Best workout equipment for glutes (9 best machines)
9 best pieces of workout equipment for glutes
Want bigger, stronger glutes?
Here are nine of the best pieces of workout equipment you’ll find in your local gym for building a set of glutes impressive enough to boost your lifts and turn heads. 👇
1) Glute drive machine
Exercise: Glute drive
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
The glute drive, or hip thrust, is a lower body compound movement that makes the glutes its main focus.
There’s some hamstring (and even quad and lower back) involvement, depending how you perform it, but the glutes are the prime mover.
We prefer this machine to the barbell hip thrust, since it provides an additional degree of stability, without sacrificing loading potential.
How to perform it
- Take a stance on the foot plate that allows you to have a knee angle of about 90º at the top of the movement.
- Position your upper back on the pad behind you, and put the hip pad in the crease of your hips.
- Come down right to the bottom to incorporate the hamstrings a little. Your knees will move towards you slightly in the bottom.
2) 45º Leg press
Exercise: Plate-loaded leg press
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
The leg press is one of (if not the) best leg building exercises there is.
But with a couple of tweaks?
You can bias the glutes for an incredible stimulus with a ton of stability and loading potential.
Just what we want from a movement when we're looking to build muscle.
We’re talking about a plate-loaded, 45º sled leg press here. Not the small, pin-selectorized machines. These don’t have enough loading potential. Nor do they have a foot plate large enough for many people to set up for the exercise properly.
How to perform it
- Set up with your feet high and reasonably narrow. No more than shoulder width.
- In the bottom of the movement, your knees should not extend past your toes. Your knee should be at a roughly 90º angle.
- Think about driving your knees back and up towards your ears.
3) Hack squat machine
Exercise: Hack squat
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
Next to the leg press, the hack squat is the king of lower body exercises.
Stability? Check.
Loading potential? Check.
So, what stops it from taking the top spot?
Lots of people lack the mobility (and the strength) to really perform it effectively. The hack squat is “heaviest” near the bottom of the movement, where the quads have to do the most work. In people whose quads are weak in this lengthened position, and in those with poor ankle mobility, their heels will rise off the foot plate.
But performing the movement to bias the glutes removes a lot of the need for ankle mobility, making the exercise both more accessible and more friendly to glute growth. 🪴
How to perform it
- Take a high stance on the foot plate at a comfortable width.
- In the bottom of the movement, your knees shouldn’t come out in front of your toes. If they do, shuffle your feet forward more.
- Your knee should be at roughly a 90º angle.
- Unrack the weight and descend slowly with control.
- Go as deep as you can.
- Keep your lower back flush against the back pad, and don’t allow your heels to rise off the foot plate.
- Reverse out of the bottom of the movement by driving through your mid-foot.
4) Smith machine
Exercise: Smith machine hip thrust
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
Some gyms don’t have a glute drive machine. But most have a Smith Machine.
While the setup for the Smith machine hip thrust is the same as that for the free barbell hip thrust, the Smith machine adds all-important stability to the movement.
How to perform it
- Set a bench, or hip thrust box, up horizontally right by the smith machine.
- Put your shoulders on the bench or box, and adjust its distance until the crease of your hips can comfortably stay in contact with the bar of the Smith machine.
- Unrack the weight and drop your hips down until your rear end is near the floor.
- Drive your hips up. At the top, think about pushing your pelvis to the ceiling by squeezing your glutes.
5) Functional trainer
Exercise: Cable kickbacks
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
The functional trainer is an incredible versatile piece of gym equipment. We're interested in it because it allows us to perform the cable kickback.
The strength of the cable kickback is in its range of motion (ROM), and that it allows you to abduct the leg to the side while extending the hip.
This works both the glute max and the glute medius. While performing it, you should feel the "upper corner" of your glute firing strongly.
How to perform it
- Attach a cuff or heel strap attachment to one side of the functional trainer.
- Set the cable just below hip height.
- Loop your heel or ankle into the cable attachment.
- Shuffle your feet back a little so you're leaning slightly forward.
- Bring your knee up to lengthen the glute, then kick your heel back behind you.
- Drive your knee outwards and towards the ceiling to target the upper glute more (for that "shelf" look).
6) 45º hyperextension
Exercise: 45º raises
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
45º raises, performed with a straight leg, challenge both the glutes and the hamstrings together.
It'll require some improvisation, but some machines even allow you to perform the exercise with a bent knee. This puts you in a position similar to the hip thrust, and removes most of the hamstring involvement.
Since the leg is straight, and you're hinging at the hips, this movement is similar to a straight-leg deadlift. The resistance profile, however, is slightly different.
When you turn the feet slightly outward, this movement is great at targeting the upper glutes.
How to perform it
Where you hold the weight matters. Holding it against your forehead is ideal. Holding it against your chest creates a shorter lever arm, and makes it harder to add enough resistance.
- Set up in the back extension machine so the top of the pad is right in the crease of your hips.
- If it's set too high, you'll end up biasing more of the lower back.
- Turn your toes outwards at 30-45º.
- Allow your upper body to fold forwards over the machine.
- Drive through your hips, using your glutes to come up.
That's not what we want here. Make sure to brace with your abs to keep your rib cage pulled down. This will "turn off" your lower back musculature.
Bracing with the abs: Tense your stomach muscles as if someone's about to punch you in the stomach.
