When you’re the reigning Favorite Butt of the Str8UpGayPorn Awards, working out is a job requirement. In the Before Times, gay porn star Michael Boston worked out six days a week to maintain his enviable “best bottom” status. He focused on his legs: Quad and glute workouts, which help boost testosterone, gave Boston an extra push when it came to problem areas like his arms and chest.
His pre-pandemic workout was standardized: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday were chest, arms and legs; Tuesday and Thursday meant shoulders and back. Sunday, he climbed the StairMaster and hit the floor for abs. Friday, he rested.
In the spring, when Tampa, Florida, closed gyms, Boston had barely any workout equipment at home. So his ass exercises became a fraction of what he did at the gym: less StairMaster, more double squats. Still, he didn’t let his backside gains backslide. “Now I’m in L.A., so I have to get back into that mentality,” he tells me. “I’ve been shooting [scenes] because I’ve got to pay bills.”
Known as Badonka-Dudes, guys obsessed with building their butts are now learning to adapt their homes into makeshift gyms. Within the Bodonka-Dude tribe, there are Career Bottoms, performers and trainers who’ve made a livelihood out of their juicy asses.
Because butt workouts focus primarily on quads and glutes, it’s relatively easy to accomplish a thorough workout at home with just a pair of dumbbells — if you can find them. “I was using bags of rice,” Micah Martinez, voted 2019’s Cocksucking King by Raven’s Eden Awards, tells me.
After two days of rice lifts didn’t cut it, he ran to Target and bought two 25-pound weights. In quarantine, when hospitals are often busy and many people are alone, Martinez advises using smaller weights than you’re used to, “so you don’t have to worry about injuring yourself.”
Instead of increasing weight, prioritize reps. Martinez is doing four to five reps of 15 to 20 sumo squats and lunges with his 25-pound weights. Because of the decreased load, increasing reps wakes your body back into the needed anabolic state where gains are made. He’s also made his ottoman his right-hand man. “This works as a bench for chest works,” he says.
If you don’t have the money to buy overpriced dumbbells, take it back to middle school gym class and do some wall sits. Jason Priest, founder of Dad Bod Health, recommends three 30-second holds, working your way to 60-second holds. Sitting upright over a virtual chair is a great workout for your glutes.
There’s also jump squats. In quarantine, Priest’s routine was three sets of 20 reps. “I’ll tell you, man, that will make your legs fire,” he says.
No matter how intensely you power your butt workouts, your diet is just as important and one of the few things you can control. Instead of a daily 100-calorie smoothie every morning, Boston is now downing powder blended with fruit. “I can’t eat crap and [say] I can go to the StairMaster for an hour and a half at level 12 tomorrow,” he tells me.
We’re in an unprecedented pandemic filled with government inaction, a boycott on Goya beans (beans are canonically queer) and a new Taylor Swift record that’ll make you even more depressed. So does it even matter if you put on some quarantine weight? The answer is, of course, no.
But for porn stars whose livelihood depends on their physique (and the perfect hole pics), quarantine has turned into a career realignment. “Yeah, I’m a little thick, but I’ve always been a little thick, so I hope it works out in my favor,” Martinez says.
Joseph Longo
Joseph Longo is a culture and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly and more. He's still trying to understand what it means to be a Gemini Rising.
