we are focusing on the Butt.


I rock a ghetto booty, which I love, but which takes a lot of work to keep in perky, short loving,  attention grabbing shape. So, as you can imagine, I do a lot of booty exercises.

1.

Squats are the number one exercise to do for your lower body, for a good reason – they burn more calories than any other move. I love them to bits and do quite a few variations of them. My first is the basic squat you see above. I usually do this in a mirror to check my form is correction. Second is a plie squat, which involves widening your stance, point your feet to side and then squatting. Sounds pretty, is a massive killer. Take it up a notch by never dropping your heels to the ground when you are doing your 50 reps. Makes it that much harder and kills your calves as well. Lastly I like doing duck squats. As ridiculous as they sound, I dare you to try and do 20 without collapsing. Basically you get down into a low squat, as you would do normally, as your starting position. Then you squat again, getting you butt as low to the floor as possible before rising up into normal squat position.

Usually makes me want to die or throw up.

2.

Bridges! I love doing these because you can feel the pull in your backside as you work – something I get a lot of sadistic pleasure out of. I like to do a lot of variations of these as well. 1. Basic raise and lower into bridge, clenching that butt as I go. 2. Bridge with one leg lifted straight out. 3. Bridge with one leg raised straight in the air. 4. Bridge with one leg resting on the other in a 4 shape (ouch ouch ouch). 5. Bridge pulses raised on the toes of your feet, as in the above picture. See, no need to get bored when you have so many variations to get through! Your butt will thank you!

3.

Glute kickbacks are another favourite of mine because the movement is so small but so effective. You can do these the normal way as shown above, or you can do them standing up, balanced on one leg with your upper body stretched in front.

4.

 

Single leg circles will kill you because you make the mistake of thining they look easy. Whether you are doing them on your back or side, with your leg straight up or held aloft to the side, these are the bomb. Like I say, they start of all easy, but put yourself on a timer and see how easy it is to keep that leg up there after 7 or 8 minutes. Then reverse it…

Your booty with be in pain by the time you take that leg down.

5.

Clamshells are a pilates move, and like the leg circles, are small enough to seem easy at first, but 50/100 reps later you’ll be feeling muscles you didn’t know existed. You can do these lying down and standing up, with weights or stretch bands. I prefer to do it on the floor and start of with 3/4 minutes of normal clamshell and then 3/4 minutes of elevated clamshell, which is where you life your bottom lower leg from the floor and carry on the simple open and close movement. I am shaking by the end of it.

6.

Finally, lunges. Walking, static, with weight and without, this is just a good all round body exercise. Remember to check your form though, it is so easy to screw it up with this exercise!

 

So there you have it! My favourite butt exercises. I do a lot of others and mix up my routine but these babies pretty much always have a place in my week. Especially the squats, damn I love squats…

 

 

 

What are you favourite exercises? What part of the body do you want to see next week?