Best Hourglass Body Workouts for a Slim Waist & Big Curves

I’ll never get sick of seeing women stop fearing weightlifting and start loving the feeling of being STRONG.

Because here’s the truth: most women who want an hourglass figure don’t need to work out more—they need to train differently.

They don’t need high-rep “toning” classes, Pilates core routines, or endless cardio. They need to build muscle in the right places—specifically the glutes, legs, shoulders, and upper back—while keeping body fat levels under control.

Do that, and your physique changes fast: your lower body looks fuller, your upper body looks more defined, and your waist looks smaller by contrast.

In other words, the “secret” to getting an hourglass figure is gaining full-body strength—and you do that with exercises like deadlifts, squats, presses, and pulldowns.

In this article, you’ll learn the best hourglass body workout routine to build muscle in all the right places, plus how to use cardio and diet to get results faster.

Key Takeaways

An hourglass body workout focuses on building muscle in the glutes, legs, shoulders, and upper back to create fuller curves and a smaller-looking waist.
Strength training can significantly enhance your proportions, but your natural bone structure and genetics influence how pronounced your hourglass shape can be.
The most effective hourglass workout routine is built around compound exercises (like deadlifts, squats, presses, rows, and pulldowns) because they train more muscles at once, burn more calories, and let you progressively overload your muscles over time.
Strength training matters more than cardio for changing your shape—but adding 2–3 cardio sessions per week can help speed up fat loss if needed.
You don’t need supplements to develop an hourglass physique, but protein powder, creatine, pre-workout, and a fat burner can help you get there faster.

What Is an Hourglass Body Workout?
Can You Get an Hourglass Figure Through Exercise Alone?
What Exercises Give You an Hourglass Figure?
The Best Workout Routine to Get an Hourglass Body
Can Cardio Help You Get an Hourglass Figure?
The Best Diet for an Hourglass Figure
The Bottom Line on Hourglass Workouts
FAQ #1: How do you get a curvy body in two weeks?
FAQ #2: What is the 3-2-1 hourglass method?
FAQ #3: What exercises slim your waist the most?
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What Is an Hourglass Body Workout?

An hourglass body workout is a style of training designed to enhance the classic “hourglass” silhouette—a defined upper body, slim waist, and strong, curvy glutes and legs.

Here’s how an hourglass body looks compared to other common female body shapes:

Can You Get an Hourglass Figure Through Exercise Alone?

Yes and no.

Strength training allows you to:

Grow your glutes and legs to add shape to your lower body
Build your shoulders and back to create the illusion of a smaller waist
Carve out more defined abs to round out your physique

In other words, you can absolutely enhance your curves and improve your proportions with the right hourglass workout routine.

But it’s also important to be realistic: Your natural bone structure is the foundation of your shape. For instance, if you have a narrow pelvis and wide shoulders, you’ll struggle to get an hourglass figure because your shoulder width will likely always dwarf your hip width.

Similarly, if your genetics are such that fat clings to your stomach and hips—giving you a pear-shaped body—achieving an hourglass figure can be more challenging than if you naturally store fat more evenly, since you’ll appear “bottom-heavy” until you get very lean.

That said, regardless of your starting point, you can absolutely improve your physique.

With the right combination of strength training and calorie-controlled dieting, you can reduce body fat where needed and build muscle in key areas—particularly your glutes, quads, shoulders, and upper back—to create a more balanced, hourglass-like appearance.

In fact, many women are surprised how much their physique can transform with just a few months of consistent training—especially when they stop avoiding strength training and start following a structured program designed for this exact goal.

Hourglass Body Workout Results

For example, check out how these women transformed their physiques with the help of Legion’s body transformation coaching service.

In just a few months—and by applying the same principles you’ll learn in this article—they were able to build muscle and lose fat in all the right places to enhance their curves and create a more balanced, hourglass shape:

What Exercises Give You an Hourglass Figure?

Most “hourglass waist workouts” you find online revolve around two things: direct ab training and high-rep weightlifting. But if your goal is to develop a smaller-looking waist and fuller curves, neither of these approaches works well.

