Hip Thrusts- All you Need to Know

Hip Thrusts- All you Need to Know

Whether you’re working out in your living room or at a gym, hip thrusts are a great lower-body exercise to incorporate into your routine.

If you want to get as strong as possible or simply strength train to keep your running game solid or build size and strength in your derrière, hip thrusts can help in this process.

A bent-leg hip extension exercise performed with your back on an elevated surface, the hip thrust is a favorite of lifters everywhere for its ability to target the posterior chain, especially the glutes, in a unique way.

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What exactly are Hip Thrusts?

The move is a variation of a glute bridge, but it is performed using a barbell and with the body lifted off the floor.

In a hip thrust, you push through your lower body (more on the specific muscles it lights up in a sec) to lift your hips (and potentially a weight) into a bridge position.

Your hips extend when they move from a flexed position (where the hips are lower than or behind the shoulders and knees) to a fully extended position where the hips, shoulders, and knees are in line.

What muscles are worked?

These are best known for working on Glutes, commonly called as butts’ muscles. The hip thrust motion mainly targets the glutes — both the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius — as well as the hamstrings

Though you might already hit these muscles with deadlifts, they definitely need the love. The hip thrust is a great exercise for developing your posterior chain (backside of your body), which we often neglect.

How to do them?

Follow these steps to perform a hip thrust:

  1. Set up with your back against an elevated surface (like a bench or a box) with your knees bent and feet flat on the ground.
  2. The bench should hit just below your shoulder blades, and your feet should be about shoulder-width apart. You can rest your elbows on the bench.
  3. Keeping your chin tucked, push through your heels until your thighs reach parallel to the floor — your legs should form a 90-degree angle.
  4. Squeeze your glutes at the top, then return to start.

Benefits of Hip Thrusts

There are some really important benefits of doing this exercise, some of the important one’s are:

  1. Improve other lower-body lifts, like squats and deadlifts.
  2. Improve stability throughout your hips and core.
  3. These increase your power, enhancing performance in athlete activities.
  4. They also increase speed.
  5. Increase your vertical jump.

Common Mistakes

There are a few form nuances which you should keep in mind when performing a hip thrust.

  1. If you stop short of thighs parallel, your glutes won’t see full activation. To fix this, make sure you’re aiming for a 90-degree angle with your legs.
  2. If your feet are too far forward, you’ll feel the hip thrust more in your hamstrings. If they’re too far in toward your body, you’ll get more quad engagement.
  3. Either not extending your hips up enough OR overextending them. At the top of the exercise, your hips should be in-line with your ribcage.

When performed correctly, hip thrusts are one of the most effective ways to add size and strength to your glutes. The good news is, they’re accessible for pretty much everyone. So, try it out today.

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