30 Minute Butt and Back Workout with Dumbbells to Improve Your Posture
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This week’s at-home, equipment free workout is a series of hip, back, and glute exercises to strengthen the lower back muscles and posterior chain, resulting in better posture and greater stability. This posterior chain workout also incorporates core exercises to challenge your balance, strength, and posture. As always, these simple moves can be done without a gym or equipment, but if you want to create a more difficult workout, see below for how to incorporate equipment to make this a mini band or dumbbell back workout.
Why Work the Back & Butt?
Our “mirror muscles”—aka those that you can see in the mirror—get the most attention in our normal gym routine. Focusing on the posterior chain (the muscles of the back, glutes, and hamstrings) means strengthening and balancing out both halves of our body. Plus, the posterior chain is the driving muscle group of our body’s movement, responsible for power and explosiveness and forward movement.
What is the Goal of this Workout?
Stabilizing and strengthening the muscles of the back, core and hips will help to fix bad posture, as well as including lower back stretches into your workout routine. Bad posture is responsible for muscle aches and joint pains associated with slumping or slouching while sitting or standing. Increased strength in the glutes helps to prevent injuries caused from compensation, overuse, and stabilization issues, as well as increasing athletic performance and power for runners and weight training athletes alike.
This workout is easily modified, which makes it perfect at-home upper body workout for beginners.
See our full workout series here.
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At Home Back and Butt Workout Without Equipment
Suggested:
5-10 Minute Warmup + Cool down of your choice.
Optional:
If you would like to make this workout more challenging, you can always use weights!
Increase the difficulty!
Looking to make it even more challenging? Use a mini band above your knees to add resistance to the glute exercises. For added difficulty, squeeze and hold a dumbbell behind your knee during the donkey kicks and bent knee glute exercises.
Need a modification?
If you have sensitive wrists, you can come down to your forearms. All exercises can be done without any equipment.
Exercise List:
One minute per exercise. Do two sets.
Back Circuit:
Supermans
How-to: On your stomach, arms and legs outstretched. Lift your chest and legs with your lower back. Hold one second at the top.
Form tip: Pull your chest and legs with your lower back and squeeze through the glutes.
Reverse Leg Lifts
How-to: In the same position as the supermans, for this exercise, only lift the legs.
Form tip: Keep the ankles and legs pressed together to activate the inner thighs.
Swimmers
How-to: On your stomach, extend the legs and arms long. Lift the opposite leg and arm, pulling your chest and thigh up from the mat as you do so. Slowly lower down and switch sides.
Form tip: Keep the core engaged as you lift.
Challenge: Speed up the movement for a high intensity interval training cardio burst.
Plank Rows
How-to: Start in a pushup position, with a weight in each hand. Row the weight to your body, keeping your palms faced in towards your body and your elbows in contact with your side. Alternate sides as you row.
Form tip: Squeeze the glutes and the core so that you stop unnecessary rocking in the hips through the movement. Widen the stance if you need to with your feet for added stability.
Bear Planks
How-to: Start in a tabletop position, shoulders stacked over wrists, hips over knees. Press through the hands, squeeze the core, and lift the knees from the ground. Hold for two seconds and then return the knees to the mat.
Form tip: Keep the knees at 90 degrees during this entire movement. To avoid rounding through the back, squeeze the glutes to rotate the pelvis forward and activate the muscles of the low abs.
Booty Circuit:
Perform all exercises on the same leg for the entire circuit and then repeat.
Donkey Kicks
How-to: Start in a tabletop position as the previous exercise. Tuck the toes of the working leg, flex the foot, and press the bottom of the foot upwards, keeping the 90 degree bend at the knee. This is an excellent movement for the muscles of the booty.
Form tip: Don’t let the back arch. Squeeze your glutes as your press to the ceiling and drop to your forearms for sensitive wrists.
Modification: Add a weight behind your knee for a hamstring challenge.
Donkey Kick Hurdles
How-to: Keeping the same positioning from the previous exercise, at the top of your press, open the hip, and perform a large circle with your knee. Return to the top press and bring the knee back in alignment with the mat.
Form tip: As you open the hip and lift the leg, don’t dump your weight into your opposite side. Press the hands into the mat and keep the weight evenly distributed.
Hamstring Curls
How-to: Keep the same positioning as the previous exercise. Extend one leg long, keeping your tight parallel with the ground. Flex the foot and bring the heel to your butt.
Form tip: Don’t let the knee drop as you bend and extend the leg.
Challenge: Lift the opposite hand to touch the opposite shoulder for a balance challenge.
Plank Leg Lifts
How-to: In a plank position, stack the shoulders over the hands, engage the core and lift one leg. Touch the toe to the ground, squeeze the glutes as you lift.
Form tip: Don’t let the back arch!
Modification: Drop the opposite knee to the mat for added stability.
Repeat Back Circuit
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