Make sure you do about 10-15 sets for your glutes on every workout. Later if you get more advanced you can start training more frequently than 2x per week (hitting the glutes 3x for example).

I’m starting back to lifting weights and have read your article and several books including Bret’s Strong Curves. I am still a bit confused as to how man different exercises I should do each workout, if I should combine glutes and legs on the same day or separate days, and should I do progressive overload every week or every 4-6 weeks? For instance, I started doing hip thrusts, deadlifts, squats, cable kickback, lying band hip abduction (to activate glutes) and fire hydrants (activate glutes) with 3-6 sets of 10 twice a week. then I would work upper body the next day.

Depending on how advanced you are, you should be training your glutes 2-10(!) times per week. If you want to find out how many times is optimal, take a look at part 2 of this article: https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/optimal-training-frequency-glutes-part-ii/

Focus on doing 15-35 sets (the more advanced you are, the more you should do) of stretchers/activators per week.

Could I add more exercises for hamstrings/quads?? (NOT for glutes) For example, 2 more exercises of different variations of leg curls or leg extensions/ leg press? I typically do anywhere from 7-8 exercises with 3-4 sets each on my FULL leg days. Or is this doing too much? Again, thank you so much. Hope to hear back!

That depends on how advanced your hamstrings and quads are. The more advanced, the more volume and frequency these muscles can handle, and the more exercise variety they will need. To get an idea of how advanced you are in these exercises, look here: http://www.strengthstandards.co/#/
You can take the Squat as a proxy for how advanced your Quads are, and the Deadlift as a proxy for how advanced your Hamstrings are.
I’ll be releasing an article with much more info on this soon.

I think you’re probably overdoing it on the amount of exercises and sets. I advise focusing on the Hip thrust, Bulgarian split squat and Deadlift for the glutes. Those are the bread and butter. Aim for 10-25 sets of these per week (again, depends on how advanced your glutes are).

Hope it helped,
Stijn

Monday:
3 x 8-12 Back Squats
3 x 8-12 Romanian Deadlifts
2 x 30 Frog pumps (pumper to finish off)

Could I add more exercises for hamstrings/quads?? (NOT for glutes) For example, 2 more exercises of different variations of leg curls or leg extensions/ leg press? I typically do anywhere from 7-8 exercises with 3-4 sets each on my FULL leg days. Or is this doing too much? Again, thank you so much. Hope to hear back!

Other than that, you could work with increasingly stiffer bands. However, you should re-evaluate whether it’s possible to fit a gym membership into your busy med schedule. If only for 3 times per week 30 mins per workout.

I was wonderding can I grow my gluteus still by
1. eating more
2. doing the stretcher, pumpers exercise
3. doing your recommended exercises and doing higher reps rather than heavier sets?
4. training glutes 4-5 times a week

I know I;m not doing progressive overload anymore since that would require me to purchase more and more weights which I don’t have space for. Can I not gain size in the glutes from higher reps?

Any advice will help

Great question.

Certainly, they can. As a rule of thumb; band exercises don’t damage the muscles as much, and are easier to recover from. Machine exercises are generally also easier to recover from. Exercises that put a lot of tension on the muscle when it’s stretched, like dumbbell flyes (chest), pull-ups (lats), incline bench biceps curls, overhead variations of triceps extension, ab wheel ‘roll-out’ (abs), wide-grip bent-over rows (middle traps/rear delts), and DB shrugs (upper traps) damage the muscles more and probably need longer recovery.

Hope that helps,

Stijn

Can the upper body exercises also be broken down into these categories? And how could I find out about these?