Glute exercises: the best moves for strength and size

The best glute exercises are not a secret, and they are not the 47-move banded circuit your feed served you this morning. They're a handful of heavy hip extension lifts, a couple of single-leg moves, and a little side-glute work, done consistently and loaded progressively for months. That's the whole trick. Nobody sells it because it doesn't fit in a 30-second clip.

This guide covers the glute exercises worth doing, how to do each one, which are best with weights or dumbbells, what the muscle-activation research actually says, and how to program them around a week that may also have running in it. Write the plan yourself or let exrsz, the AI coach build it. Either way, the exercises are the same.

What makes good glute exercises (and what doesn't)

Your glutes do three main jobs: extend the hip (stand up from a hinge, drive you forward when you run), move the leg out to the side, and keep your pelvis level when you're on one leg. Good glute focused exercises train those jobs against a load you can increase over time. That's it. Novelty is not a training variable.

Three myths to clear out before the list:

• ›"Women need different exercises." They don't. A 2020 meta-analysis of sex differences in resistance training found men and women gained muscle and lower-body strength at similar rates on the same programs, and women actually showed larger relative gains in upper-body strength. Same lifts, same principles. The best strength training for women, explained, is mostly the best strength training, full stop.
• ›"Light weights tone, heavy weights bulk." "Toning" isn't a physiological process. Muscle gets bigger and stronger slowly when you train it hard and eat enough. Fifty reps with a tiny dumbbell doesn't build a special, different kind of muscle.
• ›"This move targets the lower outer glute." You can bias regions of a muscle a little. You can't sculpt a precise shape with exercise choice.

If you'd rather not assemble the week yourself, a lifting plan for women that already has running slotted in is the shortcut. If you're building it by hand, keep reading.

Glute anatomy in one minute

• ›Gluteus maximus: the big one. Extends and externally rotates the hip. Does most of the work in hip thrusts, deadlifts, squats and step-ups.
• ›Gluteus medius: on the side of the hip. Moves the leg out to the side and holds your pelvis level on one leg. Every running stride needs it.
• ›Gluteus minimus: smaller and deeper, sits under the medius and helps with the same jobs.

The "upper glutes" people talk about is mostly the upper part of the gluteus maximus plus the medius. Training them is less mysterious than the name suggests, and the upper glute exercises that work best are mostly abduction and hip extension variations already on this list.

Glute exercises with weights: the big five

These are the main lifts. Pick two of them per lower-body session, and you've done most of the job.

1. Barbell hip thrust

Upper back on a bench, barbell across your hips, feet planted, drive your hips up until your torso and thighs form a straight line. It loads the glutes hardest at the top, where squats and deadlifts go easy.

How to do it:

1. ›Sit on the floor with the lower edge of your shoulder blades against a bench about knee height.
2. ›Roll a padded barbell over your legs until it sits in the crease of your hips.
3. ›Feet flat, about hip-width, close enough that your shins are roughly vertical at the top.
4. ›Brace, tuck your chin slightly, and drive through your heels until your hips are fully extended.
5. ›Squeeze for a second, then lower under control until the plates nearly touch the floor.

The setup is awkward at first and gets easy fast. The full breakdown, including how heavy to go, lives in barbell hip thrusts.

2. Romanian deadlift

The Romanian deadlift (RDL) trains the glutes and hamstrings through a long range, in the stretched position the hip thrust skips.

How to do it:

1. ›Stand tall holding a barbell or two dumbbells at your thighs, feet hip-width, knees soft.
2. ›Push your hips back, sliding the weight down your thighs. Keep your back flat.
3. ›Stop when your hips can't go further back without your back rounding, usually around mid-shin.
4. ›Drive the hips forward to stand tall. Don't lean back.

The RDL shares its setup and bracing with the conventional deadlift, so learning good deadlift technique pays off on both. A systematic review of deadlift EMG studies found the hamstrings were more active than the lower-back muscles in the Romanian version, so it's a posterior-chain lift, not a pure glute isolator.

