One of the most popular (and arguably, most important) muscle groups to train for aesthetics, health, and performance, the gluteals play an integral role during nearly every dynamic movement of the body.In this special episode, host Rick Richey is joined by NASM Master Trainer and IFBB Olympian, Andre Adams; and IFBB Olympian, Dr. Sunny “The Glute Doctor” Andrews, MD. Andre and Sunny detail and explore projects they’re working on, hip mobility and range of motion and its impact on glute development, how to prepare for a glute-focused training session, their favorite glute exercises and training protocols, and much more!
About The Guests:
Dr. Sunny Andrews: Also know as the "Glute Doctor", Dr. Sunny is a renowned expert on training the glutes. She is a medical doctor, an IFBB Wellness Olympian, and the owner of On Szn Fitness. Dr. Andrews was also one of more than 20 contributing authors to the NEW NASM Physique and Bodybuilding Coach Program.
Andre Adams: Andre Adams is a professional athlete with the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB) pro league, having competed in the 2015 Mr. Olympia and Arnold Classic professional physique divisions. He is also a Master Trainer with the National Academy of Sports Medicine® (NASM). Check out his IG profile.
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TRANSCRIPT:
**This transcript is auto-generated using AI and may have typographical errors present within the script.
Rick Richey 00:03
You're listening to the NASM CPT podcast with Rick Richey, the official podcast of the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Hey, y'all, and welcome to the NASM CPT podcast. My name is Rick Richey. And I want to talk a little bit today about glute development. And you're right, I may not be the right person from that perspective to giving you this information.
So what we've done is NASM has started working on a glute development course. And they have brought in to IFBB Olympians to be the brains behind some of this, the ones that are out there doing the work, training the glutes for the stage, and also looking a little bit about performance.
So it's not just about aesthetics, not just about muscular development, but what is the performance when it comes to the glutes, and how do they how are we supported with that. So I want to introduce you to a couple of people, one of which you've probably met before on the show, Andre Adams, and he is joined with Dr. Sonny Andrews. Thank you so much for being here, guys. Welcome. Hey, Hi. Thanks for having us. Yeah,
01:17
Thank you so much.
Rick Richey 01:18
Yeah, always a pleasure, Andre, Sunny, a pleasure to meet you and to have you on the show. So I'm going to throw it over to y'all and just let you take it for a little bit. Just a little introduction about like, who you are, professionally, your background. And then let's talk about like getting into some of the courses and the blogs and the things that you've been working on. And then we'll get into talk about the course. But then let's just have a teaser episode of what it is that we can do to work the glutes.
01:49
Sure, I'll kick things off since you guys know me, Andre Adams, and ESM, Master Trainer and IFBB Pro and the physique divisions. And, again, I'm happy to be back here. Thanks, Rick, for having us. Really excited to work on some of these projects on glute development with Dr. Andrew. So I'll let you go ahead and give give them an intro on yourself.
02:10
Everyone. So I'm Dr. Sunny Andrews, you guys can just call me Sunny, but I'm IPB wellness Olympian, and soon to be a Arnold competitor. And six weeks, but I study general surgery and I have a master's in biomedical science and nutrition. And I'd like to think that I'm a glute training expert.
Rick Richey 02:37
Nice, let's get let's get into the mix of this. All right, I want to I want to talk a little bit more about it. And I want to talk like just take us through a little bit of the what you've been working on. So I know that there are some blogs that have been in the works.
There's course that's in the works, what should we look forward through up forward to for these blogs? And for the course and then let's then we'll get into some of the stuff about, you know, from the time we walk in the door? What are we looking at from the warm up to the mobility drills all the way to exercise selection?
What Sunny and Andre Are Working on
03:10
Got it. So I think the better question is, what are we not working on lately, we've been doing a lot of stuff, you know, we actually just dropped a nice blog for ironmaster to shout out to Brian and Matt over there and glute development, which kind of set the foundation for what we're doing here with NSM. In fact, we're in Las Vegas as we speak, shooting with our good friend Ashley Courtois ster tomorrow to get some content for this NASM booth development course. So we'll definitely have a blog coming out.
We're going to talk about muscular development, but also you know how to build the glutes for functional strength, free prevention, postural alignment, all those all that good stuff that comes along with it. So maybe to your second point, I have Sunday kind of kickoff when we walk through the door in the gym, or we're coaching someone ourselves, one of the kind of first things we do when we're trying to prepare or warm up for our workouts.
