Glute Exercise Selection Guide
Stick to stable exercises with lots of ROM, that are limited by the target muscle group and that you can load properly. For glutes, this includes deep squats, split squats, deficit deadlifts, good mornings and a hip abduction exercise. If your goal is growth, you’re best off avoiding hip bridges and certain bodyweight “booty blasters”. Read on to find out why.
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N.B. Throughout this post, I’ll refer to all the gluteal muscles collectively as the “glutes”.
What do the glutes do?
The glutes are composed of several muscles (maximus, medius and minimus), each of which have slightly differing functions. The main function of the glutes that is worth training is hip extension. While of the 3 gluteal muscles, only the glute maximus contributes to hip extension, the glute maximus muscle is also by far the largest of the three. It is important to note that unlike the hamstrings, the glute maximus does not cross the knee, which means squats and deadlifts can train the glutes through a full ROM and be highly effective for glute growth.
The second function of the glutes that may be worth training is hip abduction & transverse abduction. While the glute medius and minimus do have other functions like internal/external rotation, these are impractical to train with sufficient load. The infamous “bad girl”/hip abduction machine trains transverse abduction, for instance.
Deep Squats
Deep squats train the glutes through a nearly full ROM. There are plenty of studies measuring glute max growth after squatting – squatting grows your glutes. Deep squatting particularly grows the glutes. Why? If I had to guess, it’s both because the hip extension ROM increases the deeper you go, and because the hip extension demands (i.e. how much torque the glutes need to produce to lift the weight) are usually highest in the hole. This means the glutes are experiencing a lot of tension while being nearly maximally lengthened, which we know is likely hypertrophic in its own right.
Deep Split Squats
For these, elevate both your front and rear foot. I’m a big fan of deep split squats – especially if you can find a way to make them more stable. The best ways I’ve found are to use a safety bar and hold on to the power rack or stands, to use a smith machine or to hold a dumbbell in one hand only and using the other hand to hold on to something.
Deep split squats take your glutes through virtually full ROM. This alone makes them a great exercise, but they also carry another meaningful benefit; because they are a single-legged exercise and it is easy to stay upright, they tend to be FAR less axially fatiguing than most other glute exercises. This makes them a great inclusion to a program that is already rather heavy in the other more axially loaded lower body exercises. Finally, I also like them because they are very hard. Because bodyweight alone for high reps can be challenging, you usually need relatively little external load. For higher reps, this means you don’t need to worry that much about bracing, particularly when you’re using a dumbbell. Because bracing is that much less important, you can now breathe much more freely, and I find I can do these for quite high reps without being limited by cardiovascular capacity.
Deficit Deadlifts and Good Mornings
This category includes all deadlift variations that maximise hip extension ROM, though the RDL may still have a slight edge over a conventional deadlift, even for glute growth. Not unlike deep squats, RDLs have high hip extension demands in the bottom position, which is where the glutes are in their most lengthened position. Again, this is likely hypertrophic.
A full ROM hip abduction exercise
Feel free to use any hip abduction exercise that can be loaded reasonably well and that has a decent resistance curve. The hip abduction machine is probably the most commonly available piece of equipment and does the job.
What NOT to do
Hip Bridges
Hip bridges aren’t a great exercise for hypertrophy. The ROM is very small. Moreover, the ROM through which hip bridges train the glutes is also likely the least hypertrophic out of all the possible ranges; it trains the glutes when they are nearly fully shortened. Combine that with a long warm-up time (from loading all the plates you’ll be using) and the fatigue it brings, and I think they’re a rather poor hypertrophy glute exercise.
Some Bodyweight “Booty Blasters”
For a lot of people, most bodyweight “booty blasters” (I believe that is the agreed upon term in the literature) are probably not heavy enough to be ideal for muscle growth. Simply put, a lot of bodyweight exercises are below 20% of 1RM, which we know is worse than 30-85% 1RM for building muscle on a set per set basis.
However, if you can really only do ~30-40 reps on an exercise before reaching failure, it trains your glutes through a full ROM and has a reasonable resistance curve, be my guest! In that case, feel free to use it to grow your glutes.
For me, for example, bodyweight hip thrusts don’t do much. They are way too light to be effective, except MAYBE when done single-legged. However, full ROM bodyweight squats are likely still challenging enough to maximise muscle growth, since I can’t squat ~4x my bodyweight just yet (which means my bodyweight is >20% of my 1RM).
That wraps up the glutes.
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