Try These Exercises Instead of Hip Thrusts

Hip thrusts are a great exercise if you want to work on your glutes (aka butt muscles). We even recommended them in 2019 as the best butt exercise you’re not doing. Well, now you’re doing them, right? And you’re probably annoyed at how much trouble they are to set up.

To do a hip thrust, you need to have a heavy thing on top of your hips (usually a barbell) and a raised surface for your back (often a bench). But the bench slides back, or it isn’t tall enough, or you have trouble getting the barbell onto your lap. It’s possible to do hip thrusts in other ways, like on a Smith machine or, if your gym is well-equipped, a dedicated hip thrust machine. But more than a few of us find ourselves dreading the exercise. Setting up is, figuratively at least, a pain in the butt.

If you don’t mind, cool. Keep thrusting. For the rest of us, here are some different exercises that work your glutes with a lot less setup time. Try them out and see which ones work best for you.

Step ups

Step ups are an underrated exercise in general. When it comes to glute work, there’s research suggesting they may activate the glutes better than hip thrusts. Step ups require the muscles of your glutes and your inner thighs to work hard to balance you as well as to straighten out your leg as you step up.

This video shows a basic step up, but anything in the same family of exercises will work your glutes. You can place the step to your side instead of in front of you; also consider lunges and split squats.

Deadlifts

Any hinge movement will be excellent for your glutes, since one of their main functions is to extend (straighten) your hips. Deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts (RDLs), trap bar deadlifts, rack pulls, and block pulls all fit the bill. (Rack and block pulls are just deadlifts where you set the barbell on a rack or blocks so it is higher than the floor.)

You can go heavy on these. This video shows dumbbell RDLs, but don’t be afraid to get the barbell out so you can add more weight.

Good mornings

A good morning is another hinge movement. In a sense, it’s just a Romanian deadlift where the bar sits on top of your shoulders instead of hanging from your arms.

If you haven’t done these, you might be a bit confused about how your body can hinge forward without getting off balance. The trick is that the barbell stays over your feet the whole time. You just move your hips backward until they’re behind you — softening your knees only as much as necessary to allow this.

Kettlebell swings

Another great hinge movement, but this one is explosive. Use a heavy kettlebell for this, one where you find yourself thinking “dang, I really have to get my butt into this if I want the weight to get up at all.” Here’s a 91 kg swing for inspiration:

Power cleans

Really enjoying explosive hip extension movements? There’s a whole sport based on that, where your butt is a key mover in snatches, cleans, and jerks. Of those lifts and their variations, power cleans are one of the easier ones to learn.

Hyperextensions

The 45-degree hyperextension machine — really more of a weird little bench — is an underrated way to work your glutes. Secure your legs in it, bend over at the hips, and hug a plate as you ask your glutes to extend your body upward. (You don’t actually have to hyperextend your hips, but that’s the name of the machine.) If your gym doesn’t have one of these, but it does have a GHD in the corner, you can do a glute-ham raise, which is basically the same thing at a different angle.