How to Prepare or Warm-up for Glute Training
04:01
I think it starts even before you step into the gym, because to have a proper training session for any muscle you're trying to grow, you need to really emphasize your nutrition and your nutritional timing. And anytime I work with any clients or I'm writing a plan for someone, I make sure that they have a higher carb meal before they go in and train and try and figure out what carbs to digest best and try and aim that to be about 90 minutes to 60 minutes before they train so that they have time to digest it.
And then they're not trying to train on a full stomach. So that that happens before you even get to the gym. And then I usually try and have some type of mindset training for every program that I'm I'm writing or coming up with so that when people are in the gym, they already have this mentality of what they're doing, what they're trying to achieve and what they're trying to accomplish with that workout.
Sometimes they get a little silly and personify the workout and do that kind of stuff. But I think it helps give another layer to the workout and I mean, I have one workout. It's called paint as your friend or Clydesdale type activities, and they're just silly. But people start getting into this mindset of, oh, I'm going to go train, and it's going to be this next level exercise.
But then obviously, there's all the boring stuff, like the stretching and the warming up, that kind of stuff. And that's incredibly important. But things that I think people talk about quite often. Yeah.
Rick Richey 05:22
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's good to start before you even go into the door like before, before you even walk in the door of the gym, what have you already done. And if we can lay the groundwork for what a good session is going to look like? Both from a nutrition perspective and a mindset perspective, you're laying down some solid foundation there?
What's Does a Good Workout Really Look Like for Glutes?
05:45
Yeah, definitely. And you know, once we're in the gym, the first things you want to do is really work on making sure you have as much possible range of motion. So you might want to stretch, get your hips open up, focus on some mobility, Rick, I know you love corrective exercise you are.
Right, so we're trying to, maybe you come in and you're foam roll and lengthen your TfL and hamstrings, your piriformis make sure that you're going to get that movement efficiency, you're looking forward to target your glutes in this particular case.
Rick Richey 06:15
Gotcha. All right. So we do like some, some warm ups, there might be some foam rolling and stretching. What would be some warm ups that you may do for the hips? Regarding activations? Would you would you do, I don't know, like, like, kind of a movement prep to start facilitating muscle activation prior to doing heavier lifts or more complex lifts.
06:39
Yeah, so sending, what would you normally do to pre-exhausted glutes going into late day.
Pre-Exhausted Glutes
06:43
So before I train any lower body part, but specifically glutes, I do a stretching routine on transition that stretching your teen into a body weight circuit. And I use resistance bands and body we do things like single leg, hip thrusts off of the bench trying to really get that mind muscle connection going because if you're going to try and jump into a heavy glute exercise, and they're not warmed up, and you're you have no mind muscle connection, you're gonna either get hurt or just it's gonna be waste your time.
So I do things like body squats, just really Lommy centric really just trying to fill your glutes with blood. And some abduction work with your with resistant bands. I call them clamshells where you lie on your side into that and what other there's there's a whole bunch of things that we've included in the in the protocol, but I think that they're all aiming towards lowly, obviously body weight or resistance bands, high volume, and you're just really just trying to pre exhaust and like you said,
Rick Richey 07:49
Yeah, I like I like looking at it where you know, if we do core work ahead of time, or if I do some glute activations, I'm basically I'm not necessarily trying to exhaust anything, I'm trying to smack them and shake them up and say, Okay, are you ready for this? You know, let's, let's get in there. And maybe the way you would do with, with a boxer going into the ring, like let's go, you know, rattle the cage a little bit.
So it's prepped, and not necessarily, and pre exhaustion is a style, right? But there's also something to be said, for like my glutes aren't, I've been sitting on them, right? I've been, I've been basically putting them in foam rolling my glutes all day long by sitting on them sitting in a chair, and they're not ready. They're, they're kind of a phasic muscle, they're a little drooped, and we're trying to facilitate some activation there.
And I think it's important to do it, I think it's important to say, Hey, these are some lighter exercises, these are maybe more isolated exercises before we go into more of an integrated movement, because you need to get the glutes to participate. And if you don't, sometimes other muscles can jump in there and say, Hey, don't worry, I got it.
09:01
Yeah, I'm pretty exhaust may have been the wrong way. But they're, they're definitely not to failure exercises, they're just exercises that make you feel. I mean, if you do that circuit, it's very similar to the circuit that I'll do backstage at Olympia before I go on stage, where you're not training to failure to be sweating your fake tan off.
