More than losing weight or being a specific size, several clients have shared with me that they just want to feel confident enough to wear those jeans or that dress. Well great legs are certainly within everyone's ability to attain, and you don't even have to sit on those ridiculous machines working your legs in and out for 1000 reps at a time.

Whether you're trying to lose weight or become a stronger athlete, to do either you have to move your legs more. And to move your legs more, there are certain exercises  that everyone should do to tone, strengthen, and most importantly, decrease risk of injuries that often occur with a sudden increase of activity.

If you want to skip all the nerdy Personal Trainer Speak, skip below to the video to see my entire butt workout. But if you have a specific issue that may be butt-related, read on to see how adding these exercises to your routine will help you!

Love Your Butt!

Your derriere is not just for balancing a glass of champagne - it is a collection of muscles that work together to help the rest of the leg move to propel you forward and up. Any movement that requires hip extension, that is to move the legs from a bent to a straight position, requires the engagement of several muscles that hang out back there.

To strengthen and shape, a combination of resistance exercises that target the biggest muscle, the gluteus maximus, and the smaller underlying gluteus medius can help the butt maintain that rounder, lifted look. But here's the thing: no two bodies, and therefor, no two butts are the same. Muscle size does not dictate strength so not everyone's muscles will look the same, even if they can perform exactly the same way. Still, doing these moves will definitely help prevent that dreaded "pancake butt" that no one wants to have!

There are very few pieces of equipment that I have as strong of an attachment to as my dear BOSU. The shelves in sporting good stores or aisles are jam-packed with gidgets and gadgets that promise to expedite results if you use those items exclusively in your fitness routine. I chose to invest in a BOSU for my fitness "arsenal" because it allows for a variety of exercises for every ability while challenging the body in a way that guarantees improvement in strength and movement.


To be clear- this is not an advertisement. I am not being compensated in any way for professing my love of this beautiful blue half-dome. I just want my clients to know why we will be incorporating the BOSU into many aspects of your individualized fitness routines.

BOSU For the Brain
Proprioceptive awareness is the term we gym nerds use to refer to the brain's ability to know where the body is in space and what it is doing. To understand what I am talking about, stand on one foot. Now, stand on one foot and close your eyes (please do not stand near furniture with sharp corners or a stairwell). Did you fall over? Hopefully not! But you probably did lose your balance rather quickly. By doing exercises on the BOSU, we force the brain to communicate more with your working muscles, and your muscles to send faster signals back to the brain. We begin first with standing on both, then just one foot and gradually progressing to compound, multi-joint movements. The more the body and the brain talk to each other, the more efficient you will become in any exercise we do, increasing the effectiveness of each workout.