Glute kickback: cable, machine or at home, and what the studies found

A glute kickback is a hip extension done one leg at a time: you lean on something steady and drive one leg straight back behind you, against a cable, a machine pad, a band or just the leg's own weight. The glutes and the hamstrings both extend the hip, so both work; the studies below measured each. Because the rest of your body stays still, it adds glute work without a barbell.

It's the last exercise in the glute workout, after the heavier lifts. This page covers the cable setup, the machine, band and floor versions, what the studies found the kickback trains, what training with it grew, the faults, and the sets.

How to do a cable glute kickback

1. Set the cable at its lowest point and strap the ankle cuff around one ankle.
2. Face the machine and hold the frame with both hands. Step back until the cable is a little tight, and stand on the other leg with a soft knee.
3. Lean forward a little from the hips, with your back flat and your hips square to the machine.
4. Drive the leg back from the hip, knee straight or slightly bent, until your leg lines up with your body. Squeeze the glute at the top for a moment.
5. Lower it slowly, about two seconds, until the foot is just in front of the standing one, then go again. Finish all the reps on one side before you switch.

Your back stays where it started. If your lower back arches to get the leg higher, the leg has gone past the point your hip can reach, so stop short of that.

Cable, machine, band or body weight

• The kickback machine. You stand with the front of your hips against a pad and push a lever back with one leg. In the study below that tested it, the start was a 90-degree bend at the hip, the knee almost straight, and the rep ended with the leg in line with the body.¹
• The cable, as in the steps above. A one-leg cable hip extension was the exercise in the ten-week trial below.
• A band, kneeling. On hands and knees, a long band looped around the working foot and held under your hands, push the foot back and up until the thigh is level with your body. It's the home version in the glute workout.
• Body weight, on all fours. Knee bent at 90 degrees, lift the thigh until it's level with your back: the move people call a donkey kick. An ankle weight makes it harder.

What the kickback trains

• The glutes, about as much as a one-leg leg press. In 15 resistance-trained men lifting their six-rep-max loads, glute activity in a machine kickback showed no significant difference from a one-leg leg press.¹
• More hamstring than a leg press. In the same 15 men, activity in the biceps femoris, one of the hamstrings, was 76% higher in the kickback.¹ In 15 trained women lifting 75% of an estimated max, two parts of that muscle were more active in a kickback than in a Romanian deadlift, a step-up or a hip extension exercise; glute activity was lowest in the leg curl, not the kickback.²
• The glutes more than the muscle at the front of the hip. In 20 healthy people, hip extensions on all fours, with the knee bent and with it straightening, worked both glutes significantly more than the tensor fascia latae, a small muscle at the front and side of the hip.³

Activity is measured during a set; it isn't growth over weeks. The authors of the leg press comparison suggest a kickback may add little for the glutes when the program already has a leg press, and more for the hamstrings.¹ That's a reading of one session of muscle activity, which is why the next section matters more.

What training with it grew

• Ten weeks of cable hip extensions. In 17 young adults, each trained one leg with a cable hip extension and the other with a cable hip abduction, twice a week, about ten sets a week of 8 to 12 reps. On MRI, the leg that did hip extensions grew the gluteus maximus by 9%, against 5% for the abduction leg, with the most growth in the lower part of the muscle, 14%. Its hip-extension max rose 40%, against 23% for the other leg.⁴
• A band version, six weeks. A 2025 review of 12 studies counts a six-week trial of 46 trained people in which a kneeling hip extension with bands, the banded kickback, thickened the upper glute on ultrasound, with or without blood flow restriction.⁵

The same review's conclusion is that a variety of exercises, single-joint or multi-joint, alone or combined, can grow the glutes.⁵ No trial comparing kickbacks with hip thrusts or squats on measured glute size turned up in a PubMed search for this page. So the kickback isn't a replacement for the hip thrust or a deep squat; it's a way to add glute sets, one side at a time, after them. The trial above also shows its other side: training the side of the hip is a different exercise, on the hip abduction machine.

The common faults, and a fix for each

• Arching the lower back at the top. Stop when the leg lines up with your body. A lighter weight lets you stop there.
• Swinging. If the weight stack bangs or the leg flies back, it's momentum. Lower in two seconds and pause at the top.
• Turning the hips open. Keep both hip bones facing the machine or the floor; rotating out lets the leg travel further without the hip doing more.
• Bending the standing knee more on each rep. Set it soft and keep it there.
• Starting on the strong side. Start with the weaker leg and match its reps on the other. (Unilateral exercises explains why.)
• Training through something that hurts. Sore muscles the next day are normal; anything sharp or lasting isn't. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

Sets, reps and where it goes

• Two or three sets of 10 to 15 each leg, stopping with a rep or two left. (How to judge reps left.) The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand, which covers healthy adults, advises at least two sets per exercise.⁶
• After the main lifts, as the last exercise of a glute or leg session, when a hip thrust, a squat or a hinge has already come first.
• At home, the band or body-weight version, two or three sets of 15 to 20 each leg, slower on the way down.
• Progress by adding reps to the top of the range, then a little weight or a stronger band. (Progressive overload covers the options.)

If you'd rather not plan it alone

A kickback is easy to learn; deciding how much glute work your week needs on top of squats, hinges and hip thrusts 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: at the end of your next leg or glute session, do two sets of 12 cable kickbacks on each leg, weaker side first, and write down the weight.