What Is a Barbell Hip Thrust?
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise targets the lower body. This exercise defines by raising your lower back and torso with your knees bent and your upper body resting on the bench.
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise targets a variety of muscles throughout the entire lower body. This exercise specifically targets the gluteal muscles.
Benefits of Doing Barbell Hip Thrusts
If you do the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise regularly and correctly, you will get many different benefits.
Benefits of the Barbell Hip Thrust:
- This exercise strengthens the buttock muscles:
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise strengthens and activates the gluteal muscles. This exercise also targets the gluteus maximus and the middle gluteal muscles, unlike other weight exercises such as gluteal bridge exercises, where you can do this exercise by adding weights to increase strength gluteal muscles
- It strengthens the entire lower body:
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise targets and activates the muscles in the entire back chain of the lower body, including the hamstrings, the quadriceps, and the erector spinal muscles. This exercise greatly strengthens these muscles.
- Strengthens the hip flexor muscles:
The movement pattern in the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise depends on doing the hip flexion and it contains a large group of muscles that help move the leg naturally, such as walking or jogging, and also helps in other cardio exercises.
The Barbell Hip Thrust helps you strengthen the muscles of the hip joint and thus helps prepare you for more advanced hip exercises such as the Romanian deadlift.
- This exercise has many uses:
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise uses a specific movement pattern to move the lower body where it can adapt to other free charges such as dumbbells and kettlebells.
There are many variations of the Barbell Hip Thrust, including doing the hip thrust using one leg and the banded hip thrust using a resistance band.
Muscles Worked by the Hip Thrust
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise primarily targets the glutes, as it strengthens the quadriceps, adductors, and hamstrings, and if you do this exercise correctly, you will target a large group of muscles.
Muscles Targeted in the Barbell Hip Thrust:
- Gluteal muscles:
The gluteus maximus muscles are primarily responsible for making the hip thrust, as the gluteus maximus muscle can handle most demands, the gluteus medius helps to extend the hip and helps make the pelvis stable, and the gluteus maximus helps to extend the hips.
- Hamstrings:
The function of this muscle is to maintain the stability of the knee throughout the exercise period, as it works evenly to hold the knee at a 90-degree angle of flexion.
Sometimes lifters may have some injuries, such as mild or moderate contractures in the hamstrings because they extend the hips, and if the injury is too much, you will not be able to fully extend your hips and also you will not be able to bend your knees significantly.
- Adductors muscles:
It is made up of the inner thigh muscles that work to stabilize the pelvis evenly as you extend your hips.
If you want to increase the activation of the hip connectors, you can use a foam roller between the thighs and make the pressure of the roller equal while doing the hip extension.
Hip Thrust vs Glute Bridge: What’s the Difference?
The Barbell Hip Thrust exercise and the Glute Bridge exercise primarily target the gluteal muscles, but there are differences between these exercises as they differ from each other in many key ways.
The differences between the Barbell Hip Thrust and the Glute Bridge are:
- Situation :
The difference here is the posture of the body. When you do the Glute Bridge, your upper body is flat on the ground, while you press your butt muscles, where your waist is raised above you, and in the Barbell Hip Thrust, your shoulders are raised.
- The weight :
The difference is that while you are doing the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise, you can use free weights, but when you do the Glute Bridge exercise, you are using only your body weight.
And you can get the extra weight from the barbell, the dumbbell or the bell, and if you want to add these weights, the muscles of the lower body must be very strong and active while you raise your butt off the ground.
- Movement range:
The difference here is that the Barbell Hip Thrust gives more range of motion than the Glute Bridge.
You can also use the Barbell Hip Thrust to warm up in order to do other exercises that use the hip joint movement such as the deadlift and Roman lunges.
How To Do Hip Thrust Exercise:
You must do the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise correctly to get the maximum benefit from the exercise and we will explain the steps to exercise in detail and I advise you to read these steps to exercise the appropriate manner.
Do the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise by using a barbell with a weight that you can control and do the exercise by doing 2 to 3 sets in each group and do 6 to 12 repetitions. You must also choose a weight appropriate to your ability and allow to maintain in the form of exercise.
How to do the exercise:
- Bring a Barbell parallel to the seat.
- Sit on the floor with your back towards the seat, then rotate the barbell on your hips to bend your hips.
- Make your upper back touching the bench, then lift your hips lightly off the floor, and you should make the upper part of your arms comfortable on the bench, then rotate your shoulders outward, to engage your muscles.
- The bottom of your shoulder blades should be in contact with the seat and you should distribute your weight evenly on your feet so that it is along each foot and then rotate your feet on the ground in order for your foot to be stable and your chin should be folded throughout the exercise as if you were You hold an egg under your chin and all repetitions should start from this position.