7) Abductor machine
Exercise: Abduction
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
The glutes have three primary functions:
- Hip extension
- Hip external rotation
- Hip abduction
For the fullest possible glute development, you'll want to maximize both glute max and glute medius hypertrophy.
The glute max, the largest of the glute muscles, primarily takes care of hip extension. Many of the exercises on this list therefore rightly take care of hip extension as that all-important function of the glutes.
But the glute medius' primary function is the third in the above list: hip abduction.
Cable kickbacks allow you to abduct the femur, but few exercises offer more stability and loading potential while challenging the hips' abduction function more than the abductor machine.
How to perform it
- Sit in the seat and adjust the knee pads so they're comfortably close together.
- Grab the handles for stability.
- Drive your thighs outwards.
8) Dumbbells
Exercise: Bulgarian split squats
What it looks like in your gym
Why we love it
The bulgarian split squat is an incredible glute builder, targeting the glutes in the lengthened position.
While it has good loading potential, the biggest drawback to the bulgarian split squat is its relative instability.
While you'll get better at coordinating the movement the more you do it, the relative instability increases your perception of effort. This means lower motor unit recruitment and, therefore, lower hypertrophy potential.
You can perform this movement in a Smith machine, with the bar on your back (like in a back squat), if the lack of stability really bothers you.
That said, we do so much on one leg in our daily lives that this is a highly functional and athletic movement. If you at all care about those things as well as building big, strong glutes, the bulgarian split squat deserves a place in your program.
How to perform it
Perform this with your front food slightly farther forward than you see here to target the glute more. Allow your upper body to lean forwards.
This is like a lunge, with your rear foot up on a bench behind you.
- Set up a bench sideways a couple of paces behind you.
- Pick up the dumbells and step the foot of your working leg forward until it's a few paces from the bench.
- Step your non-working leg back to rest its instep on the bench behind you.
- Squat down with your front leg as if performing a lunge.
9) Barbell
Exercise: Romanian deadlifts (RDLs)
What is looks like in your gym
Why we love it
Movements where you hinge at the hips are some of the best for training the glutes in conjunction with the rest of the muscles in your posterior chain.
To target the glutes most strongly, you'll want a hinge variation with a slightly bent knee.
The RDL is this variation. It's all about the hip hinge, while limiting hamstring and quad involvement.
How to perform it
An RDL is a deadlift performed “top down” with a slight bend in the knee.
- Set the bar up in a power rack at roughly knee-height.
- Unrack the bar and step away. Push your hips back to initiate the movement.
- When the bar reaches your mid-shin, reverse the movement by driving your hips forward.
Can you build your glutes with machines? 🤔
The same principles that apply for building muscle elsewhere on your body apply to building your glutes.
That means, the same things that make exercises good muscle builders:
- Stable
- Great propensity for loading
- Don’t create much systemic fatigue
- Effectively isolate the target muscle(s)
- Make form breakdown difficult
Apply when looking for the best pieces of workout equipment for building the glutes.
It just so happens that machines effectively tick all the above boxes.
So it’s safe to say you can build your glutes with machines.
Alex
Pros and cons of using machines to build your glutes
Pros ✅
1 - Resistance profiles
Machines can challenge your glutes in specific ways. Either in particular planes, or with particular resistance profiles.
Different machines will offer your glutes different challenges, depending where resistance peaks in the exercise. This limits progression plateaus, and challenges different portions of the glute fibres, which may contribute to some regional differences in hypertrophy.
2 - Progression
It’s incredibly easy to increase the loading in resistance exercises. Especially with pin-selectorized and plate-loaded machines. This gives you a ton of control over progression, making it easy to keep progressing (and growing) for years or even decades.
3 - Stability
To grow your glutes, you need to choose good muscle building movements.
This means selecting movements that are stable. In other words, they have a degree of bracing built-in, and don’t require the body to stabilise itself.
Most machines remove the stabilising component, and this is a good thing for hypertrophy. You can forget about coordinating the movement, and just focus on getting stronger so your glutes can grow.
Cons ❌
They don’t train your body in 3D space
If you’re trying to build “functional strength”, machines might not be the best option, because they lock you into a single plane of movement.
For athletes, the elderly, or anyone looking to improve how their body moves in 3D space, machines remove a critical component you might be interested in improving: spatial coordination.
Some movements, like the glute drive, however, still have an excellent carryover to movements like sprinting because of their resistance curve.
The only 3 exercises you need to build your glutes 🍑
If you were to do only three exercises to grow your glutes for the rest of your life, what should they be?
The best workout machines to grow your glutes will always lend themselves to exercises that facilitate progressive overload.
To prevent plateaus, it's therefore best to pick a few variations that challenge the glutes in different ways.
Here are our picks:
1) RDL
First, you need some sort of hip hinge variation. In other words, a deadlift variation.
Our pick, for the reasons discussed in its dedicated section above, is the RDL.
It has great loading potential and the added bonus of hitting your spinal erectors pretty hard.
2) Leg press
Next, a squat variation.
The glutes pay a massive part in leg presses when you perform them with a high stance.
Contrary to the deadlift variation above, where the legs stay pretty static and the torso moves through space, the leg press reverses those roles.
The legs move through space, while the torso stays static against the back pad.
3) Hip thrust
Finally, a thrust variation.
The glute drive machine is the best option. It's the most stable, has great loading potential, and has a very short learning curve. Almost anyone can perform it correctly within a couple of weeks of joining a gym.
Alex