Bodyweight Hip Thrust

The Bodyweight Hip Thrust increases the range of motion that your glutes work through relative to the Bodyweight Glute Bridge.

For more glute exercises and demonstrations, visit the exercise library.

• Begin by placing your back onto a bench, hip thruster, or stable, padded surface. Some prefer to perform the hip thrust with the bench just beneath their shoulder blades while others like the bench to be closer to their mid-back. This is one of those individual things that you will need to figure out for yourself.
• Like the glute bridge or feet-elevated variation, you will need to tinker around with your foot width and distance to find a place where you feel the biggest tension in your glutes at the top of the thrust.
• Your optimal stance could place your feet:
  • Foot Width Options;
    • Shoulder-width apart.
    • Wider than your hips.
    • Narrowly, potentially with your feet touching.
  • Foot Distance Options:
    • Close to your body (<90 degrees).
    • Further from your butt (>90 degrees).
    • Goldilocks zone (somewhere around 90 degrees from you).
• Weight placement-wise, some opt to push into their heels with their toes lifted while others drive through a flat foot.
• Make this move your own by experimenting with different stances. Usually, further stances will leave you feeling the hip thrust in the back of your legs (hamstrings) while closer stances will place more of an emphasis on your thighs (quads).
• Posteriorly tilt your pelvis or draw your ribs closer to your hips by performing a mini "crunch".
• Pull air down into your stomach through your nose. You may feel your pelvic floor drop as your diaphragm fills.
• Next, there will be two options for performing the hip extension portion of your hip thrust:
  • 1. Squeeze your glutes and keep your chest pointed forward, with your head and ribs remaining in about the same position at the top of your rep.
  • 2. Squeeze your glutes and let your eyes and chest move up naturally towards the ceiling, keeping your neck in a more neutral position at the top of the rep.
  • Give both variations a try along with your foot positions to see which you feel your glutes working harder.
• Use your glutes to lower you back down to your starting position to complete the rep as you inhale.
  
• Draw your next breath and squeeze your glutes hard before beginning another rep.

Progression - If this exercise is easy, you can add a challenge to it by performing a single leg hip thrust or by adding a barbell, or band, or by performing a 1.5 rep bodyweight hip thrust.