WORKOUT OR BUTTOCK IMPLANT?

If you have a small, flat or sagging fanny, you know what we are talking about. Every month, when you go to the newsstand and see magazines featuring articles such as “Dream Buttocks you may think it is a new lifting technique but as you leaf through the magazine all you see is a series of exercises which you are sick and tired of doing. Logicamente a ginástica ajuda muito a modelar o bumbum mas tem os seus limites. Of course, those exercises help to shape the buttocks but they have their limitations.

1. How can one know when to exercise and when to have a gluteal implant?

Working out is always indicated, even for people who will have an implant. The benefits thereof will be a great adjuvant and I recommend workout to all my patients. The benefits are undeniable but its results are different from those of a gluteal implant. An implant can project the fanny out about 2 cm, giving it a rounded shape, completely changing the shape of a flat fanny, something that workout alone does not provide. Therefore, it’s two different things but one helps the other for sure.

2. What kind of patient should necessarily have a gluteal implant?

For those who were born with a small, flat, level behind, and however hard they have worked out nothing ever changed, the only thing that will work is an implant. The implant will provide a round, firm fanny that will look athletic and young. Neither a workout nor liposculpture can provide the shape that an implant provides. Therefore, and implant is the only indication for most of the congenital cases, followed by workout as an adjuvant treatment.

3. Does it happen that some patients come to you for an implant and you recommend that they should workout?

Yes, especially those who back in their 40s or younger had beautiful, projecting, full buttocks but who were sedentary and as time passed the buttocks sagged, became soft and lost some of its shape. When the shape is still there but the buttocks are soft then workout is the best indication, since the implant works better to add volume than to give back the lost firmness.

4. What sort of patient benefits more from working out, and how to evaluate the possible gain?

Usually, I perform a simple test: the greater the difference between the buttocks when tense and when relaxed, the more this person will benefit from working out, since this shows how flaccid the muscle is.

5. If a patient has flaccid muscles, can she still benefit from an implant?

Yes. Oftentimes a patient, in addition to having very limp muscles, lacks volume at certain areas of the buttocks, mainly the lateral area which, we surgeons call the trochanteric depression. This area can be perfectly filled with a flat, oval implant, suitable for this kind of filling. In very subtle cases, liposculpture alone may help, making the implant unnecessary. Of course, only an experienced surgeon could say if this technique alone would be enough.

6. Is there any workout restriction for patients who have an implant?

Absolutely not. Quite the opposite; exercising helps to mold the shape given by the implant, improving the contour, rounding and lifting the buttocks even more. Patients are free to practice any kind of exercises after the second month post-op, even radical sports such as water skiing or snow skiing, horseback riding, motorcycling, any sport can be practiced by people who have a buttocks implant.

7. What would you suggest to those who have no time at all to exercise?

I usually recommend a very simple exercise which may be done even at the office: raise from the chair without completely standing up, then sit down and repeat several times. This forces the thigh and gluteal muscles. Twice a day, ten minutes each time is helpful enough. Those electric stimulation devices sold to tone the abdomen may also be used on the buttocks.

8. What would you recommend to someone who wants to have dream buttocks?

Firstly, it is import to say that plastic surgery has its limitations. As experienced as a surgeon may be, all he/she will do is help improve a buttocks shape and not always achieve perfection or the patient’s dream buttocks as a result. But I can say that most of the time the improvement achieved with the association of an implant and liposculpture overcomes patients’ expectations, because it provides a firm, toned, round and projected butt which is, in fact, what most women dream of. As for exercising, it is extremely important to say that it can work wonders to achieve firmness that, not always, the implant alone can provide. It is important not to forget that nowadays there are very suitable exercises, and that plastic surgery covers implants, lifting, liposculpture, in addition to treating gluteal retraction and depressions, techniques that were not available 20 years ago; therefore, we are increasing closer to achieving dream buttocks.