3. Bulgarian split squat

Single-leg, brutally effective, and hard with far less load than a back squat.

How to do it:

1. ›Stand about a stride in front of a knee-height bench, top of your back foot on it, dumbbells at your sides.
2. ›Lower straight down until your front thigh is about parallel to the floor or lower.
3. ›Drive through the whole front foot to stand. The back leg is a kickstand.

Lean your torso forward slightly from the hips to shift more work to the glutes; stay upright to bias the quads. The dumbbell Bulgarian split squat guide covers stance, loading and the EMG study behind the lean.

4. Step-up

Underrated and boring, which is a compliment. In a 2020 systematic review of gluteus maximus activation, step-up variations showed the highest activation of the loaded exercises reviewed, ahead of deadlifts, hip thrusts, lunges and squats, all of which were still in the "very high" category.

How to do it:

1. ›Use a box that puts your working thigh around parallel. Lower is fine to start.
2. ›Plant the whole foot, lean slightly forward, and drive through that leg to stand tall. Don't push off the back foot.
3. ›Lower slowly, keeping the weight on the box leg until your trailing foot touches down.

Hold dumbbells when bodyweight gets easy. One caution: higher EMG in a lab isn't the same as more growth over months. More on that below.

5. Squat

Back squats, front squats, goblet squats. All train the glutes, especially deep. Squats load the quads more than the hip-dominant lifts above, which is a feature for runners rather than a bug. If you're new to squatting, start with a goblet squat and graduate from there.

Glute bridges and hip thrust variations

The glute bridge is a hip thrust from the floor: shoulders down, knees bent, drive the hips up. Shorter range, easier setup.

• ›Bodyweight glute bridge: two sets of 10–15 as a warm-up before a lower session.
• ›Loaded glute bridge: barbell or dumbbell across the hips. Useful when there's no bench.
• ›Single-leg glute bridge: one foot planted, the other leg held up. It's harder than it looks and trains each side on its own. The single-leg glute bridge is also one of the best ways to find out if one side is doing all the work.

Glute isolation exercises

Isolation work isn't the main course. It's the side dish that fills gaps the big lifts leave, mostly for the glute medius and minimus, the side glutes that hold your pelvis level when you run.

Side-lying hip abduction

Lie on your side, bottom knee bent, top leg straight. Lift the top leg up and slightly back, toes pointing forward, without rolling your hips backward. In a 2009 EMG study of 12 common exercises, side-lying hip abduction produced the highest gluteus medius activity. The same study found single-leg squats and single-leg deadlifts gave the highest gluteus maximus activity, another argument for single-leg work.

Clamshells and lateral band walks

Clamshell: lie on your side, knees bent, feet together, and open the top knee like a clam without letting your pelvis roll. Lateral band walk: a band around the knees or ankles, small sideways steps, hips level. A 2013 fine-wire EMG study found the clam, the sidestep, the unilateral bridge and quadruped hip extension were the most effective of the exercises tested for activating the gluteal muscles while keeping the tensor fascia latae (a small hip muscle that also moves the leg out to the side) relatively quiet.

Machine and cable abduction

The seated abduction machine and the standing cable abduction both train the same job with a load you can increase in small steps. For the full menu of glute medius and minimus exercises, this trio plus the side-lying lift covers most of it.

Cable kickback and glute-biased back extension

Kickback: on all fours or standing at a cable, extend one hip back without arching your lower back. Back extension: hips on the pad, upper back slightly rounded, feet turned out, extend from the hips. Both are decent finishers at light-to-moderate loads.

Glute-ham raise

Knees on a pad, ankles locked, lower your torso forward under control and pull yourself back up with the hamstrings and glutes. It's mostly a hamstring exercise with glute assistance, and very hard. Most gyms don't have the machine, so the glute-ham raise usually gets replaced by Nordic curls or a stability-ball leg curl.

Dumbbell glute exercises (for home or a crowded gym)

No barbell? No problem. These dumbbell glute exercises cover every job:

When the dumbbells run out, use single-leg versions, slower tempos and pauses to keep progressing.

