moves to help shape lower body? aka "minimize my butt"

pchesnut
pchesnut Posts: 347 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I am very pear shaped. I have a fairly small waist but thanks to maternal genetics I have wide hips (thanks mom) which results in a larger backside. I am still fairly new to MFP and have just been walking 3 miles a day (brisk pace) to start my body getting used to exercising.
Now comes the selfish part of my question. I have 4 sisters who are lucky enough to have not ended up with as wide of hips. When I go to our family reunion in 3 months I would love to NOT have the biggest butt. I know that diet is a huge part of that and so I have been working hard on that area. But now I want to try and focus on my lower body.
So what are some good starting out moves that I can begin with to build up the stamina to hit it even harder down the road?

Replies

  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
    Join a gym and start one of the following lifting programs

    1. Starting Strength
    2. New Rules of Lifting for Women
    3. Stronglifts.

    Feel free to google them as there is much good info available online. Books and everything!
  • emirror
    emirror Posts: 842 Member
    As you know, the only thing that will make it smaller is to lose fat. To find where your smallest size will be, find your hip bones, and feel where the outer edge of them are. That width is the one you're stuck with, for better or worse.

    Some good exercises for the hips and glues are squats, lunges, and bridges. If you have access to a gym, my favorite machine to work my butt is the hip abductor. I set the weight low (for me, that's 40), and then by rep 10 I can feel my glutes working. I do 4-5 sets of 20-25 reps.

    It's a personal difficulty for me to get my glutes to engage, because my legs are pretty strong and they try to do all the work in squats and bridges. The abductor machine forces my glutes to work. For me, lunges work second best, but still use a lot of leg power.

    You can take a peek at my pics. I have one at 174 without any exercise, and then one recent one around 148ish. The width is less, and the building of muscle is lifting everything up and making it look a lot better. I'll always have wide hips (proportionally) but a muscular big butt is a lot different from a non-muscular big butt. :flowerforyou:

Categories