Research shows that “spot reduction” is a myth—you can’t lose fat from a specific area by training the muscles underneath it. So doing more crunches, twists, and leg lifts won’t make your waist smaller if your overall body fat percentage is still too high.

And while high-rep “toning” workouts might sound more feminine or slimming, the idea is misleading. You can’t lengthen, tighten, or tone a muscle—you can only build it.

When you build muscle and lower your body fat percentage, you develop visible shape and definition—the exact qualities that create the hourglass look.

So what exercise should you do?

To meaningfully change your proportions, you need to build muscle in the right places—primarily the:

Glutes
Legs (quads and hamstrings)
Shoulders
Lats

These muscles give your lower and upper body structure and make your waist appear smaller by contrast.

And the best way to build these muscles is with compound exercises like deadlifts, rows, squats, presses, and pulldowns.

These exercises should form the foundation of every effective hourglass workout routine because they let you lift heavy weights safely, train multiple muscles at once, burn tons of calories, and get stronger over time—which is the primary driver of muscle growth.

Now that you understand the principles, here’s the exact hourglass workout routine to follow.

The Best Workout Routine to Get an Hourglass Body

This routine is built around a simple 3-day “push pull legs” split, which ensures you emphasize all the muscle groups that contribute to the hourglass shape while giving your body enough time to recover and grow.

Do each workout once per week, leaving at least one rest day between sessions (for example: Monday, Wednesday, Friday):

Hourglass Workout #1: Pull

Deadlift: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 min rest
One-Arm Dumbbell Row: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 min rest
Lat Pulldown: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest
Seated Cable Row: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest

Hourglass Workout #2: Push

Shoulder Press: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 min rest
Incline Dumbbell Bench Press: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 min rest
Dumbbell Side Lateral Raise: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest
Dumbbell Rear Lateral Raise: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest

Hourglass Workout #3: Legs

Squat: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 min rest
Romanian Deadlift: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 min rest
Leg Press: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest
Hip Thrust: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest

Can Cardio Help You Get an Hourglass Figure?

Yes, cardio can help—but it’s not more important than lifting weights.

Strength training has a much larger impact on your physique because it builds the muscles responsible for creating the hourglass silhouette. Cardio can help you burn calories, but it does little to increase the size of your muscles.

Strength training also supports fat loss. Compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses produce a significant increase in metabolic rate, which can make staying lean long-term easier.

Building muscle has benefits of its own:

A muscular body burns more calories resting and moving than a similarly-sized fat one.
Muscle supports good metabolic health, which is vital for maintaining a healthy body fat percentage.
Muscle tissue alters the expression of certain genes that accelerate fat burning.

That said, if you want to lose fat as quickly as possible, research shows that combining strength training and cardio works better than doing either alone.

If you want to include cardio in your hourglass figure workout routine, here’s what I recommend:

Do 2–3 sessions of low- or moderate-intensity cardio workouts per week (e.g., walking, swimming, or rucking) for 20–60 minutes each.
Do one HIIT workout weekly if you enjoy it.
Limit total cardio to 2–3 hours weekly.
Do cardio and weightlifting on separate days if possible. If you have to do both in one day, lift first and separate the sessions by at least 6 hours.

And if you want to learn more about how to combine strength training and cardio, check out this article:

Concurrent Training: The Right Way to Combine Cardio and Strength Training

The Best Diet for an Hourglass Figure

So far, we’ve focused on what you should do in the gym to develop an hourglass figure. However, if you don’t also change your eating habits, you’ll never get the results you want.

There are three parts to an hourglass figure diet: calories, macros, and supplements.

Let’s look at each separately:

Calories

To develop an hourglass figure, your calorie intake depends on your current body composition and training experience:

If you’re new to weightlifting and have fat to lose, you can build muscle while getting leaner by eating 20–25% fewer calories than you burn daily. To learn exactly how many calories this is for you, use the Legion Calorie Calculator.
If you’re a beginner who’s already fairly lean, you can build muscle while gaining minimal fat by eating 5–10% more calories than you burn daily.
For more experienced lifters, the rules are more defined: you’ll need a calorie surplus to build muscle and a deficit to lose fat, usually done in separate phases, starting with whichever is most pressing.

