Butt Kicks

Heard about butt kicks? Yes, they are the most common exercise athletes do during warm-up sessions. But the scope of butt kicks is not limited to this only.

Butt kicks are also known as donkey kicks. So, don’t get confused if you hear the second name. both the terms will be used interchangeably in this post. 

Butt kicks exercise can strengthen your hamstrings. This increases speed and acceleration. This exercise is a great form to boost your metabolism and heart rate. 

Donkey kicks are a common form of glute exercises. This means that it helps you to work with glutes and allows you to stretch the quads. 

Here in this guide, you can learn all about butt kicks. You will find the right way to do butt kicks, the duration for doing the exercise and its benefits in this post. 

How to Do Exercises For Thigh And Hips: Butt Kicks?

There always exists a right way of doing an exercise. The same is for the butt kicks. 

Doing the butt kicks in the right way can help you achieve the desired goals. The exercise can be done anywhere and without any special setup.

You can do butt kicks/donkey kicks in the gym, in your living room, or on a track. Choose your place and get started. 

For doing butt kicks you need to follow the given steps:

Step 1: Stand straight on your feet. Your feet should be hip-distance apart. 

Step 2: Rest your arms on the side.

Step 3: Bring your right heel to your buttocks. Start at a slow speed. Your hamstring muscle will contract in this motion. 

Step 4: Bring down your right heel. Again, this should be done slowly. 

Step 5: Repeat the same process with the left heel. 

Step 6: Repeat the motion with alternating legs. Gradually increase your speed. 

Step 7: When you are comfortable with the alternating leg movement then you can increase your speed. With the increased speed, you will feel like you are jogging in the place.

Step 8: Continue the movement for about 30 seconds.

Step 9: You can increase the duration and the speed of the exercise according to your comfort level.

Benefits Of Doing Butt Kicks

Incorporating butt kicks in your workout routine can be very beneficial for your fitness and health.

It helps you burn fat, improve acceleration, strengthen leg muscles, and shape your backside. Besides these benefits, there are a lot many other benefits also. These are:

  • Helps burn fat
  • Increases the heart rate
  • Increases your running speed
  • Eliminates the need to set up
  • Prevents Injuries

Helps Burn Fat

Cardiovascular exercises are a great way of burning fat. One such exercise is butt kicks. Butt kicks help you burn fat easily and lose excess weight.

It improves your metabolism. Thus, you can easily adopt butt kicks for losing weight.

Increases The Heart Rate

Butt kicks are known to get the heart rate up of the person. You can include butt kicks as part of your workout or as a warm-up exercise.

It will provide benefits in both ways. Doing butt kicks as a warm-up exercise you can make your body ready for jogging.

Increases Your Running speed

Strong hamstrings are required for increasing the running speed and performance. Butt kicks help in strengthening the hamstrings.

Butt kicks target hamstrings and improves the fast-twitch muscle response. As a result, your legs move fast, and your running speed increases.

For improving the running performance, you need strong glutes. Butt kicks can again help you achieve this. Butt kicks work your glute muscles.

Thus, with butt kicks, you can achieve both the goals of increasing the running speed and improving running performance.

Eliminates The Need To Set Up

You can do butt kicks anytime and anywhere. You don’t require any extra set up of equipment for doing donkey kicks.

Thus, with butt kicks, you can engage in workout sessions without the need of going to a gym.

Prevents Injuries

Weak hamstrings and glutes can lead to injuries. It is possibly the situation when you don’t exercise regularly and take part in different sports activities.

For preventing injuries, you must include butt kicks in your glute workout session. Doing this will help you avoid injuries while you are running or doing any sports exercise.

Butt kicks will strengthen your hamstrings and quads. So, don’t forget to include butt kicks in your workout routine.

How To Add Butt Kicks In Your Workout Routine?

If you have a packed workout schedule, then you must be thinking about how to include butt kicks in your workout schedule. Don’t worry. You will get this answer as well in this post.

If you are thinking of carrying out butt kicks as a part of your daily running routine, then you must do butt kicks before running. Doing butt kicks before will help you warm up your muscles.

