17 Exercises to Shape and Tone Your Booty

Make your booty one of your strongest assets. Your backside can be one of the most challenging areas to tone and sculpt, but don't worry! We have a booty-firming workout you can implement at home, the gym, a park or just about anywhere.

If you perform all the exercises listed below as a circuit, start with the lower number of suggested reps. But watch and learn, then try these exercises for yourself — you're sure to feel your booty burn (and take on a great shape)!

Ease yourself into your workout with this warm-up exercise. With little to no impact, you'll engage your quads and hamstrings and focus on your glutes at the top of the move.

1. Lie on the floor or a mat with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Keep your feet hip-width apart.
2. On the inhale, drive through the heels of your feet and slowly lift yourself up into a bridge, starting with the tailbone and curling your spine off the floor one vertebrae at a time.
3. Lift all the way up into bridge and hold for a couple of seconds.
4. On the exhale, lower back down, vertebrae by vertebrae, until the tailbone reaches the floor.

Reps: 10, building up to 30

Firm your glutes while waking up and strengthening your pelvic floor muscles, which may help prevent prolapse or incontinence. But this isn't a rapid-fire pelvic tilt, do this move slowly and with control.

1. Lie on your back and come into a low bridge with the glutes and lower back off the floor (your upper back remains on the floor) with feet hip-width apart.
2. Slowly tilt your pelvis so that your tailbone tilts up to the ceiling without allowing the lower back to come down to the floor.
3. Return to a neutral pelvis and repeat.

Reps: 10 to 30

Read more: 15 Exercises Every Woman Should Do to Improve Her Sex Life

Take the first exercise in this workout and really amp it up by adding a barbell. You'll need a workout bench and a barbell with weight plates ranging from 15 to 25 pounds each (or higher, if you're confident in your form). Barbell hip raises isolate the glutes and engage your abdominals, too.

1. With your shoulder blades propped up on a bench, hold the barbell across the top of your hips (feel free to use a towel to pad the hip bones).
2. With a wide overhand grip on the barbell, start with your tush hovering an inch off the floor.
3. Engage your core and drive through the heels to lift your hips to just above knee height (if possible).
4. Slowly lower your glutes back to their hovering position and repeat.

Reps: 10 to 30

Squats are the single best exercise for your lower body. But this variation also gets your heart pumping and target your glutes in a whole new way.

1. Start in a plank — abs engaged, inner thighs and glutes engaged and heels pressed back.
2. Jump the feet to the hands and launch yourself straight up.
3. As you're in the air, separate your feet so you land with them just wider than mat width.
4. Land in a squat, then place both hands back on the floor as you jump back into a plank.

Reps: 10 to 20

Read more: The 30-Day Squat Challenge

Keep your heart rate up with this next exercise. Moving from standing and twisting down as you crouch not only works your glutes, it engages your obliques.

1. Stand with your legs together and hands at your sides.
2. Engage your core and jump your feet out to the sides.
3. At the same time, crouch down into a twisted squat and touch the right hand down to the floor near your left foot.
4. Jump back up to an upright stance and repeat, switching hands and sides.

Reps: 10 to 20

Channel your inner Olympian with this cardio and agility drill. This exercise works the glutes, arms, outer thighs and obliques. Plus, it'll get your heart rate up.

1. Stand on one end of a mat and jump the left foot out wide to the left as you swing the right foot back behind the grounded leg.
2. At the same time, swing your arms so they are opposite to the feet.
3. So, if your left foot is grounded, your right arm swings forward toward that foot, and vice versa.

Reps: 10 to 20

Read more: A 35-Minute HIIT Workout That Won't Hurt Your Knees

Take a note from the animal kingdom on this move. Similar to simple, traditional jump squats, frog jumps engage your glutes, quads and calves, as well as challenge your core stability.

1. Start in a low squat with your feet turned out to 10 and 2 o'clock.
2. Take your hands to the floor between the feet (in a frog stance).
3. As you jump up, let the arms and feet relax.
4. When you land, take it back down to a low frog squat with the hands on the floor.

Reps: 10 to 20

Just like diamonds are a girl's best friend, this move will be your booty's bestie. Named for the diamond shape both your arms and legs make during this exercise, this booty burner will also open your hips.

1. Start with your feet shoulder-distance apart and your arms by your sides.
2. Engage your core and swing your arms forward as you jump straight up.
3. Face your palms toward one another, bending your arms at the elbows, fingertips touching (diamond shape).
4. Turn your knees out and bend with the soles of your feet touching to make the diamond shape with your legs.
5. Land with feet facing forward at hip width and repeat.

