The Hardest 5-Minute Glute Finisher You Can Add to Leg Day

When it comes to fitness goals, tight buns are right up there with chiseled six-pack abs. But building a toned backside takes smart strategy and hard work.

"The glutes are fantastically strong, so, often, every other part of your legs will tire out in a lower-body workout before your glutes do," says K. Aleisha Fetters, CSCS, strength coach and co-author of Give Yourself MORE: A Science-Backed, Six-Part Plan for Women to Hit Their Weight-Loss Goals by Defying Diet Culture.

That's why these massive posterior muscles "deserve extra training love," Fetters says. And one way to do that is by adding a booty-burning glute finisher to the end of your leg day workout.

"Burning out a muscle group at the end of your workout, in this case your glutes, allows you to really hit that point of muscle fatigue that's needed to trigger muscle growth," Fetters says.

And there's a bonus: "by doing isolation work like this at the end of your workout, as opposed to the beginning or middle, you're not going to end up compromising your deadlift or squat form because your glutes are tapped out," she adds. That means you can get the most out of your leg exercises without hurting yourself.

"A burnout or finisher is exactly what it sounds like — it's a way to burn out a given muscle group or finish it off and empty your tank, so to speak, at the end of a workout," Fetters says. Whether cardio, strength or some combination of both, finishers are meant to be tough, which is why they're usually short routines no longer than 10 minutes.

"You've got a couple kinds of finishers," Fetters says. "Metabolic ones, which are more about... burning calories and setting the stage for greater EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), and burnout-focused ones that really aim to fully exhaust a given muscle group, with less focus on total-body work."

Whether you're working out from home or the gym, you only need a heavy resistance band for this intensely challenging 5-minute glute finisher from Fetters that will bring a big-time burn to your buns and help grow your glute muscles.

Do: each exercise for AMQRAP (as many quality reps as possible). Repeat the circuit as many times as you can in 5 minutes with as little rest as possible.