Glute bridge: the floor version, the harder ones and where it fits

A glute bridge is a hip extension done lying on your back: knees bent, feet on the floor, shoulders down, and your hips driven up until your body is a straight line from your shoulders to your knees. It needs no equipment, which is why it's the first hinge in the bodyweight workout, and it gets harder in small steps, which is why it lasts.

This page covers the setup, where your feet go, what the bridge trains, the single-leg, march, hold, weighted and machine versions, how it compares with the hip thrust, and how many sets to do. The hip thrust itself, with your upper back on a bench, is on its own page.

How to do a glute bridge

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent, your feet flat about hip-width apart and your arms on the floor beside you.
2. Set your feet close enough that your knees will be bent to about a right angle when your hips are up. More on why below.
3. Brace your midsection and keep your chin slightly tucked.
4. Push through your heels and raise your hips until your body is straight from shoulders to knees. Your ribs stay down; the hips do the lifting.
5. Pause for a second at the top, then lower under control until your hips almost touch the floor. That's one rep.

The top of the rep is a straight line, not an arch. If your lower back keeps rising after your hips stop, you've gone past the end of the movement; finish with your ribs down and your back in a neutral position.

Where your feet go

Foot distance decides how much of the rep goes to the glutes and how much to the hamstrings, and here the research is unusually consistent:

• Knees bent to about a right angle or more. In 25 physically active men, bridges with the knees bent to 90 or 120 degrees favored the glutes. With the knees at 40 degrees, feet far from the hips, the hamstrings worked harder.¹
• The same on one leg. In 28 healthy men and women aged 18 to 30, bending the working knee to 135 degrees instead of 90 during a single-leg bridge cut hamstring activity from about 75% to 23% of a maximal contraction, while glute activity stayed similarly high.² The authors note that the standard position had caused reports of hamstring cramping.

So if your hamstrings cramp or take over, walk your feet a little closer to your hips. If you feel it mostly in the front of your thighs, move them a little farther away. "Squeeze your glutes" is a common cue, but it isn't a way to switch the hamstrings off: in a trial of 30 young women, spoken and hands-on cues doubled glute activity during a bridge, from 16.8% to 33.0% of a maximal contraction, and raised hamstring activity almost as much.³ Foot position does more than the cue.

What the glute bridge trains

Mainly the glutes, with the hamstrings helping. How hard it works them depends on the version:

• The floor bridge is light. A 2019 review of 39 studies of body-weight hip extension exercises sorted them by the direction of the push. The group that includes the bridge averaged 32.8% of a maximal glute contraction, and its highest was the single-leg bridge, at 54.2%.⁴
• Light enough to need more. In 30 healthy adults (19 men and 11 women), the bridge and the single-leg bridge both stayed under 45% of a maximal contraction. The authors suggest exercises at that level may suit endurance more than strength.⁵
• Raising the feet adds a little. In 20 healthy men, a bridge with the feet raised produced more glute activity than a standard bridge, and a hip thrust more than either.⁶

Activity is measured during a set; it isn't growth over weeks. Read together, these say the body-weight bridge is a good first version and a weak long-term one: to keep it doing work, add a leg's worth of difficulty or some weight. The versions below do that in order.

Single-leg, march, hold, weighted and the machine

The hold. In 25 young men holding a bridge for 30 seconds, glute activity rose over the first 8 to 10 seconds and stayed up for the rest of the hold.⁷ So if you hold, hold for at least 10 seconds; a hold is still one set, not a substitute for the reps.

Pulses are small reps near the top, hips never coming down. They're a partial range of motion, and a 2021 meta-analysis of 16 studies found full-range training built more strength and more lower-body muscle than partial reps.⁸ Use them, if at all, at the end of a set of full reps.

The march turned up in no study in a PubMed search for this page. It's a practical bridge between two legs and one: if your hips tilt as a foot lifts, stay with it until they don't.

Glute bridge vs hip thrust

Put your upper back on a bench and the same hip drive becomes the hip thrust, with a longer range at the top. The two small studies that compared them point in opposite directions:

• In 10 men, the barbell glute bridge produced more glute activity than the barbell hip thrust, and the hip thrust more front-of-thigh activity.⁹
• In 20 healthy men, the hip thrust produced more glute activity than a standard bridge.⁶

Both measured a single session; neither trained anyone over weeks. So choose by equipment and range: the bridge when there's no bench or while you're learning, the hip thrust when you want the longer range and room to add weight. At home, a single-leg hip thrust with your shoulders on the couch is the step after the single-leg bridge.

Does the glute bridge build muscle?

Probably, if the sets are hard enough, but it hasn't been tested directly. A 2025 review of 12 studies of glute growth included no trial of the bridge. Its conclusion was broad: many exercises, single-joint or multi-joint, alone or combined, can grow the glutes.¹⁰ And higher glute activity during a set didn't consistently predict glute growth in a nine-week trial of 34 untrained young men and women.¹¹ So pick the version you can make hard and progress, rather than the one with the highest activity reading.

How many sets and reps, and where it goes

• Two or three sets of 8 to 20 with body weight, or 8 to 15 with a dumbbell or a bar, stopping with a rep or two in reserve. (How to judge reps left.) The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand advises at least two sets per exercise.¹²
• Move up a version when you can do 20 clean reps: two legs, then the march, then one leg, then a weight across the hips.
• After the squat or the hinge on a leg day, or as the hinge in a home session.
• Count your glute sets across the week. The same stand found muscle growth was enhanced by ten or more sets per muscle group a week,¹² and squats, lunges and Romanian deadlifts count toward that total too.

Common mistakes

• Overshooting the top. Past a straight line, the extra height comes from your back, not your hips. Stop at the line, ribs down.
• Feet too far away. The hamstrings take over or cramp. Walk them closer.
• Weight on your toes. Drive through your heels instead.
• Rushing the bottom. Lower under control and start each rep from a still position.
• Staying on the floor bridge forever. Once 20 reps are easy, it's time for the next version.
• Pushing through pain. Sharp pain is not soreness. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

The bridge is easy to learn; knowing which version your week needs, and when to move on to the next one, is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: find the version where 15 reps is hard, and do three sets of it at your next session.