Hip thrust: how to do it and how much you should lift

Muscles the hip thrust works

The hip thrust works the glutes (gluteus maximus) hardest. The hamstrings help them straighten your hips, and the quads hold your knees bent.

Studies that measure electrical activity with sensors on the skin (EMG) favor the hip thrust for the glutes. In 13 trained women lifting a weight they could manage about 10 times, it showed about twice the glute activity of the back squat. Hamstring activity was higher too, and quad activity similar. In 12 male athletes lifting a weight they could manage 3 times, peak glute activity was higher than in the back squat and the split squat.

EMG shows which muscles fire, not which ones grow. A 9-week study measured growth on MRI scans. In it, 34 young men and women new to lifting trained hip thrusts or back squats twice a week. The glutes fired harder in the hip thrust, yet both groups grew their glutes by a similar amount. The squat group grew more quad and inner thigh (adductor) muscle, while the hip thrust group's thighs grew very little. Neither group grew its hamstrings much.

One smaller study disagrees: in 22 trained women over 12 weeks, squats thickened the glutes by 9.4% and hip thrusts by 3.7%. The MRI study had more people and measured the whole glute at 3 levels. Two of its authors sell exercise products and services. The paper says they helped design the study and covered part of its costs, and took no other part in it.

Both lifts grow the glutes. In the MRI study, the hip thrust did it with little growth in the thighs.

How to do a hip thrust

1. Set a flat bench against a wall or a rack, so it cannot slide. A bench of 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 inches) suits most people.
2. Sit on the floor with your back against the long side of the bench, legs straight. The bench edge should sit just below your shoulder blades.
3. Roll a bar loaded with 20 kg (45 lb) plates over your legs into the crease of your hips. Put a thick bar pad or a folded mat under it.
4. Bend your knees and set your feet flat, about hip to shoulder width apart. Hold the bar with both hands just outside your hips.
5. Breathe in and brace your stomach. Tuck your chin a little, so you look forward, not up at the ceiling.
6. Push through your whole foot and drive your hips up. Your upper back pivots on the bench edge.
7. Stop when your hips are level with your knees and shoulders: shins vertical, thighs parallel to the floor. Squeeze your glutes and keep your ribs down.
8. Lower under control until the plates touch the floor lightly, or your hips sit just above it. Breathe out at the top, then brace again.

Take about 1 second to lift and 2 seconds to lower, the tempo of the 9-week MRI study. The lift first appeared in a sports science journal in 2011, in a paper by Bret Contreras and colleagues.

Hip thrust or glute bridge?

Both train the glutes. The glute bridge is the same movement with your upper back on the floor instead of a bench. Use the hip thrust as your main lift when you have a bench, and the bridge at home or when the benches are taken.

What changes:

• Range of motion: in 10 trained men lifting the same weight, the bar rose about 36 cm in the hip thrust and 15 cm in the bridge. With your shoulders on a bench, your hips have more than twice as far to rise.
• Muscle activity: in 10 men, the bridge showed more glute activity on EMG, and the hip thrust more quad activity. That is one small study of activity, not growth.
• Weight: the authors of the range study expect a heavier bridge, but no study we found has measured it. On Strength Level, logged bridges are lighter: an intermediate 60 kg woman bridges 91 kg and hip thrusts 100 kg. The bridge numbers rest on only 10,683 results.
• Setup: the bridge needs no bench, so nothing can slide. You still need the same plates and pad.
• Growth: no study has compared the 2 for glute growth.

Where the advice differs

Most hip thrust technique is coaching habit, not tested in studies. Where coaches disagree, the right answer depends on your build, your bench and your goal.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Sets, reps and rest for the hip thrust

There is no single right number. The table is a starting point built on research on lifting in general.

What the studies show:

• Heavy weights build more strength. Muscle grows about as well with light or heavy weights, if the sets go close to failure.
• More weekly sets bring more muscle, up to a point. Strength gains level off sooner.
• With the same weekly sets, training a muscle more often does not add size. It only makes the sets easier to fit in.
• You do not need to reach failure. With full-size plates, a missed rep ends with the plates on the floor.
• In a review of 9 studies, rests longer than 60 seconds built a little more muscle. Past 90 seconds, longer rests made no clear difference.
• In the 9-week MRI study, beginners trained hip thrusts twice a week, in sets of 8 to 12 reps to failure. They started with 3 sets and built up to 6, and their glutes grew.

For longer answers, read how many sets and reps build muscle and how long to rest between sets.

Warm-up sets before heavy hip thrusts

Climb to your working weight in a few short sets. Type your working set below, and the calculator gives you the warm-up sets and the plates for each side.

The bar has to roll over your legs and clear your hips, which takes full-size plates. So the calculator starts with the bar and one 20 kg (45 lb) plate on each side, for 5 reps. When your working weight is less than 5 kg (10 lb) above that, it starts with the empty bar for 10 instead.

Then it climbs: about 40% of the working weight for 5, 60% for 3 and 80% for 2. Before sets of 5 or fewer reps, or a working weight of 100 kg (225 lb) or more, it adds 90% for 1. Before sets of 8 or more reps, it keeps only the 40% and 80% sets, and under 40 kg (90 lb) it gives one set at 70% for 3. It rounds each weight down to what your plates can make, and skips a set that would sit within 5 kg (10 lb) of the one before.