Reps: 10 to 30

Remember those days as a kid when your PE teacher would ask, "How high can you jump?" Jumping causes your glutes and the rest of your leg muscles to fire, strengthening and sculpting them at the same time.

1. Stand with your knees slightly bent with your feet parallel and hip-width apart.
2. Engage your abdominals and crouch down slightly.
3. Swing your arms and jump high enough to straighten your legs.
4. As you land, put a soft bend in your knees and repeat immediately.
5. Keep your toes pointed forward with the knees aligned to your second toe (next to the big toe) to protect the knees.

Reps: 10 to 30

Sculpt the backside of a ballerina with the plié squat. It's excellent for activating the lower glute and inner-thigh muscles.

1. Stand with your feet wide apart (about three feet, depending on your height) and turned out. Make sure your feet are set wide enough apart so that when you come all the way down your knees end up just over the ankles.
2. Tuck your tailbone under and engage your lower-abdominal muscles.
   
3. Lower down, bringing your arms in front of you for balance. Don't arch your lower back and keep your torso straight throughout the squat.

Reps: 10 to 30

You'll really challenge your balance and lower-body strength with this one! But you can also modify as you build up your strength. This squat variation works the quads, glutes and calves.

1. Holding a rope, TRX attachment or other prop without elasticity as an anchor, stand on one leg and extend the opposite leg out in front of you.
2. Slowly and with control, lower down into a single-leg squat, keeping the bent knee directly over the ankle.
3. As you lower, keep your free leg from touching the floor so that when your glutes touch the floor (or come close), your free leg is hovering parallel just a couple of inches above the floor.
4. Slowly rise up, driving through the heel of the bent leg, keeping the knee and shin from coming too far forward.

Reps: 10 to 15 on each leg

Goblet squats take an already great lower-body exercise (the traditional squat) to a whole new level. You'll work deep into your gluteal muscles and legs and challenge your core and arms.

1. Stand in a plié stance (feet two to three feet apart and turned out) and hold a kettlebell or dumbbell at chest level.
2. Engaging your ab muscles, squat down as low as you can.
3. Stand up and repeat.

Reps: 10 to 20

Read more: 9 Fat-Torching Kettlebell Moves

These squats are quite similar to goblet squats. But rather than one large dumbbell held at the center of your chest as with goblet squats, you'll use two dumbbells (one in each hand).

1. Stand with your feet slightly turned out and about two to three feet apart.
2. Hold the dumbbells at one end with each hand so they hang down.
3. Engage your core and slowly squat down, taking your seat as low as you can, keeping your weight focused in the heels of your feet.
4. Come all the way down until the ends of the dumbbells tap the ground, then drive through your heels to return to standing.

Reps: 10 to 20

Take a quick break from squats for this exercise. The side lunge will continue to engage the glute and quad muscles from a different angle, offering a bit of a variation to the muscles.

1. Standing with feet together, step your right foot out wide to the side.
2. Shift your body weight to the right leg and bend over your right knee with the left leg out straight.
3. Push off the right foot to come back up to standing, legs together.

Reps: 10 to 20 reps, alternating sides

The pretzel is one of those subtle exercises that offers solid engagement in one of those hard-to-reach areas: the gluteus medius (ie. side of your butt). Pay attention to form to ensure the gluteus medius is activating properly and adjust your feet and legs to fit your range of flexibility.

1. Sit on the floor or mat with your left leg bent back behind you and your heel reaching toward the left glute. Your right leg should be bent in the same direction with the heel touching the top of the left quad.
2. With your chest and arms squared over your right leg, keep both sit bones grounded to the floor.
3. Gently lift the left knee off the ground, keeping your left foot down on the ground.
4. Return the knee back to ground.

Reps: 30 on each side

You may feel silly doing this move, but the fire hydrant is a fantastic exercise that activates the gluteus medius and hamstrings. It also opens up the hips and stretches out the inner thighs.

1. Start on all fours with your toes curled under and your feet flexed.
2. Line up your knees directly under your hips and your shoulders directly over your wrists.
3. Keeping the 90-degree bend in the right leg, slowly lift and open that bent leg outward.
4. Keep your neck long and jaw away from either side of your shoulders, avoiding hunching your shoulders.

Reps: 10 to 30 on each leg

The donkey kick is an excellent booty and hamstring activator and a great finishing exercise.

1. Start on all fours with your toes curled under and feet flexed.
2. Line up your knees directly under your hips and your shoulders directly over your wrists.
3. Keeping the 90-degree bend in the right leg, slowly kick the right heel back and up toward the ceiling, foot flexed.
4. Lift the leg as high as you can go without arching your lower back or hunching your shoulders.

Reps: 10 to 30 on each side

Read more: 15 MORE Moves to Tone Your Glutes