we tested 17 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 but 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 performs well out of all the exercises we tested it led to the highest activation 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 thrusters 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 casim who has run several of these experiments in the past 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 sensor is stuck to our booties each of us needed a smooth hairless butt fortunately only one of us needed some work done stop clench 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 that it will read so a 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 MVC or maximum voluntary contractions yes yes believe 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 I'm tired of this 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 basing 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 trap before it 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 glue's 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 prices we tested varied in difficulty Raza a beginner had had a hard time doing the more complex variations such as Bulgarian split squats and front foot elevated reverse lunges 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 maybe the glutes quite well and if you remember from our last back video deadlifts also
performed very well at activating the whole back making it a great choice to work the whole back side of your body at once now one thing I did find really interesting was how similar the results were between us males and Tony 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 butt lift well this part of the glutes primarily helps with the motion called adduction 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 angle version did lead to better activation of the upper glutes as well as the glue radius next abduction movements these are
exercises that directly train the function of the upper inside 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 media significantly more than the lower glutes but we also tested a unique type of lunch I learned from coach casim 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 turn the toe in slightly and then we took a step
directly back and slightly to the side behind the body this puts the upper Loop fabrics 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 performed 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 taking 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