Macros

No matter your calorie goal, aim for about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight each day, get around 20–30% of your daily calories from fats, and fill in the rest with carbs.

This balance supports muscle growth, performance, and overall health.

To learn more about how to calculate your macros, check out this article:

How to Calculate Your Macros for Weight Loss & Muscle Gain

Supplements

You don’t need supplements to sculpt an hourglass figure, but the right ones can help. Here are five worth considering, depending on your goals:

Protein powder: Eating enough protein is essential for building the shoulder, back, and leg muscle that creates an hourglass figure. Protein powders like Whey+, Casein+ and Egg+ make hitting your target easier.
Creatine: Creatine boosts muscle and strength gain, improves endurance, and reduces muscle damage and soreness. For a natural source of creatine, try Legion’s creatine monohydrate powder, creatine gummies, creatine capsules, or post-workout Recharge.
Pre-workout: A quality pre-workout helps you train harder by boosting energy, focus, and athletic performance. Legion’s Pulse is available with or without caffeine.
Yohimbine: 0.1–0.2 milligrams of yohimbine per kilogram of body weight before fasted training increases fat loss and is particularly helpful with losing “stubborn” fat. Legion’s pre-workout fat burner Forge is a fantastic natural source of yohimbine.
Fat Burner: Effective fat burners contain ingredients that boost the number of calories you burn and reduce hunger and cravings, making weight loss more straightforward. For a top-tier fat burner, try Legion’s fat burner Phoenix.

Want even more specific supplement advice? Take the Legion Supplement Finder Quiz to learn exactly what supplements are right for you.

The Bottom Line on Hourglass Workouts

If you want a smaller-looking waist and fuller, stronger curves, the answer isn’t more cardio, ab circuits, or “toning” workouts—it’s building muscle in the right places while keeping body fat under control.

Prioritize compound exercises like deadlifts, squats, rows, presses, and pulldowns. Get stronger over time. Support your training with a calorie-appropriate diet and enough protein. Add a bit of cardio if you need to speed up fat loss.

Do all of that consistently, and your body will change—and probably faster than you think.

FAQ #1: How do you get a curvy body in two weeks?

You can’t meaningfully change the size of your muscles or your body fat percentage in just two weeks. Reshaping your proportions and building curves takes months of training and dieting.

But you can use that time to establish the habits that make fat loss faster, easier, and more sustainable. To learn how, check out this article:

The Complete Guide to Safely and Healthily Losing Weight Fast

FAQ #2: What is the 3-2-1 hourglass method?

The 3-2-1 hourglass method is a workout split that includes:

3 lower-body workouts per week
2 upper-body workouts per week
1 cardio session per week

The idea is to emphasize the glutes and legs to create fuller curves, develop the shoulders and back to help the waist look smaller by contrast, and use cardio to help you maintain a low body fat percentage.

And it can work well—but mostly for advanced lifters who need more weekly training volume (sets) to make progress.

For most beginners and intermediates, however, doing three lower-body workouts per week is overkill. It usually doesn’t lead to faster growth, and the increased recovery demands can cause your progress to stall or even backslide.

So while the 3-2-1 method is popular on social media, it’s not necessary for most people to build an hourglass figure. A well-structured routine with 2–3 lower-body days and balanced upper-body work is more than enough to make consistent, noticeable progress.

To learn more about how much training you need to do per week to build muscle, check out this article:

How Many Sets Should You Do for Muscle Hypertrophy?

FAQ #3: What exercises slim your waist the most?

No single exercise can directly slim your waist—fat loss comes from losing body fat overall.

The exercises that help with that most are compound exercises (like squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses) because they work multiple muscles at once and burn more calories than isolation exercises.

And if your goal is to lose overall body fat as quickly as possible, combine strength training with cardio and a calorie-controlled diet. This is the most efficient and reliable way to slim your waist.