Glute Exercises for Better Strength and Fitness Performance

These exercises will teach you how to turn on your glutes and how to build both size and strength. It’s not a complete guide, but it should offer you some starting points and a guide for strengthening and activating your glutes. If you do nothing for your glutes but these exercises, you’ll be a whole lot better off!

Exercise 1: The Glute Bridge

Some of us have met these movements as ‘the crab,’ but bridges are a great exercise group for the whole body. The glute bridge is a simple movement that’s deceptively difficult to do, so don’t feel bad if you have trouble doing it: almost everyone does! Start by lying on your back with your feet on the floor, shoulder-width apart and close to your glutes. Keep your neck neutral and your shoulders on the floor.

Next, drive downwards with your heels and push your hips up off the floor, relaxing your hip flexors and driving your hips as high as you can. It’s a simple enough movement, but doing it for even a few reps will defeat most people. Start off with two sets of 12-15 and move on to two sets of 20. When you can reliably do them, try adding weight. A barbell works well –especially since the discs are often so large that if you have to drop the bar it won’t fall on you. But a rucksack full of something heavy will also work. Just remember to push upward as hard and as far as you can.

Exercise 2: Hill Sprints

Hill sprints are significantly harder than the glute bridge. They’re also a very simple exercise, though – they’re exactly what they sound like, sprinting uphill.

I’d recommend sprinting only for the distance you can hold your breath, which for most people will be between ten and forty yards, and concentrating on ‘driving’ – pushing yourself to accelerate as fast as possible, and trying to make your feet move as fast as possible without shortening your stride or slowing down. I’d also recommend getting up to 2X20 with the glute bridge before you try hill sprints, or you could find your glutes when you pull them – and without the support of strong glutes hill sprints can be rough on the hamstrings too.

Exercise 3: Glute Ham Raise

Glute Ham Raises are among the hardest glute exercises there is. They're included here as a way to demonstrate what can be achieved – a kind of signpost. I’ll also go into their gentler cousin, the glute-ham curl.

To perform a glute ham raise, you’ll need something that anchors your heels in the same plane as your knees. A doorway bar a few inches off the floor will work if you can find something soft to go under your knees. Lie on the floor face down, and lift your body from the knees by contracting your glutes and hamstrings. When you’re kneeling erect, lower yourself to the starting position. That’s one rep.

Obviously, for most of us it’s going to be a journey to get there, so it’s best for a lot of us to train the glute ham curl instead. It’s the same exercise, but with an external load attached to an exercise machine instead of a being a body weight exercise. Think lat pull down, rather than pull-up. Many gyms have a glute ham curl (GHC) machine, and if you don’t use a gym you can use exercise bands attached to a low doorway bar. You don’t need very high resistance to get a good session with GHCs.

If you have a question to ask (or a tale to tell!) drop me a line in the comments below.