But if you're basically like training to have a pump, and like you said, wake up the muscles a little bit. And then when you go into an extra set, even if you go do a compound exercise, your glutes are the ones that were firing, you know, failed, like you can recruit them much more than you could if you just went did it cold turkey.
09:38
Yeah, a lot of stimulation. Right? And Ricky would appreciate things like single leg exercise. So like a single leg balance, reach, maybe even standing on a piece of foam where you're forcing that stabilization. If you've got so for aesthetic physique goals, you might even want to start by warming up your glute medius and minimus to try and round off.
You know, the top outer portion of your glutes if that's a weak point. for you. So again the clamshells fire hydrants, any kind of hip extension, all of those things are good ways to get that stimulus, you're looking for it before you get into, you know, subsequent training.
Rick Richey 10:13
Now talk a little bit about because we mentioned it, but hip mobility and hip range of motion, what are what are we looking at when when would you say, we need to work on some hip mobility with you, and what might some of those exercises look like?
Exercises for Increasing Hip Mobility
10:29
I kind of start with those assessments, right. And in fact, I'm gonna have Sonny share a story, we just talked about an insider. But if we look at our overhead squat assessment, and you have limited range of motion through the hips, you sit all day like us, right, you're probably going to have some hip flexor issues where you need to stretch and lengthen those as well to get that mobility, postural alignment.
If you've got anterior pelvic tilt, or, you know, PPT, those are all things that you might need to improve to make sure that you can isolate your glutes in an exercise. So Sonny talked a little bit about the stretching.
11:02
Yeah, I recently started going to this place called the stretch lab. And I just was thinking it was going to be somewhere where you went and they helped you stretch, so you don't have to do too much. It was much more than that. You stand on this platform.
And you hold on to this bar, and there's like a 3d scanner. And as you do these different movements asks you to squat and do deadlifts. And as you're doing these different movements, it tells you which muscles are being recruited more than others where you have imbalances, now, it was so cool.
And then we're gonna focus your stretch on these muscles so that it's not so tight so that you can recruit your glutes more, for example, and that was for me, they're like, you know, when you do squat, you're only recruiting out of if you say like you recruit your glutes 100% I don't think you're supposed to in a squat, but you're only recruiting them 30%.
You're really quad dominant. And I'm like that is like, wow, that's your quads out, you can recruit. I don't squat, I really don't squat at all. Because of that reason, when I didn't know it was because of that reason. But now I know, I am not interested glute workout that I want them to tight. Right? So I Yeah. Now I want to go do that every time.
Rick Richey 12:15
It's amazing. Alright, let me reintroduce you to our audience here. So we've got Dr. Sonny Andrews, and we have Andre Adams, both of which are IFBB Olympians, that's a big deal. That's a big deal. And I appreciate you all taking some time out of the the show and the the thing that you're doing in Las Vegas this weekend to be here with us to talk about the glute blog that you've been working on within NASM the glute development course that you're working on with NASM. And then just talking through some glute stuff for us and our listeners here.
So I appreciate that. I got a I want to talk a little bit about. I mean, it's kind of what you're talking about here where we're discussing really movement efficiency, right? And so you had this really wonderful High Tech experience to go through some neuromuscular efficiency, and to identify what some of those things are.
Andre, you were talking about the movement assessment, and identifying some things with the movement assessment. So how do you go from movement assessment, and then identifying neuromuscular efficiencies? And then where does the glute training fit in that conversation?
Glute Training and Movement Assessments
13:29
Yeah, so I think it's, it's very similar to what we're doing, you know, with our NDSM, overhead squat assessment, or any of our, you know, kinetic chain movement efficiencies, where you're looking to isolate and lengthen some of those overactive muscles, right? So Sony's example her quads were a little bit dominant in that particular assessment.
So maybe foam rolling and stretching those areas before she gets into her, her glute training. That would be my approach for most of it, right? If you're hamstring dominant, definitely want to roll out in the biceps for Morris, hamstring complex, maybe your TFLs before you start your actual glute training.
That's really what I would look at it for is how can we strengthen the underactive muscles we're trying to get this adaptation for? Right? We're trying to build our glutes, and then how can we relax or lengthen the overactive muscles?
