Exercises To Target The Upper Glutes

Want to target your upper glutes? You’re in the right place. Upper glute exercises will help you to build a more rounded “upper shelf” to your butt.

The good news is, with weightlifting you can build any muscle you want to build, just focus on and apply yourself to building that target muscle, and in time, the result is yours.

But before you delve into these upper glute exercises, you need to understand and consider the bigger picture…

Exercises To Target The Upper Glutes Contents

Upper Glute Muscles

Upper Glute Exercises

The Untold Secret About Upper Glute Exercises

Exercises To Perform Before Your Upper Glute Exercises

Avoid Sabotaging Your Upper Glute Workouts

Beyond Upper Glute Exercises

Upper Glute Muscles

Your glutes are actually made up of 3 main muscles, the gluteus medius, maximus and minimus.

The upper glute is the gluteus medius, the middle (and largest) part is the gluteus maximus and the lower part is the gluteus minimus.

No matter what exercises you do to target the upper glutes, you will naturally recruit the other glute muscles, at the very least from a secondary perspective.

Basically; they’re all going to come along for the ride whatever glute exercises you do.

With that said, you can still focus on exercises that put additional emphasis on those upper glute muscles, see below…

Upper Glute Exercises

To cut to the chase, here are some of the best upper glute exercises you can do. Click through to learn more about each exercise in its own right.

Hip Thrusts

Glute Bridges

Single Leg Glute Bridge

Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift

Cable Kickbacks

Clamshells

Crab Walks

Single Leg Romanian Deadlifts

Cable Hip Abductions

Feet Elevated Hip Thrusts

Butterfly Hip Thrusts

The Untold Secret About Upper Glute Exercises

What so many women miss about targeting the upper glutes with the key exercises, or any muscle group for that matter, is that they work best when performed AFTER your bigger compound exercises.

Seriously, DO NOT try to bypass this step; the only person you’re sabotaging is yourself.

It is a well known fact of weightlifting that the muscle grows the most in the final stages of the workout. This is why lifters perform more isolation and assisted exercises at the end of their workout.

When your muscles are already fatigued from performing the bigger lifts, then they can be broken down further for better growth potential in recovery.

That’s why Muhammed Ali famously said; “I don’t count, I only start counting when it starts hurting”, because he knows that’s when it’s actually working at its best.

Exercises To Perform Before Your Upper Glute Exercises

Before you do your upper glute exercises, perform your heavy compound glute exercises first, these will be any squat variation—sumo stance for better glute activation.

Or, any barbell deadlift variation—again, if you’re not feeling it in your glutes, try a sumo stance.

Then work your way down in terms of the level of intensity, so this might look like:

Barbell Back Squat

Hip Thrusts

Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift

Single Leg Romanian Deadlifts

Cable Kickbacks

Crab Walks

Clamshells

The above is just an example, you don’t have to follow those exact exercises, just make sure you’re working through your upper glute exercises by level of intensity, from the most intense overall to the least intense overall.

Avoid Sabotaging Your Upper Glute Workouts

This is worth repeating, because it’s tempting and so common for women to just focus on the upper glute exercises, ignoring the bigger, more crucial picture.

There is a reason workout plans are structured in a certain way, and that is why anyone who doesn’t follow this formula lacks any substantial results.

You can make some progress, but if you want substantial progress that you can see reflected on the outside, you need to base your upper glute workouts around a key compound lift.

This applies to all workouts. Start with the compound lifts first and then do the smaller, isolation exercises last. Your muscles grow much faster and much more substantially when you approach your workouts in this way.

Also, avoid overtraining. 1-2 solid upper glute workout plans a week is enough. You don’t need to train them every day, focus on some other muscle groups in-between.

Beyond Upper Glute Exercises

Glutes in general, not just the upper glutes, are a hot topic amongst women in the gym at the moment. It’s great that women are working to build this muscle group. It’s the largest muscle group in the human body and is responsible for so much more than giving you that glute shelf or a bubble butt!

For that reason, we already have a lot of glute related content on this website, so check out some further resources below…

Compound & Isolation Glute Exercises That Build Muscle Fast

10 Butt Lifting Exercises To Grow Your Glutes

Bum Exercises

Glutes Galore Fast Track Workout Pack

Bum & Thighs Workout Plans

Simply Glutes Workout Plans

Glute Bridge vs Hip Thrusts