What is the best exercise to build glutes after 40?

If your glutes feel flatter no matter how much you work out, Nikkiey explains it is usually the plan, not you. She says declining estrogen in perimenopause and menopause affects how your body builds and maintains muscle, and the glutes, as your largest muscle group, are one of the first places women notice it. Years of cardio and long hours of sitting add what she calls glute amnesia, where the hamstrings and lower back take over the work.

That is why she puts band walks, fire hydrants and kickbacks in your warm-up, not at the center of your training. The burn is not the same as a growth stimulus. Women over 40 need compound, loaded movements, and she points out the glutes have three jobs, hip extension, hip abduction and hip external rotation, that a complete program should train with real load.

Nikkiey also shares that decades of classes and running never included hip thrusts, and when she started, she felt her glutes fire in a way nothing else had produced, with a difference in her lower back and posture. She adds dumbbell deadlifts for the whole posterior chain, starting light at 3 sets of 8 to 10.