Rick Richey 14:16
Yeah, I love that. I love that, that focus with that. So now let's get to it. This is really all anybody cares about for this next part? So and you know, it's true. We get these these questions all the time.
What are the best exercises or sometimes not even that what is the best exercise is usually what you get if you only had one exercise. I'm not going to put you on the spot like that because my brain doesn't work that way. Like I understand it, but that the answer really depends, right?
Like there's so many things that are out there, it just depends but what are what are what is your favorite, what are the best exercises and not just glute max, but we can talk about glute medius and up to you as well.
What Are The Best Glute Exercises?
15:02
Yeah, um, let you go first Sonny.
15:04
I had a millimeter added to the circumference with my glutes every time someone asked me this. I would have the biggest lifts in the entire world. Yeah, I, you want me to go?
15:16
I think or we can guess each other's.
Rick Richey 15:18
Okay. Oh, that's funny. All right.
15:22
If I only had to pick one because I have a lot. For us.
15:25
Hip thrusts are the are my favorite? Yeah, I can. I can, like loose the most in hip thrusts. But when I traditionally say, alright, what's your favorite
15:37
Lunges? Close? That's, that's probably number two. Okay,
Rick Richey 15:41
Step up, rear foot elevated.
15:43
I'll be on the minds of compound movement, close kinetic chain. If that's a hint, I come from powerlifting. So I like that. Yeah, I love deadlift. So deadlift guy, but I think they're king but for our goals, right?
For you, you probably focus more on like an audio. One question. I think we should we should ask Rick is kind of some of the variations because there's so many, right? If we say, a lunge, if we say a squat, right, are we talking sumo squats, Bulgarian split squats.
We're talking back squats, front squats, back squat. So when we think about even just some of the acute variables with a hip thrust? What's your favorite? Are we talking barbell loaded Smith band? Are your hips and PPT? You know posterior pelvic?
Rick Richey 16:29
Yeah. Great question. No.
16:32
So I, I will do my favorite hip thrust would be the resistance band on my knees, Smith machine, triple contraction. If I do four sets of that it's game over. It's though I get the best pump from doing that.
I don't necessarily, I think I get the best pump. But I don't think I necessarily break the most fibers that usually won't make me sore, like five to six sets.
So really heavy hip thrusts where I do some feeder sets and then try and do a drop set at the end like that's, that's like next level. But to get the most pump, the craziest pump is definitely the triple contraction machine.
17:14
So Rick, you know, you and I always touch on our mechanisms of hypertrophy. Remember last time we met on the physique stuff, we talked about adding a fourth one. So you got exercise induced muscle damage, right? Yeah, chemical tension, metabolic stress and the pump.
So the pump, really, you're not breaking down a ton of tissue, right? There's not a ton of extensive damage being done. But you are getting a lot of mechanical tension, you like to go pretty heavy on your hip thrusts,
17:41
I can go very heavy, yes, she goes, she goes heavy, she probably do more than I can on a hit list. And you're getting the metabolic stress from the pump and the volume and the right of the exercise.
17:51
Another thing when you do hypertrophy training, when you get the pump is you cause angiogenesis. So although you're not breaking down fibers you're causing there should be more blood that goes to those muscles, so that they can get more nutrients and grow more efficiently to so you increase the size of the vessels that then cause tributaries to grow and Feed The Muscle to so it is necessary.
Rick Richey 18:14
Nice. So this is a lot of bilateral exercise that you're doing here is their place. Is there. Do single leg exercises fit in this continuum? Or these? Maybe maybe we're just talking about favorites does it fit in, in a glute development program?
18:32
Oh, absolutely. I had an asymmetry to my glutes and worked very hard to correct it. But my favorite glute exercise that when people ask me my three favorite glute exercises, I will always say step ups.
Because if you go on PubMed, and you look at which muscle or which exercise recruits glues the most and the most out of any other muscle while you're training it step up. So I really, I have been really trying to work on incorporating more step ups into my routine. And I really wasn't even recruiting glutes enough when I was doing it. So I had to really work on my form.
19:07
Yeah, and we're gonna demonstrate that actually tomorrow. Maybe we'll just do a quick video tonight but you know the box but you know, definitely the former at the height of the box.
So what that elevation is, are you you know, tilting the knee past the toe? Are you driving more through the heels and recruiting all your glutes? All those little distinctions make a big difference in how step ups can really help develop your glutes.
