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Why You Should Not Believe the Hype of "New and Improved" Exercises for Your Fitness Journey

“The ‘new and improved’ workout for your glutes approved by every self-proclaimed social media influencer who enjoys working out!” Does that line ring a bell to you? And you flock to this “new and improved” exercise thinking it’s finally the one to get you the butt you’ve always wanted!

Let’s give a superficial analysis of the phrase “new and improved” first. By definition, new has not been done before and cannot be improved. If something is improved, it cannot be new because any improvement is based on a prior version. Why do you believe this influencer has told you the greatest glute move since the human body was invented?

Dribbling a basketball 70 years ago is the same as it is today. The biomechanics of how the hand, wrist, and fingers move in unison with each other to repeatedly push the ball down to the floor and receive back has not and will not change in our current anatomical form. Any basketball player knows it takes hours, days, weeks, months, and years to become proficient in this skill to the point of it being automatic. Yet, professional players practice the same fundamental skills and drills every practice. Dribbling is not new and improved, nor can it be.

Back to your glutes. Your glutes are used for hip extensionand assist in decelerating the body during a stride, they always have and always will be. Nothing new or improved can be done for how the glute musclefunctions in any human. Because of this, the biomechanics of any exercise is the same for contracting the glute muscles. I see people, mostly women, staringinto their phones at the gym daily looking at “new” movements to make their butts bigger and stronger. The only new, is the person making the social mediapost about it.

Strengthening the glute muscles requires the same basic movements every week for hours, days, months, weeks, and years. There are no shortcuts or new angles to make the glute contract differently or performanother function other than it’s biomechanically supposed to. You cannot do one set of 10 reps and expect to have the butt of Jennifer Lopez.

Every week people work the same muscle groups with the same basic exercises because that’s how those muscle groups are activated. A powerlifter or body builder doesn’t skip doing the fundamental lifts as part of their advanced routines. If they aren’t skipping, why do you think a social media influencer of six months has the magic prescription for your glutes?

Strength training for men and women is fundamentally the same because our muscles do the exact same things to move us in our daily lives. Your glutes don’t do anything different than mine. Embrace the process and practice of the fundamentals to get the glutes you want. Perform squats, lunges, deadlifts, and step ups to activate them. Yes, change the order of exercises, reps, and sets to improve your results. The workout routine can be new to you, the exercises themselves are not new as a whole.

Practice, practice, practice like a professional athlete is the pathway to the body you want. You must do bench presses, shoulder presses, squats, leg curls, back rows, and others each week for the rest of your gym life. Until a new human body comes out that has joints in different places and with different functions, you’re stuck with the basic moves we all have!

Oh, and your parents are also to thank or blame for yourframe. Work with the tools you have to be the best version of your physicalself. It’s human nature to want what the other person has for whatever bodypart you admire on them. They probably want something you have or can do also.

Go through the motions you do every week because they are the only motions you can physically do! New and improved does not exist. Improved is the best we can do with this body God has given us. Love it and be thankful for it!

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