Squats Help!

I been trying to do squats to get a butt lol I have a flat a** haha the thing is, I dont know what Im doing wrong...I dont feel it in my butt, instead I feel it on the top of my thighs.  I tried putting my feet wider apart, but still the same...any squat masters out there?? lol what am I doing wrong?

You want a shoulder width stance, toes pointing forward. Imagine you are sitting down in a chair and coming back up. Pushing down with your butt. You will feel it in the legs but also core and butt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke1eFazK1IA

Lunges are also great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_hoiumFkgE

 Could be you're kinda suffering from "gluteal amnesia" - you body's forgotten how your glutes are supposed to work and have trouble using them right.

 To sort of wake your body back up, you can do hip bridges and straight leg glute extensions or other bodyweight exercise where you focus on squeezing the glute muscle to activate it for later use - and if you're still not feeling the glutes working after activating it you might consider doing stepups or one-legged squats as a more challenging version. Or bulgarian split squats, they're also a very focused glute exercise.

 Or it could be that you're not quite using correct squat form - check out these video demonstrations from Krista ;)

make sure your not leaning forward when you do the squats, you want most of your weight on the heels of your feet, not over your toes. you can try keeping your chin up while you do them, and try to point your toes up slightly. might help correct your form.

also, i do sumo squats, which doesn't use a bar over your shoulders, which i find sometimes hurts. you basically just hold a weight at your chest instead. it works for me!

try doing dead lifts and lunges too! good luck!

First off CONGRATS on the weight loss, you look great and I bet you feel even better. All the exercises listed are good, but some time genetics are just against you, hope you get the results you're looking for.

By the way how tall are you?

you may also want to work on squatting deeper.  i had glute amnesia when i first started squatting as well.  squatting deep (as low low low as you can go) with proper form has reawakened my glutes.

Try doing reverse barbell lunges.  I do squats every week so I substituted these on Tuesday and my butt is still sore today. 

If you have the form and flexibility to squat low enough that the top of your thighs are parallel to the ground, it is supposed to be better, and active your glutes more. Shallower squats are supposed to activate your quads more.

If you don't mind reading, there is a famous book called "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe - parts of it are clinical, but it goes into great detail about proper form and has been helping me personally. (I have horrible posture and bad flexibility that is hampering my squat form, but slowly it is getting better). 

I started seeing progress with my own glutes when I started alternating squat and lunge days, with deadlift and step-up days into my regular workout, but ymmv.

Im 5'8 - 5'9

Thanks everyone for the great tips...I will definately give them all a try! I swear I wish I could take some fat off my stomach and put it on my a** lol

Melkor, I was taught to do deadlifts like this http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/drobson101.ht m

it is totally different than the one in the link you posted.

The main things to remember is when you do squats, make sure you push your butt back like you are using a public toilet and push up with most of the weight on your heels squeezing your glutes on the way up.

Here is a website I found very helpful and insightful. I have been following her directions since June and have had nothing but harder butt and legs because of it.  It sounds like you aren't putting most/nearly all of your weight on your heels, if you do this and push through your legs you'll feel it in your butt.

http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle. php?aid=52

You mightwant to incorporate lunges in to you routine.  Lunges are a great exercise for the glutes and are easier to execute than squats.  Feel the burn...

<grin>  Lunges may be great exercises (i.e. they may do great things for your legs), but I find them *massively* harder to execute than squats.  I guess that's just another example of how everyone's different.

If you do them right, lunges are every bit as challenging as squats - perhaps even more so, because people are usually a bit too tight in the hip flexors to really open up and go deep in their lunges. So you see a lot of forward tilting the torso to reduce the stretch in the hips, quads and hamstrings, resulting in a less-.than optimal muscle activation pattern and more lumbar spine stress than is really good for you. Check out Hardcore Lunge by Mike Robertson for more than you ever wanted to know about how to do them right ;)

 The description in your link is correct, safina - the deadlift Paige does here is more of a stiff-legged deadlift, which is not a variation that allows for much loading at all if you want to keep your spine intact. You can do it with a relatively light load and be reasonably safe, but in general I think you're better off sticking with the basic exercise from your link.