How to Get a Toned Butt

The butt, legs, and abs are probably the top 3 places people would like to get rid of fat the most. Unfortunately, the majority of people approach fat loss in these areas in the wrong way. The typical person tries to firm up the area and target fat loss by doing isolation exercises. It’s great that they’re in the gym working out, but they could be seeing results much faster if they knew what they were doing. I’m going to outline what needs to be done to get a toned butt and legs so that you can get closer to reaching your goal of getting rid of the fat in those areas.

What Does Toned Mean & How do You Target Fat Loss

First of all, you can’t target fat loss, so let’s get that out of our mind now. If you want a nice firm butt, no amount of butt isolation exercises are going to get you there if you have a layer of fat covering up your muscles. Second of all, being “toned” is a meaningless word made up by the fitness industry to try and sell products.

What is being toned? All that means is that you are lean enough, and have enough muscle tone to actually see your muscles. Certain exercises don’t make you more toned. Your muscles either grow or they don’t. You either have fat covering your muscles or you don’t. If you want to get “toned”, you need to build muscle in that area, and you need to lose the fat covering it up. This is how you do it:

You Need to Eat the Fat Away

As I said, no amount of leg lifts, butt blasters, or any other ridiculous gimmicky isolation exercise is going to shape up your ass. The same goes for your abs and doing situps and crunches. You’re wasting your time if you aren’t following these steps to get six pack abs. If you want an ass that you can be proud of, you need to start in the kitchen. Follow these dieting guidelines to start dropping the fat:

• Aim for at least 1 gram per pound of body weight in protein.

• Eat enough carbohydrates to fuel your workouts,  your brain and nervous system, but no more. An average person will need around 100 grams of carbohydrates per day to fuel brain and nervous system function. Add this number to what you require to fuel your exercise, and this is the number of carbohydrates you should eat. Not sure how to figure that out? This is how you determine carbohydrate needs.

• Once you have both your protein and carbohydrate intake figured out, it’s time to figure out your fat intake. This is extremely tricky because each and every person is different. You could use a calorie calculator for a rough starting point, but there is only one way to truly get an accurate calorie intake – by adhering to this how-to guide for determining calories. I highly recommend you follow that guide, but if you’re feeling lazy, eat 10-12 times your body weight (pounds) in calories. Always start high. Your goal is to eat as many calories as possible and still lose weight.

• A little math will give us our fat intake. If we take a 150 pound person, and eat 1 gram per pound of body weight, that would be 150 grams of protein (150 pounds * 1 gram/pound = 150 grams). For carbohydrates, we take the 100 grams we need for brain and nervous system function and add it to let’s say another 100 grams that’s needed to fuel a high intensity workout. That would be 200 grams of carbohydrates total.

• Stick with me. Since protein and carbohydrates both have 4 calories per gram, and we have 150 grams of protein + 200 grams of carbs = 350 grams * 4 calories/gram = 1400 calories. The rest we are going to fill with fat. If our total calories is 12 times our body weight, we get 12 * 150 pounds = 1800 calories. Lost yet? Take our total calories (1800) and subtract it from the calories we have from protein and carbohydrates (1400), and we get our fat intake. (1800 – 1400 = 400 fat calories) Fat has 9 calories per gram so (400 fat calories / 9 calories per gram = 44 grams of fat)

Ok, so you’re confused as hell. That paragraph looks like a jumbled block of numbers and symbols. That’s OK. Read it, and then read it again if you don’t understand it. It will start to make sense to you. Our end result was 1800 calories, 44 grams of fat, 200 grams of carbohydrates, and 150 grams of protein. This should put us on track for fat loss in the area of 1-2 pounds per week.

Exercises for an Awesome Ass

Now that we have the most important aspect of getting a great butt completed – nutrition, we can start focusing on what needs to be done to build quality muscle in that area. The following exercises will start adding sexy shape to you butt in the fastest and most efficient way possible. There are no isolation exercises here. Forget them. They are not needed at all for that matter unless you are a mid-advanced to advanced lifter. Start doing these exercises, and you’ll start getting that butt you see on all those fitness models.

Good Mornings

The good morning is an amazing exercise. Done right, it works the muscles from the neck, all the wall down to the calves. It’s especially good for your hamstrings, glutes, and hips. Here’s a demonstration video:

Squats

Squats are the king of lower body development. If you’re trying to get a great ass without doing them, your severely limiting your potential. Not only do squats develop the butt, hips, quads, and hamstrings, but they are great for boosting the hormones responsible for building muscle and losing fat. Below is a video demonstration. For a step by step written guide on doing squats, a highly recommend you read this article for completing squats with perfect form. There are several mental aspects of the squat that people never think of that I cover in that article.

Sprints

Nothing will lean out your legs, butt, and abs (and your entire body for that matter) like sprints will. If you’re overweight, this might be difficult to do. However, I highly recommend you try them if you are in any kind of decent physical shape. Give yourself a proper warm-up, and then get to it. Sprints will put your body into the prime metabolic environment to release fatty acids – just what we need for shaping up that backside. Combine sprints with HIIT training for an all around amazing fat burning workout.

With the right nutrition, and by using exercises that will actually build muscle, you will be well on your way to getting that butt you always wanted. Get at it!