Over the past decade, glute training has risen in popularity. What was once reserved for athletes, and floor-based exercise classes, has since become an industry-changing phenomenon. 

Glute training has become a staple for the average exercise enthusiast. However, many forget the humble beginnings of the glute bridge.

The glute bridge is an isometric exercise that primarily targets the glutes while engaging the quadriceps, lower back, and hamstrings. From the outside, this looks like your average exercise. But don’t let its simple appearance fool you. It can be the key to increasing strength, and muscle mass, and improving performance.

In this article, we will discuss glute bridge benefits. We explore why you should consider adding it to your training, and expert tips to help make every rep count.

8 Glute Bridge Benefits

The benefits below are some of the main ones to expect when performing the glute bridge. From building mass and strength to improving function and performance.

Improves Strength

The glute bridge is an effective exercise for developing lower body strength. During the exercise the glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps isometrically contract to hold us in position. This is where the muscles contract, but do not change in length.

Supplementing your hypertrophy workouts with isometric exercises has been shown to increase maximal voluntary strength. This is an effective means of training as the glute bridge can effortlessly be programmed into your hypertrophy workout. 

Our glutes are a powerful muscle group that controls the hip hinge and are active in all lower-body exercises. Therefore, we can enhance our strength by adding the glute bridge to the beginning of our workout.

Consider including it into the leg and back days of your 3-day workout split. This will provide you with more opportunities to improve strength, enhancing results.

Increases Muscle Mass

The glute bridge can be used to increase glute muscle mass. Increasing muscle mass requires progressive overloading of muscle tissue. This can be done by increasing resistance, sets, duration, and intensity over time. 

When performing the glute bridge we can overload the glutes by increasing sets and hold duration. Resistance in the form of bands, dumbbells, and kettlebells can also be placed on our hips for further overloading. 

Our glutes are one of the largest muscle groups in the body capable of considerable strength and power. The glute bridge is also an excellent exercise to begin your glute training. From here we can graduate to heavier variations such as the barbell hip thrust and single-leg hip thrust. 

Boosts Performance

When it comes to boosting athletic performance, we typically look toward compound and isolation exercises to get the job done. This is because they are incredible for targeting multiple muscle groups, increasing load, intensity, and volume. 

While compound movements are more exciting and dynamic, and replicate functional movement patterns, they can lead to soreness and fatigue. Meanwhile, the less flashy isometric exercises offer a more gentle approach. 

They have also been shown to be beneficial for sports that require isometric contracts such as rugby scrums. Furthermore, they can be beneficial for sports with dynamic performances such as jumping, running, kicking, and striking. 

This may be because sustained contractions of isometric exercises increase strength, hypertrophy, and musculotendinous joint stiffness. This is where the muscle and tendon join. Furthermore, this can be done without the risk of injury that comes with dynamic movements.

By adding the glute bridge before your warm-up, you can improve glute, quadriceps, and hamstring musculotendinous junction stiffness. This helps increase explosivity and performance without the risk of injury.

We recommend adding the glute bridge to your warm-up, and your static stretches to your alongside these cool-down exercises. This will improve performance, and improve your recovery. 

Enhances Physique

Enhancing our physique requires an alteration of body composition. For this to happen, we need to increase lean muscle mass, while reducing body fat to reveal muscular definition. To achieve this, we can use a variety of compound and isolation exercises to create overload, while increasing volume, and intensity.

Glute bridges are a compound exercise that can help us develop lean muscle. It uses multiple muscle groups, allowing us to increase and apply significant load to promote growth.

Moreover, it targets many of the lower body’s biggest muscle groups such as the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and erector spinae. By increasing muscle mass in these areas, we can alter our body composition, enhancing our physique. 

Reduces Lower Back Pain

Lower back pain is one of the most common functional diseases due to our modern sedentary lifestyle. It is estimated that 80% of the population has experienced an episode of lower back pain. Plus, this occurrence increases as we age.

When we assume the seated position our glute muscles are inactive, while our pelvis is tilted forward. This position lengthens the glutes and lower back muscles. This regular inactivity can lead to weakness and pain.

The gluteus maximus’ principle function is to extend the hip or leg behind the body, and externally rotate the leg. The erector spinae muscles’ main function is to stabilize and extend the spine and maintain posture. When our feet are planted, the hip extension works alongside our lower back muscles to lift our torso upright.

Together they both work to sustain posture. However, when there is weakness or poor glute mechanics, it can place additional pressure on the lower back.

Glute and lower back strengthening exercises can be used to reduce lower back pain severity. Adding the glute bridge to your training is a safe and effective way to reduce lower back pain. 

Being an isometric exercise, it allows us to load the glutes and lower back without significant resistance. The sustained position also reduces the risk of further injury that may come from more dynamic movement. 

