Best Glute Exercises: What the Growth Research Shows

For about a decade, the case for the hip thrust as the best glute exercise has rested on one kind of evidence: electromyography, which measures the electrical activity of a muscle while you work. On that measure the hip thrust wins clearly.

In 2023 a group at Auburn University ran the study that measure had been standing in for. They trained two groups for nine weeks, one squatting and one hip thrusting, and used MRI to measure how much the glutes actually grew.

Where the hip thrust reputation came from

In 2015, Bret Contreras and colleagues published an EMG comparison in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics. Thirteen trained women performed exercise-specific estimated ten-repetition maximums in the back squat and the barbell hip thrust, meaning each lift was loaded relative to itself rather than at a matched absolute weight, while activity was recorded from the upper and lower gluteus maximus, the biceps femoris and the vastus lateralis.

The differences were not subtle. Mean upper gluteus maximus activity was 69.5% in the hip thrust against 29.4% in the squat. Lower gluteus maximus was 86.8% against 45.4%. Biceps femoris was 40.8% against 14.9%. Quadriceps activity, measured at the vastus lateralis, was statistically similar between the two.

The authors were careful about what this meant. Their own conclusion states that longitudinal training studies were needed to determine whether the enhanced activation correlates with increased strength, hypertrophy and performance. The activation numbers were nonetheless widely repeated as a ranking of exercises by how much muscle they build.

The trial that tested it

The 2023 study in Frontiers in Physiology took untrained college-aged participants and randomised them into a hip thrust group of 18 and a back squat group of 16. Both groups trained for nine weeks with set volume equated, across 15 to 17 supervised sessions. Gluteal and leg muscle cross-sectional area was measured by MRI before and after, and strength was tested by three-repetition maximum.

The trial could not separate the two for gluteal growth. Estimates modestly favoured the hip thrust at the lower, mid and upper gluteal sites, but every one of those confidence intervals crossed zero and the authors describe appreciable variance. That is a failure to detect a difference rather than a demonstration that none exists; the study was not designed as an equivalence trial, and with 18 and 16 participants it would only have caught a fairly large effect.

The other outcomes split along predictable lines. Squat training produced greater growth in the quadriceps and adductors. Squat three-rep max improved more in the squat group and hip thrust three-rep max improved more in the hip thrust group, which is what specificity predicts. Deadlift strength and an isometric wall push improved similarly in both.

Three limits belong with the result. The participants were untrained, and untrained people tend to grow from most things, so this says little about someone with years of training behind them. Nine weeks is a short window for hypertrophy differences to emerge. And Bret Contreras, who popularised the hip thrust and runs a company selling hip thrust equipment, is a co-author. That is worth knowing, though it cuts against the usual concern here: the finding does not favour his exercise.

Activation and growth in the same trial

The Auburn study measured both kinds of evidence in the same participants. All measured gluteal sites showed greater mean EMG amplitudes during the first hip thrust session than the squat session, reproducing the 2015 pattern. Those activation differences did not consistently predict the gluteal growth outcomes that followed.

EMG measures electrical activity during a set. Hypertrophy accumulates over weeks of loading. This trial is one instance of the two not lining up, in untrained participants over nine weeks, which is a reason for caution about activation rankings rather than a general law about them.

So what should you actually do

The answer this trial supports is narrow. Over nine weeks in untrained people, squatting and hip thrusting both produced gluteal growth, and the study could not tell them apart. Squatting also grew the quadriceps and adductors. Strength went up in whichever lift was trained.

That is the whole finding. It does not rank every glute exercise, it does not establish an optimal programme, and it says nothing about trained lifters. If you prefer one of the two lifts for reasons of your own, this evidence gives you no reason to switch.

For the smaller hip muscles the picture is different, and neither group in this trial grew them much. That is covered in the piece on the gluteus medius, where the relevant evidence is acute and modelled rather than longitudinal.

References

1. Contreras B, Vigotsky AD, Schoenfeld BJ, Beardsley C, Cronin J. A Comparison of Gluteus Maximus, Biceps Femoris, and Vastus Lateralis Electromyographic Activity in the Back Squat and Barbell Hip Thrust Exercises. Journal of Applied Biomechanics. 2015;31(6):452–458. doi:10.1123/jab.2014-0301.
2. Plotkin DL, Rodas MA, Vigotsky AD, et al. Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift. Frontiers in Physiology. 2023;14:1279170. doi:10.3389/fphys.2023.1279170. Free full text.