Glute focused exercises: does EMG pick the winner?

Every glute ranking on the internet is secretly an EMG ranking. EMG measures electrical activity in a muscle during a lift. It's useful information. It isn't a growth prediction.

Here's the honest picture:

• ›Hip thrusts light up the glutes. In a 2015 study of 13 trained women, the barbell hip thrust produced greater upper and lower gluteus maximus EMG activity than the back squat at estimated 10-rep max loads. The authors themselves noted that longer training studies were needed to know whether that meant more growth.
• ›Those training studies came out mixed. In a 9-week trial in untrained young adults, hip thrust and back squat training produced similar glute growth measured by MRI, even though the hip thrust showed more glute EMG in the first session. The squat group grew more quadriceps and adductor muscle. In a 12-week study in well-trained women, the back squat group actually increased gluteus maximus thickness more than the hip thrust group.
• ›Each lift got better at itself. In both trials, squat strength improved more with squats and hip thrust strength improved more with hip thrusts. Training is specific. Shocking.

Translation: the "best" glute exercise is the one you'll do with progressive load for months. A program with a squat or split squat, a hinge, and a hip thrust covers the bases better than any single winner.

How to program glute exercises

These are coaching conventions, not commandments. RPE 8 means about two reps left in reserve.

A simple two-day lower-body setup:

Add an upper-body push and pull to each day and you've got a full program. For the exercises that round out the rest of the body, see workouts for women, body part by body part.

Progression does all the work: add reps to the top of the range on every set, then add the smallest weight jump and start back at the bottom.

Where glute training fits a running week

Strong glutes are useful for runners: they drive hip extension in every stride and hold your pelvis level when you land on one leg. The scheduling rules are the same as for any lower-body work:

• ›Heavy lower-body work goes on easy run days, after the run if both are on the same day, or the day after a hard run.
• ›Keep it away from the day before intervals or the long run. Sore glutes make fast running feel slow.
• ›Heavier beats longer. A 2024 meta-analysis found high-load strength training improved running economy in distance runners, while submaximal-load training didn't show the same benefit. Fewer, heavier reps beat a 100-rep burnout.
• ›Separate runs and lifts by a few hours when you can. An updated meta-analysis on concurrent training found explosive strength gains were blunted more when both were done in the same session than when they were separated by at least three hours.

After training, gentle mobility and glute stretches can feel good, especially after long runs or a deep split squat session. They're a nice extra, not a replacement for the strength work. If something hurts rather than just feeling worked, see a professional.

How exrsz handles glute training

exrsz builds a periodized plan from your goal, schedule, level and equipment, so a home setup with dumbbells gets dumbbell glute exercises, and a full gym gets hip thrusts and barbell RDLs. It balances lower-body days against your runs in one plan, adapts loads each week based on what you actually lifted, and reshuffles missed sessions instead of stacking them.

FAQ

What are the best glute exercises?

Hip thrusts, Romanian deadlifts, Bulgarian split squats, step-ups and squats cover the main jobs, with some abduction work for the side glutes. Training studies comparing hip thrusts and squats found similar glute growth, so consistency and progressive load matter more than picking one winner.

What are the best glute exercises with weights?

The barbell hip thrust, Romanian deadlift and squat are the classics, because they take heavy loads and are easy to progress. Dumbbell Bulgarian split squats and step-ups fill in the single-leg work.

What are good glute isolation exercises?

Side-lying hip abduction, clamshells, lateral band walks, machine abduction and cable kickbacks. In a 2009 EMG study, side-lying abduction produced the highest gluteus medius activity of the exercises tested.

Can I train glutes with only dumbbells?

Yes. Dumbbell RDLs, Bulgarian split squats, step-ups and hip thrusts cover every job. Once the dumbbells get light, use single-leg versions, pauses and slower tempos to keep progressing.

How often should I train glutes?

Two lower-body sessions a week works for most people, with two or three glute exercises in each. Runners can keep one or two shorter sessions in a race block, away from hard runs.