( ; Design: Ayana Underwood/Canva ) The donkey kick exercise isn’t new: this move is a longtime staple in Pilates, barre, and bodyweight workouts. But it is newly trendy, thanks to Megan Thee Stallion shouting out the donkey kick as one of her go-to exercises in a recent interview with The Cut. What’s much less funny, though, is how much this exercise can fire up, and burn out, your glutes.
As a certified personal trainer, I’ve programmed this move into my own workouts and into group fitness classes, too, because it’s a really effective way to isolate your butt muscles. Here’s why the donkey kick is so good for your glutes. And doing them regularly can keep your lower body ready so you can take on the trails with ease.
The starting position for the donkey kick is really simple. First, get on all fours with your wrists under your shoulders and knees under your hips. From there, lift one leg straight up, keeping the knee on that same lifted leg bent to 90 degrees.
Then, with control, lower your leg back down to complete one rep. Do a set number of reps; you can do the standard ten reps if you’d like, but if you want to bang out more, then that’s totally OK. Then switch legs and do ten on that leg.
This move looks pretty easy, and in a sense, it is. Many other lower-body exercises that work the glutes—like squats, lunges, step-ups, and deadlifts—also engage other muscle groups. But because the donkey kick keeps your knees bent, which largely takes your hamstrings out of the equation, you’re really just isolating your glutes here.
That means it hits those muscles—hard. The gluteus maximus (your biggest butt muscle) does the heavy lifting to raise your elevated leg, while your gluteus medius and minimus (two smaller muscles that form your side butt) help stabilize your hips. Your core also stabilizes the move, and an engaged core keeps your torso still while you move one leg at a time.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
