When sculpting your glutes, you don’t need to spend hours in the gym lifting weights. With the right exercises, you can get an excellent workout from the comfort of your living room. Ready to find out more? This 25-minute workout, devised by personal trainer and Sweat app instructor Kelsey Wells, works into the glutes and hamstrings and can be done from anywhere.
Strong glutes are more than just an aesthetic goal — sure, you might want to get glutes like Kim Kardashian (here’s what happened when we tried Kim’s glutes workout), but actually working on your glute strength can help you run faster and lift heavier. Your glutes work to keep your pelvis stable as you run and walk, so can help relieve the pressure on the lower back when you move. They can also reduce your risk of injury to your lower back, hips, knees and ankles.
The good news is, you don’t need to grab the best adjustable dumbbells or the best resistance bands for this workout — handy if you’re traveling, or on the go.
Kelsey Wells' 25-minute glutes and hamstrings workout
The workout goes as follows, four rounds of four exercises, which you can either do for 45 seconds with a 15-second rest, or 60 seconds with no rest. Wells recommends you take a minute-long break between sets.
The exercises are as follows:
Double-pulse squat: For this exercise, squat down, and at the bottom of the squat raise up a few inches back up, then squat down again before rising back to your starting position. Here are some of the most common squat mistakes you might be making.
Glute kickbacks: Similar to a donkey kick, start on all fours, with your hands underneath your shoulders and your knees underneath your hips. Engage your core and your glutes, and kick one leg out and back behind you, before returning to your starting position. Switch sides halfway through.
Pop-squat: For a pop squat, jump up, and land in a sumo squat position — with your legs wider than hip-width apart. Squat down, then jump back to your starting position. Move as quickly as you can to get your heart rate up.
Glute bridge: To do a glute bridge, start by lying on your back, with your feet pressed into the exercise mat and your knees bent. Engage your core and your glutes and lift your hips up to the ceiling, squeezing your glutes at the top of the exercise, before lowering your hips back down to the starting position. Here’s more on how to do a glute bridge with the perfect form, plus what happened when this fitness writer did 50 glute bridges a day for a week.
This workout follows a circuit format, where you work for four minutes, then take a minute rest. There are a number of benefits to this style of exercise, one of them being that you can get great results in a short amount of time. This workout doesn’t give you time to get bored, and sit and scroll through Instagram — with only 60 seconds to rest and catch your breath, you can really push yourself to get through as many reps as possible in a minute.
All of the exercises in this workout also target your hamstrings — the muscle that runs down the back of your leg between your glutes and your knees. Strong hamstrings can improve your overall leg strength, help you run faster, and lift heavier weights. Whether you’re an Olympic weightlifter or just a CrossFit fan, strong hamstrings will help you during explosive moves such as the snatch and clean.
Strong hamstrings and glutes are especially important for runners, as research has found that by strengthening these muscles, you can accelerate faster. By working on your posterior chain — the muscles that run along the back of your body, you can ward off common injuries to your hips, keens, and ankles.
Looking for more workout inspiration? Here’s a 10-minute ab workout that only uses one kettlebell, plus this 7-minute kettlebell workout that helps you build bigger legs.
