I had a client tell me once, "I don't think hip thrusts are working — I don't feel the burn like I do in squats." She'd been doing them for six weeks. Her glutes had visibly grown. She just didn't trust it because the sensation didn't match what she'd been taught to expect.
Here's the thing: that burning, shaking, "I can't walk tomorrow" feeling has almost nothing to do with whether a muscle is actually growing. I tell my female clients this constantly, because it's the single biggest myth keeping women stuck doing the wrong exercises for the wrong reasons. So let's actually look at what the research says about building glutes — not bro science, not Instagram trends, actual peer-reviewed data.
The "Burn Means It's Working" Myth
Most of us were taught that if a muscle lights up and burns during a set, that's the muscle growing. It makes intuitive sense. It's also not how hypertrophy works, and we now have a study that proves it directly.
In 2023, Plotkin, Rodas, Vigotsky, Roberts, and colleagues published a randomized controlled trial in Frontiers in Physiology comparing hip thrust training to back squat training over eight weeks. Here's the twist: the hip thrust produces dramatically more glute muscle activation (EMG) during the actual lift than the squat does. If "burn equals growth" were true, the hip thrust group should have built noticeably bigger glutes.
They didn't. The two groups built essentially the same amount of glute muscle. Equal hypertrophy, despite wildly different activation levels during the set.
That's the finding I want every woman reading this to sit with. The amount a muscle "lights up" in the moment is not a reliable predictor of how much it grows over weeks and months. Mechanical tension, total volume, and progressive overload over time matter more than how intensely you feel a muscle working on any single rep. This doesn't mean activation is meaningless — it just means it isn't the whole story, and chasing the burn at the expense of good programming is a mistake I see constantly.
What the EMG Research Actually Tells Us
Now, activation data isn't useless — it's just one piece of the puzzle, and it's genuinely useful for picking exercises, even if it doesn't predict final muscle growth on its own.
Contreras, Vigotsky, Schoenfeld, Beardsley, and Cronin (2015) ran an EMG comparison of the back squat versus the barbell hip thrust and found the hip thrust produced substantially higher glute activation than the squat. That's part of why the hip thrust earned its reputation — it genuinely does recruit the glutes hard, specifically because of the hip-extension angle at the top of the movement, where the glutes are working against the most resistance.
Then in 2020, Krause Neto and colleagues published a systematic review in the Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, pulling together EMG data across a wide range of common exercises. Their finding: step-ups (and step-up variations) produced the highest glute activation of the exercises reviewed, with hip thrusts and hex bar deadlifts also ranking near the top.
So if you're choosing exercises based on which ones recruit the glutes the hardest in the moment, your short list is step-ups, hip thrusts, and hex bar deadlifts. But — and this is the point I keep coming back to — that's a different question from which exercises build the most muscle over a training block. Squats still build glutes. They just don't necessarily feel like they're working the glutes as directly, because the activation is spread across more muscles.
Building Your Glute Exercise Toolbox
Based on all of this, here's how I actually program glute training for my clients, and it's simpler than the fitness industry makes it look.
You want variety across hip extension patterns, not just one "magic" exercise. The hip thrust and glute bridge are your horizontal hip extension staples — they load the glutes hardest near full hip extension, which is their specialty. The squat, deadlift, hex bar deadlift, and step-up are your vertical hip extension movements — they build total lower-body strength and still meaningfully grow the glutes, even with lower EMG readings than the hip thrust. Lateral movements like cable kickbacks, lateral band walks, and Bulgarian split squats round things out by hitting the glute medius and minimus, which matter for hip stability, not just the "shape" everyone's chasing.
I don't program one exercise and call it done. I rotate through all three categories across the week, because each one is doing a slightly different job, and no single lift covers everything the glutes are capable of.
How to Actually Program It
This is where most women's programs fall apart — not the exercise selection, but the dosing. According to NSCA guidance from Hodge, effective glute training breaks into three movement categories (horizontal hip extension, vertical hip extension, and lateral/rotary movement), and total training volume should land somewhere between 10 and 25 sets per muscle group per week, depending on your experience level and recovery capacity.
Progressive overload is non-negotiable here. That means adding weight, adding reps, slowing your tempo, or adding sets over time — not doing the same three sets of twelve with the same ten-pound dumbbells for six months because it "burns." I have clients track their lifts every single session specifically so we can see progression on paper, not just feel it in the moment.
The Takeaway
Stop choosing exercises based on how much they burn and start choosing them based on what the research actually shows builds muscle: a mix of horizontal, vertical, and lateral hip extension movements, done with enough total volume (10-25 sets per week), and progressively overloaded over time. Hip thrusts, step-ups, and hex bar deadlifts will give you the strongest in-the-moment activation. Squats and deadlifts will still build real glute size even when they don't feel like a dedicated "glute exercise." You need both. The burn was never the goal — the growth was.
References
- Contreras, B., Vigotsky, A. D., Schoenfeld, B. J., Beardsley, C., & Cronin, J. (2015). A comparison of gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, and vastus lateralis electromyographic activity in the back squat and barbell hip thrust exercises. Journal of Applied Biomechanics, 31(6), 452-458.
- Krause Neto, W., Vieira, T. L., Gama, E. F., et al. (2020). Gluteus maximus activation during common strength and hypertrophy exercises: A systematic review. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, 19(1), 195-203.
- Plotkin, D. L., Rodas, M. N., Vigotsky, A. D., Roberts, M. D., et al. (2023). Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift. Frontiers in Physiology, 14, 1279170.
- Hodge, A. Program design considerations for optimal strength and hypertrophy of the glute muscles. NSCA's Personal Training Quarterly, 10(4).
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