Squats used to be the ultimate butt builders (Yeah, She Squats…). Until people started to see the squat mainly as a leg exercise (Squats are for Quads), after which the hip thrust was crowned the ultimate exercise for the bottom (The Best Butt Exercise You’re Not Doing). But is the hip thrust actually better for growth of the gluteal muscle than the squat?

The main points:

1. Although the hip thrust scores best on muscle tone in the buttocks in EMG studies, the effectiveness of the exercise is limited in practice by the small ROM. On balance, hip thrusts and squats are more or less equally effective for training the gluteal muscle. According to one study, deep squats are even better than hip thrusts, but the quality of this research is seriously questioned.

2. But you don’t have to choose. In fact, for maximum glute growth, you need to do more than one exercise. Preferably you do a squat variant, an activator (for example the hip thrust), a pumper (for example the hip abduction) and possibly a deadlift variant.

TRAINING BUTTOCKS

First of all: both barbell squats and barbell hip thrusts make your derriere grow. With squats you train almost your entire lower body (and also a bit of your upper body), in particular the quadriceps and the gluteus maximus, i.e. the buttocks. Barbell hip thrusts are mainly a butt exercise, so more of an isolation exercise. The quadriceps and hamstrings are stimulated only slightly during the hip thrust.

To shape your butt optimally, you should do three types of exercises: stretchers (such as squats and deadlifts), activators (such as hip thrusts and glute bridges), and pumpers (such as hip abductions and band side lying clams). So you don’t actually have to choose between squats and hip thrusts: ideally you do both!

But if you can’t or don’t want to, for whatever reason, which of the two is the best butt exercise?

EMG RESEARCH

You probably think the hip thrust is the most effective glute exercise. After all, many renowned coaches, with buttock expert Bret Contreras at the forefront, label this as the king of buttock exercises. This is partly in response to some EMG studies.

EMG (electromyography) measures the electrical activity that occurs when the nervous system sends signals to the muscles, which happens, for example, during a fitness exercise. Based on this, it is possible to check the activity of each muscle that comes into action during the exercise, even broken down into different moments in the movement.

There are several EMG studies that indicate that gluteal activity is greater during the barbell hip thrust than with other exercises, such as the barbell squat ^{[ i ][ ii ][ iii ]} . In addition, it is hard to deny that Bret Contreras cultivates many beautiful pairs of buttocks in his ‘Glute Lab’, with the hip thrust as the foundation of his training programs.

So a done deal? Not quite. Coach Menno Henselmans already expressed his doubts two years ago about the effectiveness of the hip thrust compared to the (full) squat, with regard to the buttocks (after all, there is no discussion about the quadriceps, the squat is superior in that). Henselmans makes it clear that the results of EMG studies can be misleading. After all, you measure the muscle activity during the exercise, not the results (muscle growth and strength increase).

The high scores of hip thrusts in EMG studies, according to Henselmans, are because they have a short range of motion (ROM) with a decreasing force curve. This results in a large peak contraction in the buttocks and thus also a high average muscle activity in the EMG studies.

For muscle growth, however, the mechanical tension on the muscle fibers counts and that is very short at the hip thrust, due to the small ROM. With full squats you have a smaller peak contraction, but there is a much larger ROM and the glutes are active throughout that ROM. You may feel them less during the exercise than with the hip thrust, but on balance they may be just as effective – if not even more effective. Henselmans:

Muscle growth is caused by mechanical tension on the muscle fibers and this is generally best estimated biomechanically, not by EMG or your subjective sensations. ^[ iv ]

Greg Nuckols of Stronger by Science also questions the usefulness of EMG studies. He says they are useful for comparing two exercises that are biomechanically similar, for example, the bench press and the close-grip bench press. However, comparing two exercises that are completely biomechanically different (such as the squat and the hip thrust) based on EMG does not give reliable results ^[ viii ] , according to Nuckols.

HYPERTROPHY RESEARCH

Two studies have now been conducted in which squats and hip thrusts were compared on the basis of muscle growth.

RESEARCH 1

A Brazilian study was published in 2020, the first study to make a direct comparison between the barbell hip thrust and the barbell squat based on muscle growth and strength (so no EMG study) ^[ v ] .

The study design in a nutshell: 22 trained women performed either hip thrusts or deep squats (ie, to ~140° knee bend, which is well below parallel) during a 12-week training program. Strength gain (1RM) and muscle growth (via ultrasound measurement of muscle thickness) were then measured in both the quadriceps and the gluteus maximus.

The results of the study? Starting with the obvious, the hip thrusts led to significant growth and strength gains in the glutes, as well as a little in the quadriceps. The squat led to significant increases in both the glutes and quadriceps. But most of the growth of the buttocks was achieved with the squat! Yes, the squat butt is real: in the study, the (deep) squats turned out to realize more than twice as much muscle growth and strength gain in the buttocks than the hip thrust (9% versus 4%). The difference was even greater in the quadriceps (squat 12%, hip thrust only 2%), but that was to be expected.

