Muscles worked
Your gluteus maximus does most of the work as you lift your hips. Your hamstrings help, and more so the further your feet are from your backside. Your abs and deep trunk muscles keep your back still, so the movement happens at the hips rather than in your lower back. With your shoulders staying on the floor, the range of motion is shorter than in a hip thrust against a bench. Without extra weight it works well as a warm-up or for learning to use your glutes.
Common mistakes
- Cramping hamstrings. Your feet are often too far away. Bring your heels closer to your backside and think about driving your hips up with your glutes.
- Knees falling in or out. Keep your knees pointing the same way as your toes throughout. A band just above your knees helps you feel when they drift.
- Staying at the same level. The bodyweight glute bridge soon gets easy, and once you can do 30 reps without much effort, more reps give you less and less. Make it harder instead, with a pause at the top, on one leg or with added weight.
Variations and alternatives
- The banded glute bridge adds a band around your knees and gives the side of your hip more work.
- The marching glute bridge makes it harder to keep your pelvis still, as you lift one foot at a time at the top.
- The single leg elevated glute bridge is the next step when regular bridges get too easy.
- The barbell hip thrust is the gym option when you want to go heavy.
Sets and reps
Without weight, the glute bridge needs more reps to become hard work. Two to three sets of 15 to 25 reps is a good starting point, or fewer reps with a two to three second pause at the top. As a warm-up before squats or deadlifts, one or two light sets of 10 to 15 are enough. End the set when you can no longer lift all the way up with your glutes. The guide to sets and reps has more on this.
To keep progressing, the exercise has to get tougher over time, the core of progressive overload. Add reps first, then a longer pause at the top, then harder variations such as one leg at a time. When even that gets easy, rest a dumbbell or a weight plate across your hips.