Psycle bootcamp week four: stretch and squeeze

This short 15-minute workout for your glutes lifts and tones thebutt muscles and sculpts the hamstrings.

Adding this routine to your daily schedule will target muscle groups that are often dormant. This workout will improve strength, power and lift the muscles to create the well-known barre butt.

The nature of the exercises will also elevate your heart rate, increasing your metabolic output, which means you will burn calories even when resting. Each move has multiple parts, hence it is able to work so many muscles.

1. The Bridge

This works the gluteus maximus, hamstrings, adductors and rectus abdominous.

Lie on your back with your feet flat on the floor and knees bent. Squeeze your glutes and lift the hips so your body forms a straight line from shoulders to knees. Keep your hands on the floor. Draw the right knee into the body, and start to pulse the hips in very small reps (the smaller the better). Do 30 reps.

Then extend the lifted leg to the ceiling, with the heel flexed and the back of the knee long. Lower the leg down towards the floor and back up again (nice and slow).

Make sure the standing leg stays still and hips square, so you get that deep burn on the standing leg. Do 30 reps.

Keeping both hips off the floor, squeeze the inner thighs together so the hips and knees are parallel, raise your hands over your shoulders and lift the hips up and down, with a little more height for the final burnout. Do 20 reps.

2. The Clamshell

This works the abductors, adductors and obliques.

Lie down on your right side with your right forearm pressed underneath you, and your hips and shoulders stacked. Stay lifted out of the right shoulder. Draw your knees up by 45 degrees, keeping your heels in line with your ankles. Keep your knees on the floor, feet together and lift your feet off the floor.

Keep your heels together and rotate the top right knee up so that your legs open. Bring the knees back together and repeat this movement, making sure to squeeze the glutes together under tension. Do 30 reps.

Hold the top knee open and make tiny little wraps with the knee, feeling your glutes squeeze together and making sure the rest of the body doesn’t move. Do 30 reps.

3. Side Lying

This works the gluteus medius and obliques.

Keep the upper body exactly where it is, remaining strong in the torso. Your underneath leg stays bent and the top leg is extended. Make tiny circles with the extended leg one way and repeat the other way. Do 30 reps.

Then, keeping the toes stretched, double tap the toes on the floor and return to the starting position each time. Keep the leg under tension. Do 30 reps.

Then, keeping the leg elevated, without moving the body, pulse the leg up and down. Do 30 reps.

Repeat the whole series on your other side.

Rod Buchanan is the co-head of Barre at Psycle, psyclelondon.com

Follow Rod on Instagram: @BODbyRODpt