And this seems to confirm that the greater ROM during full squats is of much greater significance for the stimulation of the gluteal muscles than the high peak contraction during the hip thrust. The EMG studies apparently do not say much, the researchers also state:

Large electromygraphic responses do not necessarily imply higher recruitment of motor units and neither can infer hypertrophic potential. ^[ v ]

However, there are serious doubts about the quality of this research. Menno Henselmans even speaks of a very shady study, while Brad Schoenfeld considers this study to be illegitimate.

RESEARCH 2

A recent study, which also included Bret Contreras and Menno Henselmans, compared how effective squats and hip thrusts are in stimulating lower body growth and strength development ^[ x ] .

The setup was as follows. Each group did only squats or only hip thrusts during an otherwise identical 9 week program with 2 supervised workouts per week with 3-6 sets to muscle failure at 8-12RM. The participants were untrained women and men. There were no significant differences between groups in macronutrient intake.

The results? Both exercises proved to be equally effective as a butt builder: for the upper, middle and lower gluteus maximus, as well as the total gluteal muscle.

So you could conclude that it doesn’t matter which exercise you do, but that’s not entirely the case. With the hip thrust you can handle larger training volumes, i.e. they have a better stimulus to fatigue ratio (SFR).

According to muscle growth expert Brad Schoenfeld, there may be hypertrophic mechanism differences between the exercises – the squat has greater passive tension while the hip thrust has greater active tension ^[ xi ] . So it can be a synergistic benefit to combine the two exercises. This, according to Schoefeld, is the next research step (ideally in trained individuals, since the participants here were untrained).

CAVEATS

Actually, the ‘battle’ between the squat and the hip thrust is a purely theoretical one. We already mentioned that for maximum growth of the glutes you need to do several types of exercises. And that includes at least one axial load exercise (the stretchers we talked about), preferably a back squat variation—not necessarily a deep barbell squat, but also not a front squat, which is more quadriceps dominant. It also includes at least one exercise with anteroposterior load (an activator ). The latter can be the barbell hip thrust, but also back extensions or cable pull-throughs, for example .

FULL VERSUS PARALLEL SQUATS

Also, another winner is likely to come out of that “battle” when the squats are performed to parallel. As mentioned, the women in the Brazilian study did deep squats, well beyond parallel. However, not everyone has the necessary mobility to perform deep squats correctly and therefore risk-free.

For the quadriceps, for many the primary target muscle of the squat, it is enough to go parallel. The ROM may be smaller, but you can lift heavier. With regard to the glutes, however, the ROM of parallel squats is probably too small to trump hip thrust.

SQUATS AND QUADS

Women often do not want to squat at all, because they do not aspire to large(r) quadriceps. If you want to train only or almost exclusively your buttocks, you are dependent on other, more isolating buttock exercises.

For those who cannot or do not want to squat deeply, the hip thrust is therefore a great alternative. Although there are also many other insulating buttock exercises, such as the aforementioned hip extensions and cable pull-throughs.

RECOVERY CAPACITY AND VOLUME

We already talked about training volume and SFR. The barbell squat is a very taxing compound exercise that makes great demands on your recovery capacity. The barbell hip thrust is a less strenuous, isolating exercise, from which you may recover faster. As a result, you can do more volume (sets) on a weekly basis and therefore perhaps grow more on balance.

Menno Henselmans, however, is skeptical about this theory:

I’m skeptical hip thrusts generate much less neuromuscular fatigue (…). Mental fatigue, sure, but neuromuscular, most research finds few differences between different exercises. ^[ vi ]

MAKING HIP THRUSTS (EVEN) MORE EFFECTIVE

You can further increase the ROM and thus the effectiveness of hip thrusts by placing your feet on an elevation. Although this makes the exercise, in terms of set-up, even more uncomfortable than it already is.

Another option is the glute bridge, a traditional glute builder that, according to another study, produces slightly more gluteal activity than the hip thrust ^[ ix ] . For a truly complete buttocks workout, do both, the hip thrust and the glute bridge: the gluteal muscle is stimulated slightly differently in both exercises .

CONCLUSION

Although hip thrust scores best on muscle tone in the buttocks in EMG studies, the effectiveness of the exercise is limited in practice by its small ROM. On balance, hip thrusts and squats are more or less equally effective for training the gluteal muscle. According to one study, deep squats are even better than hip thrusts, but the quality of this research is seriously questioned.

Fortunately, you don’t have to choose. In fact, for maximum glute growth, you need to do more than one exercise. Preferably you do a squat variant, an activator (for example the hip thrust), a pumper (for example the hip abduction) and possibly a deadlift variant.

Squat versus hip thrust Battle of the Booty Builders