For 100 kg (225 lb) for 5, that gives 60 kg for 5, 80 kg for 2 and 90 kg for 1 (135, 180 and 200 lb). The 40% and 60% sets sit too close to the start, so it skips them.

Smaller plates are smaller across, so the bar cannot roll over your thighs. For working weights under 65 kg (145 lb), lift the bar onto your hips by hand, or use full-size bumper plates if your gym has them.

No study has tested a warm-up for the hip thrust. In the squat, a warm-up set at about 80% of the working weight gave faster reps than a light one. Another study found that the kind of warm-up made no difference to reps. No study shows that warm-up sets prevent injury.

How much should you hip thrust?

No good hip thrust standard exists. Powerlifting meets leave the lift out, so there are no meet results to build a table from. The tables online come from what gym app users log, with no check on form or range.

StrengthLog publishes tables for the squat, bench press, deadlift and overhead press, but none for the hip thrust. The largest table is Strength Level's, built from 1,221,785 hip thrusts its users logged from 2017 to 2026. After its checks, 383,413 results count, more from women (224,489) than from men (158,924).

Here is where each level starts, as a one-rep max (1RM, the most you can lift once), bar included:

Read it as a rough guide, not a target. Nobody checks a logged rep: it may stop short of the top, or get there by arching the lower back.

How does it compare with your squat? On Strength Level's tables, an intermediate 60 kg woman hip thrusts 100 kg and squats 72 kg. An intermediate 80 kg man hip thrusts 149 kg and squats 132 kg. That is one site's data at one level, not a rule.

Under 18? These tables are for adults, and they set no target for teenagers. For a young lifter, clean reps and slow, steady progress matter more than any number on them.

Find your hip thrust max

You do not need to test a true one-rep max on the hip thrust, and few people do. Type a set you did, and the calculator estimates your max with 7 formulas. Sets of 10 reps or fewer give the closest estimate. For more detail, open the 1RM calculator.

Setting up the hip thrust safely

Most hip thrust trouble starts before the first rep, so set up with the empty bar first.

• The bench: put it against a wall or a rack, so it cannot slide back when you push. A bench fixed to its base, or a hip thrust station, does the same job.
• The pad: use a thick bar pad or a folded mat across your hip crease. In one study, researchers put a dense pad there to protect the belly and the pubic bone.
• Getting the bar on: sit with your legs straight and roll the bar from your feet up to your hips. With heavy weights, ask someone to help you roll it.
• Getting the bar off: lower your hips until the plates rest on the floor, then roll the bar back down your legs. Never let it drop onto your hips from the top.
• A missed rep: lower your hips until the plates rest on the floor. With full-size plates, the floor takes the weight, not your belly.

When the hip thrust hurts

Pain is a reason to change something, not to push through. Diagnosis and treatment belong to a physiotherapist or a doctor. We found no study of hip thrust injuries, so the advice below is coaching practice.

• Hip bones or pubic bone: the bar is pressing on bone. Use a thicker pad, set the bar in your hip crease, or switch to a machine or a band for a few weeks.
• Lower back: finish with your hips, not your back. Stop when your hips are straight, keep your ribs down and take weight off. A glute bridge, with its shorter range, may feel better.
• Knee: move your feet a little further out, so your knees bend less.
• Neck or upper back: move so the bench edge sits below your shoulder blades, or fold a towel over the edge.
• A sharp pain that stays, or pain that runs down a leg, needs a doctor.

For lasting pain, read what to do when a lift hurts.

Hip thrust variations and alternatives

In Trackist's exercise library, the hip thrust sits in one group with 8 other glute movements: the glute bridge, the single-leg glute bridge, the single-leg hip thrust, the dumbbell hip thrust, the machine hip thrust, the frog pump, the cable glute kickback and the bodyweight glute kickback. The app's hip thrust page lists them as similar movements. When you swap the hip thrust for one session or for the rest of your plan, the picker puts that group first, then other glute exercises, starting with those your equipment and joints allow.

How Trackist runs your hip thrust

Trackist is an AI personal trainer for the gym. It writes your plan, and the hip thrust gets this from the app:

• From your second session of the hip thrust, Trackist suggests what to try from the last time you logged it. When every set at your top weight reached the top of the rep range, it adds 2.5 kg (5 lb). Inside the range, it keeps the weight and asks for more reps. There is no suggestion in a deload week.
• When you fall short of the reps, it keeps the weight, takes about 5% off or leaves the call to you, depending on how far short you fell and how hard the sets felt.
• From your second session, it logs a personal record when you beat your heaviest weight, your most reps at a weight or your best estimated max.
• The exercise page shows 4 form cues, the muscles worked and the joint the hip thrust loads: the hip. From your second session, it adds a chart of your estimated one-rep max.
• When your hip hurts on the hip thrust, you report it and rate it from 1 to 5. Trackist swaps the hip thrust for a glute exercise that leaves the hip out, such as the clamshell or the lateral band walk. Your profile remembers it. The app has no narrower pattern for glute exercises, so later plans leave out every movement that loads the hip: squats, deadlifts, Bulgarian split squats and bridges included.
• The hip thrust does not count towards your Strength Score, which Trackist works out from squats, hip hinges, presses and pulls.