Rick Richey 19:37
And interesting so let's, let's take this and move into range of motion. So is there an ideal range of motion that we should be looking at when it comes to working through the hips is is there a point where too much hip flexion as you're doing your your descent?
Is there too much? Is there an ideal range of motion or like, Are we are we doing the same thing? It depends. And let's work through variety.
The Ideal Range of Motion for Working Through the Hips
20:05
Are we talking specifically on step up? Still?
Rick Richey 20:09
No, no, let's, let's cover let's cover everything. So yes, let's try to step up since you talked about them.
20:15
All of the exercises. Okay, which one? Are we gonna start with? Medical? Alright, so yeah, go
20:20
Do top three. Yeah. Okay. So you know, I always like to look at it is with any exercise, if you can start the exercise, whether it's a step up or an RTO, with the muscle in a lengthened position, where you're getting that full range of motion, you're going to recruit more muscle fiber.
That being said, you know, you also want to have that range of motion that allows you to consciously squeeze that muscle, contract that muscle as hard as you can,
20:44
Yeah. If I do step ups, and it's too high of a platform, and I have to come all the way back down and then take the tension off of the muscle, I don't think that it's as effective as if I just kind of keep myself in a constant tension and go up and down.
20:59
So that's a good point. You T right, time under tension. Yeah, that's everything in this world with muscular development, where you're really trying to maximize how much muscle fatigue you're tapping into. And again, it's that most mechanical tension, right, those three mechanisms. So I think that's one of the biggest focuses on anything in bodybuilding.
And ohana, you're working with honey RAM bot. Now, one of the legends in the sport in terms of coaching, I don't know what he has, like 20 Olympia titles under his belt, which is maybe one more physique. But, you know, his philosophy is like, I think it's FST seven. Right.
So that's the fastest stretch training. Again, shuttling that all that blood flow and everything like that, but definitely some big techniques that are centered around time and attention with any of these exercises.
Rick Richey 21:50
Yeah, cuz that's one of the things I was thinking about with the step ups is that oftentimes, when you get somebody where step is high, when they drop down, they they bounce off the calf to come back up. And, and then you lose some of that tension.
So and I think a lot of times, in that particular example, what you do is you have people focused more on the step up than focusing on the glute supporting that step up, and what you're saying with his mind muscle connection. And there's a research article that that Brad Schoenfeld felt just posted recently, that really does show that when you focus on a muscle during the resistance training of that muscle, it does increase muscle activity.
And so it's actually made it into the acute variable list when you're focusing on muscular development is thinking about and focusing on that muscle. And sometimes it's hard to do when you're bouncing off a rear leg on a step up.
22:56
Right, exactly. So it's got to you know, it's got to be a good fit for you for your biomechanics. I think another good exercise, maybe to to think about would be an RDL, or even a sumo squat.
You know, you'll see some athletes, we even like to do deficits, right where you get if you're flexible enough, and you feel like you can get a little bit more out of the exercise, some people will elevate the feet and go to a deficit.
And then you're coming up about 90%, just to keep it under tension, right? If you stand completely up. Now you've kind of lost that can just another looked at
23:31
I'm getting very excited to go train tonight.
Rick Richey 23:35
This is very cool. Can you talk about the were the role of a PPT in doing some of these lifts like an RDL.
Maybe a deadlift, you know, things like that, where a posterior pelvic tilt may have some contribution here.
Walking Through Hip Thrusts
23:54
I'm thinking maybe let's walk through hip thrusts. And when you're at the top of your hip thrusts, right, if you start just spine and and hips neutral, yeah, that's kind of like you know, the starting point for most people. But if you want a little bit more out of it,
24:06
Yeah, right. You have to have a PVT F at the top of the movement, and then hold it to Yeah, if you really like it, we were talking about time under tension with hip thrusts, it could be like a two out of 10 and effectiveness.
But if you really wait up at the top of the movement and rotate your hips, and then have a long centric movement, it turns into a whole different exercise, because you're the most force is on your muscles when it's like completely contracted. So that's usually not like the most effective exercise.
But if you change it so that you're still constantly instead of just dropping down the weight, but if you're still putting yourself under tension, as you're lowering the barbell when you're doing hip thrusts, then it becomes much more effective. But yeah, the posterior tilt I think if you get out of it, so for me for like rest pause, hit Test.
