Glute workout: a gym session, a home version and how often

The glutes extend the hip. They drive you up out of a squat, pull you upright from a hinge and push your hips forward at the top of a hip thrust. A glute workout trains that one job from three directions: against a load across the hips, in a hinge, and on one leg at a time.

This page is the session built for the glutes: a gym version, a home version with dumbbells or bands, what the training studies say, and how often to run it. If you'd rather tilt a normal leg day toward the glutes, the leg day shows the swaps. Each exercise below has its own page for the technique.

The three jobs a glute workout covers

1. The hip drive, hardest at the top. The hip thrust and the glute bridge load the hips at the point where a squat gets easy. In 13 trained women lifting an estimated 10-rep max, the barbell hip thrust produced more than twice the average upper-glute activity of the back squat, 69.5% against 29.4%.¹
2. The hinge, hardest at the bottom. The Romanian deadlift loads the glutes and hamstrings with the hips pushed back and the muscles on stretch.
3. One leg at a time. The Bulgarian split squat and step-ups load each side alone. Single-leg work can also ask more of the side glute, the gluteus medius: in 15 training-experienced men, the single-leg deadlift worked it harder than the conventional deadlift.²

Activity is measured during a set; it isn't growth over weeks. A 2020 review of 16 studies put all three kinds, hip thrusts, conventional and hex-bar deadlifts, split squats, lunges and step-ups, among the exercises with very high glute activity.³ Which of them grow the glutes is a separate question, and only a handful of trials have measured it.

What the training studies say

The trials are few and small, so here they are with the people who were in them:

• Hip thrust or squat, similar growth in beginners. In a nine-week trial, 34 untrained young men and women trained with either back squats or hip thrusts. Glute growth, measured by MRI, was similar in both groups.⁴
• The squat ahead in trained women. In a 12-week trial of 22 well-trained women, glute thickness rose 9.4% in the squat group and 3.7% in the hip thrust group.⁵ A 2025 review notes that the hip thrust in that trial was done through a partial range of motion.⁶
• Depth matters on the squat. In a ten-week trial, 17 men trained twice a week with full or half squats. Glute volume rose 6.7% with full squats and 2.2% with half squats.⁷
• Vertical or horizontal, similar. In a six-week trial, 19 resistance-trained adults followed a program of back squats, barbell step-ups and box jumps, or one of hip thrusts, reverse hyperextensions and long jumps. Glute thickness rose similarly in both groups.^8,6
• Machines and bands can work. The 2025 review of 12 studies found that the leg press grew the glutes in one of the two trials that tested it, and that a kneeling hip extension with bands grew them in another, a six-week trial of 46 people.⁶

The review's conclusion is broad: a variety of exercises, single-joint or multi-joint, alone or combined, can grow the glutes. When the glutes matter more than the other leg muscles, it suggests prioritizing a single exercise such as the hip thrust.⁶ So no one exercise is required. A session that covers the three jobs and pushes each set close to failure is the one to run; take each lift as deep as you can control.

The gym glute workout

Five exercises, in this order, about an hour with warm-up sets:

Stop each set with a rep or two still in you, two or three on the first two lifts (how to judge reps left). The heavier, more technical lifts go first, while you're fresh. No room to set up a barbell? A hip thrust machine fills the first slot, and the leg press can stand in for the split squat on a busy day.

If this is your only lower-body day, swap the step-up for a deep back squat, three sets of 6 to 10, so the front of the thighs gets trained as well.

The home version: dumbbells or bands

One or two dumbbells, a long resistance band, and a couch or a sturdy chair:

No weights at all? Start with body-weight glute bridges and reverse lunges, and move to the single-leg versions as twenty reps get easy; the glute bridge page has the ladder. A band can work for the hip drive: the 2020 review lists the band hip thrust among the exercises with very high glute activity.³ Anchor the band to something that won't move, and see the resistance band workout for the rest of the body.

Lighter loads can build muscle too. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand found that in healthy adults muscle growth didn't depend on the load, from 30% of a one-rep max to the heaviest.⁹ A sensible rule is to keep each set hard; at home, more reps, slower lowering and the single-leg versions do the job a heavier bar would.

Sets, reps and how often to train glutes

• Two or three sets per exercise. The ACSM's 2026 stand, which covers healthy adults, advises at least two sets per exercise.⁹
• Ten or more hard sets a week for the glutes. The same stand found muscle growth was enhanced by ten or more sets per muscle group a week.⁹ The gym session above is 13 sets on its own, counting a set on each leg as one.
• Once or twice a week, however the sets fall. The stand found that training frequency, from one day a week to more than five, didn't change muscle growth when total volume was matched.⁹ Run the whole session once a week beside a normal leg day, or split it across two lower-body days.
• Count the rest of the week. Squats, lunges and deadlifts on leg day train the glutes too, so two full glute sessions on top of two leg days is a lot of hip work.
• Space the hard days. Put a day between the glute session and a heavy leg day where you can.

When the top of a rep range comes easy with reps to spare, add a little weight or move to a harder version. (Progressive overload covers how much.)

Glute workout for women and for men

The session is the same for both: in a 2025 review of 29 studies that put healthy men and women aged 18 to 45 on the same program, relative muscle growth was similar between the sexes.¹⁰

Common mistakes

• Only hip thrusts. Cover the hinge and one leg too; the trials above grew the glutes with several kinds of exercise.
• Half reps. In the depth trial, full squats grew the glutes about three times as much as half squats. Squat depth is the one range comparison here; take each lift as deep as you can control.
• Arching your back to finish a hip thrust. Stop when your body is flat from shoulders to knees, ribs down.
• Chasing the feeling instead of the log. Feeling the glutes work can help (the mind-muscle connection covers when), but the measure is more reps or more weight over the weeks.
• Starting single-leg sets on the strong side. Start with the weaker side 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.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Five exercises are the easy part; fitting a glute session around a leg day and the rest of your week without doubling up on the same muscles 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: pick the gym table or the home one, and run it once a week beside your leg day.