The Best Glutes & Hamstring Free-Weight Exercises

The glutes and hamstrings are the main muscles on the back of your legs. Your hamstrings are responsible for flexing your knee and extending your hip, while your glutes, or butt muscles, extend, rotate, abduct and adduct your hip joint. While there aren't any all-out best exercises for these two muscles, any free-weight move that utilizes both the glutes and hamstrings simultaneously can be highly effective for building glute and hamstring strength and size.

  1. Deadlift Variations

    • Together, your glutes and hamstrings along with your lower-back are referred to as your posterior chain. Few exercises fare as well as the deadlift when it comes to hitting your whole posterior chain, claims Eric Cressey, owner of Cressey Performance in Boston. Regular deadlifts, stiff-legged deadlifts or trap-bar, elevated and deficit deadlifts all recruit your glutes and hamstrings to a high degree. You should feel your hamstrings activated the most when you're down low in the starting position and your glutes come into play towards the top of the deadlift, notes strength coach Bret Contreras.

    Squat Variations

    • You might think of squats as a quadriceps or knee-dominant movement, which they are, but they also work your glutes and hamstrings. The lower you go on a squat, the more you hit your glutes and hamstrings and the less focus there is on your quads. So, go as low as you can while keeping good form with your heels on the floor and a small arch in your lower-back. Squat using a barbell in the back or front squat position, or try dumbbells and kettlebells. For the best posterior chain-focuses squat, Cressey recommends switching to box squats, where you squat down onto a box, pause briefly, then explode upwards.

    Lunges and Single-Leg movements

    • Lunges are a highly versatile lower-body exercise that hit many of the same muscles as squats. Make them more hamstring and glute-focused by lunging backward, not forward. Push off firmly from the floor while squeezing your hamstrings and avoid letting your knee fly forward, as this switches the emphasis onto your quads, advises strength and conditioning coach Harold Gibbons. A barbell across your shoulder blades works well for reverse lunges, or you can perform them holding dumbbells or kettlebells at your sides or at shoulder height. In the same vein as lunges are split squats, performed like a static lunge with your back foot resting on a weight bench and step-ups, where you step forward onto a low bench or box.

    Thrusts and Bridges

    • Hip thrusts involve sitting on the floor with your upper back resting against a bench and a barbell over your lap. To initiate the movement, push your hips as high as you can, pause briefly, then lower them under control. Hip thrusts actually work your glutes and hamstrings more effectively than deadlifts, as they maximize hip extension and also place less stress on your spine, notes Contreras. If you're not comfortable performing hip thrusts with a bar, hold a dumbbell or pair of dumbbells across your lap. Bridges are similar, but performed with your whole upper body on the floor. Bridges are tougher than thrusts, so you'll need to use less weight. For an increased challenge, elevate your feet on a weight bench, perform your thrusts and bridges one leg at a time, or add in a longer pause at the top.