Those are those are great, because you can recruit the muscles over and over again if the if the box is like the right height, but like we said, with the step ups, if the box is too high, and you come all the way down and you have to reposition yourself every time, I think it's less effective,
Rick Richey 25:16
Right? That makes sense to me. I was even doing just today on the back extension stand where I really just do them for hip extension stands, holding onto a plate posterior Lee tip, tipping my pelvis as I come up into it, where it feels like I'm pushing my pelvis into the pads and lifting up. So different than just lifting up. Right, like being very focused on that.
So let me go one more time with this. We've got Dr. Sonny Andrews, and we have Andre Adams with us today. I've got a couple more questions. And we'll actually go get your training in because I know you're chomping at the bit to do it Sunny. Let's do that. Let's talk about two things.
So I just want to I want to lay it out what I want to address is can we talk about volume and frequency? And then Sunny? If you could, because it's based on the blog that I read, if you could talk about the SRA curve? I'd appreciate it? Yeah, of course.
What is The Stress Recovery Adaptation (SRA) Curve?
26:16
Yeah, we're gonna go SRA first, and we'll go volume and frequency.
26:19
Okay, so with the SRA curve, you're going to
Rick Richey 26:25
What is it?
26:27
Let's define the acronym. Is that's your stress recovery adaptation, right? Yeah.
26:33
So if you're going to have the curve be the most effective, you have to have enough, you put your body under enough stress for it to even be activated. So obviously, you're gonna have to find an amount, that's going to give you an activation so that you're going to even need to recover. So you're going to put yourself under stress, that's the exercise.
That's the time under tension. That's the force. That's the I mean, obviously, your form is important too, because that's that too. So that's the if you think I know where my hand is, there you go. So that that part is where you're going to have a descent in the curb, if you're trying to look at it that way.
Recovery is the time when you're resting in between your workouts. And that's going to depend that length of time is going to depend on your sleep, on your food, nutrition, and also on how much of the stress you put your body under.
So you want to make sure that if your, your stress response, or stimulus is too great, and it's going to cause your rest response or rest time to need to be much longer, you're going to mess up your curve. So like let's say the ideally, you can go through three different of those cycles and week if you do that correctly. But if you have a stress response, that's going to cause you to need to have an extended period of time for your rest, and your need to rest for days instead of two. And you can only fit in two cycles, and you mess up the curve.
And then I can go on to adaptation, which is the last part where you come back up before you're ready to work out again. And that's the adaptation. And that's basically just that, hopefully, after you've rested, that your your muscles have built a stronger system than they were before. So you break them down, you rest, you build them back up. And that's the adaptation.
Rick Richey 28:31
Right? So you're doing this little down and up, but you're doing it at a trajectory that's hopefully elevating
28:38
Likely, yes, everything's strategic. Rick, I would, I would equate it back to like our said principle, right. So specific adaptation to impose demands, and you've got that muscle protein synthesis happening in there.
And to Sonny's point, if you're not getting enough stress or demand placed on the muscle or not breaking down enough tissue, you're probably not going to get that adaptation. So it's a sweet spot too much. You push that recovery period out farther than with like, not enough, you're just not going to get the adaptation you're looking for.
Rick Richey 29:08
Gotcha. So when it comes to doing this now, because it this goes hand in hand with the question about training, volume and frequency.
So is there is there a sweet spot for frequency? And does it matter for beginner, intermediate advanced what that looks like?
The Sweet Spot for Glute Training Frequency
29:28
I'll go I'll go beginner, intermediate, she's gonna go advanced or intermediate. You know, I'm thinking about kind of my day to day clients that are maybe not competitors, looking for, you know, some functional strength improvements or postural improvements.
We usually target about twice a week, but again, it can it can vary wildly depending on their goal. I think when you go around in a survey a lot of people, especially women, and ask why they want to train glutes. The number one response you typically get is an aesthetic goal.
So we're trying to balance those Two dichotomies, right? Is it functional performance or is it purely aesthetic? Obviously, we don't want to throw you know, your body out of out of alignment or out of whack either. So I would start maybe twice a week. But for more advanced training, as many is 456, you know,
30:18
It trained your glutes, well, she's an athlete. Yeah. And it's, and I took, it took some time to work up to training four times a week, and you can't train four times a week, unless you're having adequate, you know, recovery.
