Glute bridges are a proven way to build stronger hips, protect your low back and even make your hamstrings more resilient. Here's how to lock-in your form. By Kelan Ern Updated: 07/26/26
Glute bridges have been in my "exercise arsenal" for a LONG time.
If you were a fly on the wall in one of my private coaching sessions or even my personal workouts, chances are you'd see a bridge variation during the routine. It's a sure-fire way to restore hip mobility, activate dormant butt muscles and learn how to move from your hips - not your back.
Some people do them for relieving low back pain. Some for increasing hip mobility. Others to build the booty.
Whatever your motive - there's a place for this exercise in most workout programs.
Even if you can squat, lunge or deadlift hundreds of pounds, there's immense value in returning to this fundamental movement. And after personally teaching this exercise to hundreds of people over the last 16+ years, I'm still learning nuances with this exercise.
I’ll show you what most 80% people miss.
What Is a Glute Bridge?
Glute bridges are a hip strengthening exercise where you lay on your back with your knees bent and lift your hips off the ground. It works the glutes, hamstrings and core muscles.
Many people have been introduced to this exercise in rehab, group exercise class, or personal training sessions. It's a crucial movement pattern to master for hip-dominant exercises such as deadlifts or RDLs.
There are many benefits of glute bridges but here are some of the biggest reasons to include them in your workouts.
4 Reasons to Do Glute Bridges
Glute Activation: When you do glute bridges correctly, you “turn-on” the glute muscles (butt muscles). These are weak for most people and in some cases, shut-down. Bridges provide a way to reactivate and reintroduce you to these important muscles.
Supports Walking and Running: One job of the glutes is to extend the hip. Think: when your leg travels backwards during walking or running. The glutes are a primary hip extensor. That's their main job when they functioning properly. If not, other muscles have to take up the slack.
Hamstring Health: The hamstrings are leg muscles that run on the back of your thighs… right below the glutes. When you go to touch your toes (or attempt to), this is where most people feel a stretch.
Here's what to know about hamstrings:
They are secondary hip extensors. So the hamstrings commonly try to take over if the glutes aren’t doing their job. But they aren't designed to replace the glutes so they will often get overused (and sometimes strained).
Strength coach Mike Boyle once shared a case study where a NFL football player struggled with hamstring pulls. When Boyle tested him on glute bridges, he noticed his hamstrings were strong and if anything overdeveloped. But his glutes wouldn't activate and sagged like a grandmother's arm.
Lower Back Health: When the glutes aren’t functioning properly, the low back is another part of the body that tries to “help”. Take walking for example. If you can’t extend your leg backward often your pelvis will tilt and your lower back will arch to complete this motion.
Another example is picking up a heavy object on the ground. If you can’t bend from the hips to grab the object, you’ll tend to round the back and that’s where bad things happen to the spine. Both are reasons to give your glutes TLC.
How to Do Glute Bridges Correctly
Starting Position: Start lying on your back with your arms at your side and your knees bent.
Execution: Drive your feet into the ground to raise your body off the ground. Squeeze the butt muscles and pause for one second. Then lower your body back to the ground. Do 10-15 repetitions.
5 Glute Bridge Mistakes
While glute bridges are extremely common and relatively simple, these are the five biggest mistakes I see when people do them.
Mistake #1: Lifting Heels
This heel raise will make the exercise more calf and quad-dominant (thigh muscles). Our goal: work your glutes, not your quads. Drive through the whole foot - including the heels.
Mistake #2: Lifting Toes Back in my early days of personal training, whenever someone had a tendency to drive through their toes, I’d tell them, “Lift your toes and drive through your heels.” This solved the problem but it limited the benefit of the exercise. Grip the ground with your toes and drive through the whole foot. Not just the heels.
Mistake #3: Arching the Back Many people arch the lower back instead of moving from the hips. Think about it like peeling your low back off the ground, one vertebra at a time. If your entire spine is coming up at once, you are probably arching. In a moment, I'll show you a bridge variation that eliminates this altogether.