Warming up is essential before any workout. Also, doing butt kicks before running will help you achieve good speed while running.

You can also include butt kicks as a part of your workout routine with other exercises. You can easily pair butt kicks with other forms of exercise like high knee, squat jumps, jumping jacks, etc. all these exercises are plyometric exercises.

If you are pairing donkey kicks with other plyometric exercises, then you must do each form of exercise for 30 seconds.

After each exercise, you should take rest for about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. By repeating the process, you will be able to build a beneficial workout routine.

Besides plyometric exercises, you can pair butt kicks with bodyweight exercise and exercises for weight training. Examples of bodyweight exercises are planks, pushups, and squats.

By trying the different combinations, you can easily include butt kicks in your daily routine or workout routine.

Variations of Butt Kicks Exercises

Butt kicks are one of the most effective buttocks exercises. Along with the standard way, you can include butt kicks in your routine in different variations.

With these different variations, you can increase the difficulty level of the exercise according to your convenience and flexibility.

You can choose the butt kick variations depending upon your fitness level.

Butt Kicks For Beginners

If you are a beginner, then you must focus on the motion rather than the speed. If you do butt kicks for some time, then you will gradually feel the increase in the pace.

Step 1: Bring your right leg slowly towards your buttocks. Land the right leg on the ground slowly.

Step 2: Repeat step 1 with your left leg.

Step 3: Continue the same motion slowly with alternating legs. If necessary, you can widen the stance.

Step 4: Continue the motion for 30 seconds at a slow speed. Make sure that your arms are stationary during the movement.

Step 5: When you are comfortable and ready to pick up the pace, increase your speed gradually.

Butt Kicks for Intermediate Or High-Level Fitness

If you are used to workout sessions and want to try a challenging version of the exercise, then you can try the following variations.

Moving Butt Kicks

You can try doing butt kicks with a moving motion. You can move forward while you tweak the movement.

To try this variation of butt kicks, you need to follow the given steps:

Step 1: Bring your knees in an upward direction, in the same way when you do a high kick. Bring your foot beneath the leg so that it touches your butt.

Step 2: Start moving forward while performing this motion. Start with a slow speed and then gradually increase the speed. The entire exercise may look like you are running with high knees. 

Step 3: Land your foot gently on the ground. Your foot should land beneath your hip.

Step 4: Continue the same motion for 10-20 yards. You can repeat it 3-4 times.

With High Knees

In this variation of butt kicks, you can combine butt kicks with high knees.

To try this variation of butt kicks you need to follow the given steps:

Step 1: Complete a set including 8 butt kicks.

Step 2: Complete a set of 8 high knees. All you need to do is bring your knees up and down while staying on the same spot.

Step 3: Continue the same motion with alternating legs

Step 4: Continue the motion for 30 seconds. Take rest for 30 seconds.

Step 5: Repeat the complete exercise 3 times

Step 6: When you feel comfortable, you can increase your duration.

Points to Remember While Doing Butt Kicks

Precaution is always better than cure. The statement applies to the majority of fields in life. The same is true with exercises also.

You must always take precautions while doing any kind of exercise and workout. Some of the safety tips which you should take care while doing butt kicks are:

  • Maintain a proper body form throughout the exercise. Otherwise, you may experience strain or sprain in the muscle.
  • Start butt kicks with slow speed. You should always increase your pace gradually.
  • During butt kicks your chest should be open, the core should be tight, and the spine should be neutral.
  • In butt kicks, you should land on your balls of the feet rather than on heels.
  • Try to contract your hamstring while doing butt kicks.
  • Do butt kicks in the correct form. Don’t mix different variations while doing the exercise.

Conclusion

Adding butt kicks in your daily workout routine can improve the strength of your hamstrings and glutes. This improvement will help you to run faster and more efficiently.

Butt kicks will also help you to improve heart rate and will make you more fit. Butt kicks will also help you to boost stamina.

If you suffer from any medical condition, then you must consult your doctor before deciding any workout routine.

We hope that you found all the information related to butt kicks that you were searching for on the web. Do tell us what is your routine to stay fit and healthy.

Stay fit, happy, and always healthy!!!!