Really, it's quite, you have to be very, I don't want to stay pampered. But you really do need to take care of yourself and you're not training if you're going to try and make grow or change at all, if you're training four to five times a week is
what is strategic to write a little bit glutes and then
30:51
I only have two heavy glute days, and then I have three other touch up, you could call them touch up glue days. So it's high volume. Right now I don't really train includes anything less than, I think 10 reps is the lowest I go.
So that's usually a very high volume between like, there's some work, some exercises like the abduction work I do is between 20 to 15 reps. Some cable work is 20 reps, but most of the time it's between 10 to 15.
Rick Richey 31:23
Okay, what kind of sets are people looking at if they're doing these rep ranges.
Typical Sets for Glute Training
31:28
So for someone who's, in my opinion, when I was starting from people I train that are beginning, I think, and you really want to make changes and be very sore. If you train two times a week, you can do a set of hip thrusts that are like six sets. If you you know you want to put yourself through the wringer and see changes could you make I think you can make growth with four sets.
But if I'm going to be giving someone my honest opinion about a very rigorous glute training program, I'll bump up and I don't start, I won't say Oh, start at at six sets. It's like I will adjust people sets week to week. And you know, instead of doing increasing weight all the time, sometimes it's better to just increase your reps or not increase your reps, increase your sets. So yeah,
32:14
You know what I'm hearing, right, because one of my favorite terms, progressive overloading the whole podcast on that. So we did you know, when we think about what tools do we have to progressive overload. So in that NASM OPT model, we've got our, you know, five different stages. For the purposes of a physique goal, we're pretty much training primarily in that muscular development phase.
And then over the course of so many weeks or prep, we can progressively overload our intensity, our loading rates of the weight, the amount of sets volume, we can play with the timing or the cadence of our sets. So definitely a lot of different tools to keep you progressing without necessarily adding a ton of weight or getting outside that rep range looking for.
Rick Richey 32:58
All right, I got one more big question to ask and then we can we can wrap it up. But I get the question a lot. So I'm gonna ask it to you. Can I work out when I'm sore? If my glutes are sore? Can I do still do glute days? Or should I wait until I'm not sore? What's your rule of thumb? 90%? Our brother?
Should You Workout if Your Glutes Are Still Sore?
33:17
Yeah, I'd say unless you're, you're better than 90% recovered, it's really not effective. Okay, you're just messing with your recovery period at that point. So it could be counterproductive to your growth.
Rick Richey 33:29
I'm so happy you said that. All right. Yeah, tastic y'all, I'm gonna let you get back to it. I know that you have a workout you're going to get in tonight and you have a whole day doing shoots, where you are showing people how to do these things. And for those of us who get the course, we will be able to see what those exercises look like that you'll be shooting tomorrow.
So thank you so much, Andre, and Sonny for being here with us. Can you just let people know anything you want them to leave with, but it should also include how they can find you. So social media, things like that.
34:06
Absolutely. I would say keep a lookout for Sonny at the Arnold in six, six and a half weeks, whatever we are now.
Rick Richey 34:12
Congratulations on that. But I'll definitely be tuned in I'll probably be there. But you know, for me, definitely find me on Instagram. Andre Adams underscore official or Andre Adams official calm. And check us both out. We both got a bunch of cool treads and transformation challenges. I think you just started a posing challenge too,
34:32
Right? Yeah. It's a course. Of course, I'm doing Arnold prep challenge right now. Just cool because I have a whole community of people that are doing the same workouts that I've made for this prep. Yeah, helms done. I mean, everyone has a little bit different goals.
So I'm doing everyone's nutrition a little bit differently. But it's cool to be in. I feel like I'm in prep with all these different people. It's very cool. Cool. Sorry, Instagram. My Instagram handles Dr. Sonny Andrew. And I've been posting on my YouTube channel more, which is Sonny Andrew. I've been posting my workouts and I actually have to go do that right now. I have one post today.
Rick Richey 35:14
All right, cool. Well, I do encourage everyone to follow and to definitely see Andre and to see why Dr. Sonny Andrews is also called the glute data. So it's definitely on display and that we understand why you were tapped to help author this course. So thank you so much for what you've done, the support that you've given us at NSF and for being on the show.
Thank you for listening. For those of you who are with us, make sure if you have questions for me reach out to me, you can do so on Instagram at Dr. Rick, Rick Ritchie. And you can also hit me up on email Rick, Ritchie, Ric H Ey and nsn.org This has been the NASM CPT podcast.