Mistake #4: Knees Drifting Out
This is where the person will drive their knees out as they lift their hips, which will recruit extra hip muscles (not in a good way). This is not a clamshell. Keep the knees stable. If you are struggling with this, hold a small pillow or ball between the knees.
Mistake #5: Tensing Shoulders Some people will unintentionally shrug their shoulders, tense their shoulders or brace their back muscles when they bridge. This unnecessary tension takes away from your hip muscles. Relax your shoulders, neck and upper back muscles. Let your hips do all the work.
What If I Can’t Activate My Glutes?
Years ago, I was working with a colleague who couldn’t get her glutes to fire.
Whenever she tried bridges, her hamstring cramped or her quads burned. I pulled out all the stops at the time: having her lift her toes… put her hand on the muscle (which can drive more muscle awareness) … putting bands around her knees and other tricks in a desperate attempt to awaken those muscles. And even still, those hardly helped.
There are many reasons someone can struggle to activate their glutes – including:
Postural alignment
Hamstring dominance
Quad dominance
Glute activation problems are a bigger topic, but here are a few strategies to get your butt-in-gear again:
Wide Stance Glute Bridge
Sometimes simply bringing the feet a little wider and turning the toes slightly can put the hips in a more advantageous position to wake up those stubborn glutes.
Cook Hip Lift
This genius exercise was created by physical therapist Gray Cook, and it’s where you set-up like a regular glute bridge except hug one foot towards the chest. In this position, raise your hips by driving through the bottom foot. If you’re like most people, you’ll hardly get off the ground at first. This exercise forces you to move from the hips, not the low back.
Foam Roller Glute Bridge
Lay on your back with the back of one knee on the foam roller, the other leg is on the ground. From this position lift your hips by lifting your hips and foot off the ground at the same time. If this is still challenging, you can do one side at a time.
Four Glute Bridge Variations
Let's say your glutes are firing like a champ.
Here are four bridge variations to spice things up while also increasing demands on your glutes and your core stability.
Reaching Glute Bridges
Hold your arms towards the ceiling while doing glute bridges. This removes the stability from regular bridges and activates more core and some often-weak shoulder muscles (serratus anterior).
Glute Bridge with Single Leg Extension
Raise the hips like in a regular glute bridge and then extend one leg in line with your body. Then return. Then extend the other leg. Don’t let your hips drop or rotate. This will challenge not only your glute strength but your core stability at resisting rotation.
Fun fact: One study found that marathon runners could hold this exercise for 20 seconds or mor) had 49-64% lower injury risk, compared to those who could only only held it for 9 seconds or less.
Single Leg Glute Bridge
With this exercise, you hold one leg up while bridging. This puts the full force of the exercise on the one leg. Remember: Don’t arch form the low back. This is typically a harder variation to do with proper form.
Hip Thruster
This is one of my favorite hip strengthening exercises that takes glute bridges to the next level. Use a bench, box or sturdy object to support your upper body and then perform a glute bridge – squeezing the glutes at the top. This extra range of motion recruits the glutes in a big way.
When Should You Do Glute Bridges In Your Workout?
For a beginner, glute bridges can be part of a strength workout.
Or it can be part of a daily mobility routine. No equipment or gym needed. Just find a comfortable spot on the floor (ideally not hard wood or concrete) and knock out 15 reps. Heck, some people do them in bed even.
When I create a workout program for a new coaching client, glute bridges are usually always included in the warm-up. This helps improve hip mobility and activate the glutes so they use those muscles during the rest of the workout. It also builds awareness of how to move from the hips - instead of the low back.
Bridges might look boring.
But few exercises help reset the hips the same way. It's one of the tried-and-true ways to make sure your glutes keep doing their job - and that your body stays in balance.
Kelan Ern Elite Fitness Coaching
P.S. Glutes bridges are a foundational exercise for building stronger hips but there are dozens of other tools and strategies to help you go further, faster on your fitness journey. Each week I share these fitness tips with my 'mind-body community' and share insights from the fittest people on the planet inside the Mind-Body Breakthroughs newsletter.
