We Tested 17 Glute Exercises, These Are Best For Growth

We tested 17 of the most popular glute exercises on four subjects, male and female, to find out which ones are the best at building a powerful, well rounded butt. At the end, we're going to use these results to create a simple glute workout perfect for you and guaranteed to transform your butt.

So we tested the exercises using Betty, a $12,000 EMG machine that measures muscle activation. Here's how the most popular glute exercise, the hip thrust, performed.

Well, out of all the exercises we tested, it led to the highest activ in both the lower and the upper glutes. But despite the high activation, there's actually other exercises that would very likely grow your glutes better than hip thrusts do. Before I share why that is and what they are, let me first explain what exactly we tested.

So the glutes are actually an extremely complex muscle. To measure, I needed all the help I could get. Luckily, biomechanics expert coach Kassem, who has run several of these experiments in the past or offered to help out based on his advice. To see if certain exercises favor different parts of the glutes, I decided to put a sensor on the lower glute, the upper glute, and another muscle located in the upper side of the butt called the glute medius. Now, to make sure the sensors stuck to our booties, each of us needed a smooth, hairless butt. Fortunately, only one of us needed some work done.

I cannot stop clenching.

To be honest, Raza could have had it worse. Apparently, some studies take it to the extreme and rub sandpaper on the butt. Now, before testing, there's a couple variables we need to control. For the more challenging an exercise is, the more muscle fibers you'll use and the higher activation. Bet it will read. So, few days before testing, we all spent a whole day in our gym to figure out how much weight we'd use on each exercise to make them equally as challenging. Finally, before our first measurement, we need to get the NVC or maximum voluntary contraction. Basically, we need to figure out the maximum activation each of our butt muscles can reach in order to accurately compare the exercises we do relative to our own bodies. With that out of the way, we're ready to test. We did one set of each glute exercises and took a five minute break between each set. After a long day, we were finally done with measuring.

Sure you got a nice view of.

The kahunas under there.

Before I dive into the results, it's important to understand that more activation doesn't always mean more growth. For example, Even though the hip thrust led to the highest activation, the downside is that it works the glutes the most at the top position when your butt is fully contracted. Whereas recent research has shown that exercises that challenge muscles at the bottom position when they're fully stretched, tend to be better for growth. So while it is a great exercise to help you really feel your glutes working, and is something I'm going to throw into the sample glute workout I'll show at the end of the video, it's not the only glute exercise you should be doing. This is especially true because based on the data, it seems like different exercises targeted different parts of the glutes. Let's start with the lower glutes. There were two types of exercises that targeted this region very well. The first type were lower body presses. These are exercises where your foot is pressing against the floor to raise your body up. So we tested barbell squats, step ups, different types of lunges, and of course, Bulgarian split squats. And for each of these exercises, we used a slight lean forward at the torso and tried to keep the shin vertical over the foot rather than letting the knee travel forward. This form seemed to help activate the glutes even more by reducing the involvement of the quad muscles. And I actually covered this form in more depth in this past glutes video I did. I'll link it in the description box down below and you can check it out after this one if you want to learn how to properly execute some of these exercises. Now, although these did favor the lower glutes more, there was one unique type of lunge that performed surprisingly well for the upper glutes, and we'll talk about that later on. What's important to note that the lower body presses we tested varied in difficulty. Raza. A beginner had a hard time doing the more complex variations such as Bulgarian split squats and front foot elevated reverse lunges. And these variations are great for growth because they stretch the glutes at the bottom position even more than regular lunges do. But they're challenging. So for beginners, I'd highly recommend that you stick to a basic reverse lunge or split squat. Master that, and then over time start progressing to these more challenging exercises. Now, the second type of exercise that did very well for the lower glutes was deadlifts. We tested both the conventional deadlift and the glute focused Romanian deadlift. Anyways, both types of deadlifts favor the glutes quite well. And if you remember from our last back video deadlifts also perform very well at activating the whole back, making it a great choice to work the whole backside of your body at once. Now one thing I did find really interesting was how similar the results were between us males and Tawny the female. A big misconception is that females need to train completely differently than men do and vice versa. But the best glute exercises for women will also be the best for men. The difference comes with how you program those exercises in for example, if you wanted to prioritize your glutes then you do more volume and exercises for them compared to other muscles. And for those who want a done for you, science based program that shows you exactly how to train based on your goals. Then after this video just head over to builtwithscience.com and take our analysis quiz so far. Based on the data it seems like exercises where your butt is moving backwards and then forwards, also known as hip extension, will favor the lower glutes. But what about the upper and side glutes, AKA the Brazilian Butler? Well, this part of the glutes primarily helps with the motion called abduction, which involves moving your leg away from the middle of your body. And there's a few exercises that seem to work really well for this. Let's start with cable kickbacks. So we tested this with the leg lifted straight back or out at about a 30 degree angle. Theoretically, since the leg travels out to the side, the angled version should better line up. The tension with the upper and side glutes result well for all four subjects. The angled version did lead to better activation of the upper glutes as well as the glute medius. Next, abduction movements. These are exercises that directly train the function of the upper and side glutes. We tested seated and standing banded abductions and even the seated machine abduction, which we had to borrow from another gym. All of these variations favored the upper glutes and the glute medius significantly more than the lower glutes. But we also tested a unique type of lunge I learned from Coach Kasim that ended up activating both the upper glutes and the glute medius very well. We used just a small step up for the front foot, turned the toe in slightly and then we took a step directly back and slightly to the side behind the body. This puts the upper glute fibers and the glute medius into a deeper stretch than traditional lunges do. I've honestly never done these in my own training, but I'm definitely adding them in after seeing just how well they perform. Okay, so let's put these exercises together into a well rounded glute workout. To do that, I'd recommend first starting off with the toughest movement by picking a hip extension dominant exercise to favor the lower glutes. This exercise will also be the most important one for growth, so it's a good idea to do it while you're fresh. But after that I throw in hip thrust for some extra overall glute work which isn't as tiring on the body. Then to finish it off, I'd recommend adding one to two exercises from the upper glutes list depending on how much you want to prioritize this region. I've also put the full workout into a free downloadable PDF you can get over at builtwithscience.com glutespdf now a nice pair of glutes wouldn't be complete without a muscular defined back as well. So to find out which exercises were best for growing the back, click here to give that video a watch next. I'll see you next time.