We recommend adding the glute bridge to your exercise rehabilitation routine, or warm-up. This will help you reduce lower back pain, and improve stability for your workout.

Enhances Glute Mind-Muscle Connection

The way we think about movements and muscle contractions plays a major role in developing lean muscle mass and strength. This is known as attentional focus, which refers to what we think about when performing our lifts.

There are two types of attentional focus — external and internal. External focus is often used for large compound lifts and performance-based movements. For example, when we squat, we may be cued to drive the floor away from our body. This has been shown to boost performance, creating greater force production with a decrease in muscle activity.

Meanwhile, internal focus refers to cues where we focus on engaging target muscles. For example, squeezing your glutes is a common cue used during a hip thrust. By internally focusing on the target muscle we can improve muscle activation and strengthen our mind-muscle connection, enhancing our results.

The glute bridge is the perfect exercise for using internal focus and developing our glute mind-muscle connection. As we lift our hips and begin our hold, we have ample time to internally focus on engaging our glutes.

We recommend adding the glute bridge to your warm-up. This will ensure your glutes are engaged for your workout, leading to greater muscle activation, and better results.

Increases Tendon Health

The glute bridge can improve tendon and joint health. As mentioned, isometric exercises such as the glute bridge are excellent for increasing tendon stiffness. This is important as it directly affects our muscle’s ability to generate force.

During the glute bridge, our glutes, erector spinae, quadriceps, and hamstring undergo an isometric contraction. This increases tendon stiffness, which has been shown to improve tendon structure and function.

As mentioned, this is beneficial for performance, allowing increased explosivity and performance.  

Can Be Performed Anywhere

One of the best things about the glute bridge is that it can be performed anywhere. Typically, the lack of equipment or resistance is often seen as a negative. However, this means we can improve glute strength, mind-muscle connection, and tendon stiffness just about anywhere.

If you are away from the gym, or on a holiday, you can still maintain your glute strength, until your next workout. Furthermore, it is a great addition to your home workout. This will allow you to increase glute training volume and stimulus which can help increase muscle growth. 

Tips For Doing Glute Bridges

• When performing the glute bridge focus on lifting the hips and contracting the glutes. This will ensure you are using the glutes as the primary mover. 
• As you reach the top of the glute bridge, concentrate on engaging and squeezing the glutes. This will improve your mind-muscle connection, increasing muscle activation, and results. 
• Focus on correct breathing for the duration of the set. Inhale, and engage core muscles at the bottom of the movement. Then exhale as you lift your hips, and perform control breaths for the duration of the bridge. This will increase rigidity through the torso, improving glute isolation and lifting capacity.
• Consider adding glute bridges to your warm-ups for workouts that utilize the hip hinge. For example, during a 5-day workout split, you can program it for your legs and back day. This will activate your glutes before your session while increasing glute training volume, improving hypertrophy. 
• Aim to progressively overload your glute bridge by increasing resistance, and duration. This will gradually increase stimulus, improving your results.
• Stronger glutes have an application both inside the gym and in daily life. Consider performing a glute bridge at the beginning of each day to engage the glutes. This will establish your mind-muscle connection, allowing you to recruit them for tasks including walking, standing up, and lifting objects.

Modifications

The glute bridge is a versatile exercise that can be modified to increase resistance and target different muscles. Below is a list of modifications, including their benefits.

• Hip Thrusts — The hip thrust is a popular and common variation of the glute bridge. Instead of a hold, this version used repetitions to stimulate muscle growth and strength. 

One popular version is the barbell hip thrust which is shown to have greater glute and hamstring activation than the barbell squat. This makes it a natural progression for your glute training.

• Single-Leg Glute Bridge — The single-leg glute bridge is used to target one glute at a time. During the standard glute bridge, there is a chance that our strong leg will compensate for our weaker leg. 

Performing the single-leg version means each leg will need to work independently. This increases resistance and can help identify weaknesses, improving overall glute strength.

• Hamstrings Glute Bridge — This version of the glute bridge uses a slight adjustment in foot placement, placing the load onto the hamstrings. The standard glute bridge is performed with the knees bent at a 90-degree bend. Extending the legs slightly and resting our weight in the heels, loads the hamstrings. 

Adding this to your training can improve hamstring stiffness. This makes it a great addition to a knee injury prevention program as the muscle stiffness could help prevent knee sprains. 

Conclusion

The glute bridge is an incredible exercise for developing strength, glute mind-muscle connection, tendon stiffness, and performance. While its lack of resistance seems like a drawback, its benefits make it an essential exercise. This makes it suitable for all experience levels and a must for anyone looking to level up their glute training.

Frequently Asked Questions