- To make the upward movement, you must put pressure on the muscles of the buttocks and then push your feet towards the ground.
- Squeeze the butt muscles as you push your hips toward the ceiling to fully extend your hips, and you must tie your core in order to make your ribs low, and your pelvis should be slightly folded toward the top, and your shin should be perpendicular.
- When you reach the top, pause for 2 to 3 seconds.
- To do the downward movement, stop at the hips in order to return to the starting position of the exercise, then make your chest follow your hips, then look forward with your chin folded, then keep the muscles in your buttocks tense and make your core active and busy and your torso should be At an angle of 45 degrees with the ground at the bottom of the movement.
Common Mistakes
While you are doing the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise, you may fall into many common mistakes that make you not do the exercises correctly, and therefore you may have some injuries and you may lose many of the benefits of exercise and may lead to many problems in the neck and back.
Some common mistakes while doing the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise:
- The incorrect posture of the feet:
Many coaches instruct players that they can make a foot position that makes them feel very comfortable, but this affects the position of the foot and the activity of the different muscles during the push. If you move your feet, you will increase or narrow the range of movement and therefore you will make a big difference, but If you move your feet away from your body or close to your body, it may change the feeling of this exercise.
If you find that there is a lot of effort on your quadriceps, especially in the front of the thigh, this is because your feet are too close to your hips, so moving them away from the body will help you transfer the workload to the hamstrings and buttocks, and moving them further away will reduce the buttocks and will emphasize the Hamstring.
- lazy neck:
You must focus a lot while performing the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise to support the upper back, which is around the lower shoulder blade area and this is done by using a weight bench, but the neck and head are not, so you must drop the head Backside while looking at the ceiling while you raise your hips, and this may lead to passing the spine, so it is preferable to stay away from this position.
Instead of this position, keep your chin folded downward toward your chest as you raise your hips to stretch them. This position will help you keep your core running and help prevent any curvature of the torso and not overextend through the spine.
It is preferable to do this movement in front of the mirror, to focus on the movement of your body and your figure by looking at the woman, and this will help you keep your chin in the appropriate position.
- Incomplete supplement:
If your thigh muscles are very weak and you lift a lot of weight, you can partially raise your hips, but in this matter, it will not make you reach the full extension position with your hips, in line with the shoulders and knees, and this position will shorten more effectively in this exercise.
To reach the full-extension position, you must reduce the amount of weight a little and also you must know if you can fully extend your hips or not and if you still see that the hips are not rising enough, this indicates that the hip muscles Too narrow, so try to do the bridge exercise on the ground to open the hip area before you push.
- Very fast reduction:
There are two important things while you are doing the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise and they are doing the concentric lifting phase and the eccentric phase ie the lowering and there are people who make a very big effort in the lifting position as they move quickly during the lowering phase to start the repetition again.
To achieve the maximum benefit from the exercise, you must control the eccentric phase, so take a long time to lower the bar, such as raising it, because this will make the glutes keep engaging in the work more seriously.
What variations can you try?
There are many variations of the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise that we will mention now to get rid of the boring routine and to target a new muscle group.
Barbell Hip Thrust Workout Variations:
Glute bridge:
The gluteal bridge exercise and the hip bridge exercise are very similar, but they focus on different muscles.
You can do the Glute bridge exercise with your upper body on the floor instead of on a bench.
If you feel that your quads are too active while doing the hip thrust, the gluteal bridge exercise is a great alternative to focus on the glutes.
Single-leg hip thrust :
Advance your hip thrust by focusing on one leg while holding it at a 45-degree angle while performing the movement.
Hip thrust off the bench :
Bring a bench or box so that it is equal in height or slightly larger, then grab it and push the hip while you raise your foot.
The range of motion in this exercise is greater than the Barbell Hip Thrust exercise, so you have to go down to the bottom and that is less than if you were on the ground.
FAQ
How much weight should you use for hip thrusts?
As we discuss the sets required in the exercise, the reps required for each set, and the weight recommendations, the correct answer to this question is that if you use a weight that you can’t feel, the glutes are working, you become very light.
And if you feel the weight, you will struggle and your strength will collapse, so you must reduce the weight you are using.
How can you progress hip thrusts without adding more weight?
The gluteal muscle is one of the largest muscle groups in the body, as it consists of fast and slow muscle fibers in a ratio of 50 to 50. It is not the only way.
If you are restricted to a certain amount of weight that you can reach, you can combine the increased pace of the range of motion ie hip flexion, and a short rest period to increase the accumulation of metabolites and muscle fatigue.
You can play it in an orderly fashion or combine it with more complex exercises such as squats to increase muscle breakdown.
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