The 3 Best Glute Workouts and Exercises for Women

The best glute workouts follow a few principles:

They include exercises that effectively target the glutes (many don’t).
They involve taking each set relatively close to failure (the point you can’t move the weight despite giving your best effort).
They involve gradually increasing the weight over time.

Looks simple, but this is totally different from how many women think they should be training to build their butt. For example, you may have heard that the best way to grow your glutes are exercises like the Stairmaster, Pilates, yoga, or even walking.

Nothing wrong with these things, but they’re going to do almost nothing for your butt.

Thirty minutes of proper strength training per week beats 10 hours of Stairmaster or Pilates.

And specifically, you want to be primarily doing barbell and machine exercises to grow your butt.

Bodyweight exercises like bodyweight bridges and squats are better than nothing, but they simply aren’t as effective for building your glutes as exercises like the barbell squat or hip thrust machine.

Dumbbell exercises like goblet squats are better than body weight exercises because they allow you to incrementally add weight to your workouts, but they’re generally more cumbersome and less practical than barbells or machines.

Finally, you need to train hard. You should be taking most sets of your workouts relatively close to failure—the point where you can’t move the weight despite pushing as hard as you can.

The last couple of reps of every set should feel difficult and move noticeably slower than the first few. Some teeth gritting and swearing should occur.

And if you train this way, you also don’t need to do many sets per workout or per week. When it comes to training your glutes (and every other muscle), quality beats quantity.

Below, you’ll find three glute workouts built on these principles: a barbell version, which is what I encourage everyone to do, plus dumbbell and bodyweight versions for the ladies who don’t want to train with barbells.

The Only Glute Workout You Need to Build a Great Butt
The Best Dumbbell Glute Workout for Women
The Best Bodyweight Glute Workout for Women
Want More Content Like This?

The Only Glute Workout You Need to Build a Great Butt

Barbell Back Squat: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Barbell Romanian Deadlift: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Hip Thrust (Machine or Barbell): 3 sets | 8–12 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Hip Abduction Machine: 3 sets | 8–12 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

The best glute workout isn’t really a “glute workout” at all—it’s a lower-body workout with glute emphasis.

The exercises that build the best butts also build strong, shapely legs, so you’ll be training your quads and hamstrings hard whether you mean to or not.

If you want to push your legs even harder, you can add isolation work like leg extensions and hamstring curls on another training day. But for most women, the workout below is all the lower-body training they need.

One last thing before we get into the workout: skip glute activation exercises.

While many glute-growth gurus claim that doing band walks, clamshells, and bodyweight bridges before your working sets primes your glutes for heavier training, there’s no good evidence they accomplish anything useful, including increasing glute activity or force production in the exercises that follow.¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸

And when you think about it, there’s no good reason to think they would. You don’t need to worry about whether your glutes are “active” when you squat, deadlift, or hip thrust heavy weights—they necessarily must be. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to complete a single rep.

So instead of futzing around with a resistance band before your workout, do this simple, research-backed warm-up instead:⁹

Estimate the weight you’ll use for your first hard set of your first exercise.
Do 6 reps with about 50% of that weight and rest for 1 minute.
Do 4 reps with about 70% of that weight and rest for 1 minute.

After this, you’re ready to tackle your hard sets for your first exercise and the rest of your workout.

Now, here’s how to do the exercises.

1. Barbell Back Squat

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The back squat is one of the most thoroughly studied glute exercises—and for many women, the most effective. No other lift lets you train your glutes with such heavy weights, through such a long range of motion, and progress as consistently over time.

It’s no surprise, then, that a 2025 meta-analysis found that back squats significantly grew the glute max (the largest part of the glutes) in every study that tested them.¹⁰

One detail worth knowing: depth matters. Deeper squats produced more glute growth than shallow ones across every study that compared them. You don’t need to drop “ass-to-grass” to see results—squatting to roughly parallel (thighs parallel to the floor) is enough for most women. Go as deep as your comfortably can—your glutes will thank you.

Beyond that, don’t sweat the small stuff. You’ll hear that a wider stance, more turned-out feet, or a low-bar position will “target your glutes more”—but these tips are mostly just distractions. Pick a stance that feels stable and strong, and put your energy into adding weight to the bar. Any tiny increase in glute activation from a particular change in your stance or bar position will be outweighed by simply getting stronger.

How to:

Set a barbell in a rack at about chest height.
Step under it, pinch your shoulder blades together, and rest the bar across your upper back.
Lift the bar out, step back, and set your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width with your toes turned out.
Keeping your back straight, sit down and push your knees out in the same direction as your toes.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: Think about spreading the floor apart with your feet by driving your feet into the ground and away from each other (though they shouldn’t actually move). This prevents your knees from caving inward and lets you lift more weight with a lower risk of pain or injury.

Alternatives:

2. Barbell Romanian Deadlift

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The Romanian deadlift trains your glutes through a long range of motion, with heavy weights, and while stretched—three factors that drive muscle growth. While no research has tested it specifically for glute hypertrophy, plenty of related evidence suggests it’s a worthwhile addition to your training.

For instance, a 2024 study found that adding the stiff-leg deadlift (a close cousin of the RDL) to a squatting-style exercise (the leg press) grew the glute max by 6% in 10 weeks.¹¹ That suggests that pairing a squat with a “hip hinge” is an effective one-two punch for glute growth.

(Or if you want to train your glutes harder, research suggests the deficit RDL activates the glutes even more than the regular version.)¹²

How to:

Stand with your feet hip-width apart and hold the barbell with a shoulder-width, overhand grip.
Keep your back flat and push your hips back to lower the bar straight toward the floor.
Lower until you feel a deep stretch in your hamstrings or just before your lower back rounds.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: Pretend there’s a car behind you with the door open, and you have to close it with your butt. This cue encourages you to push your hips back rather than squat down, which ensures your glutes and hamstrings take the load.

Alternatives:

3. Hip Thrust (Barbell or Machine)

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 8–12 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The hip thrust is the one of the only exercises that trains the glute’s main function (hip extension) with heavy weights, without significantly involving the rest of your leg muscles. That makes it the best way to grow your glutes without growing the rest of your thighs.

It’s also backed by research: one study found that adding the barbell hip thrust to a program that already included squatting and hinging movements boosted glute max growth by more than 50% over 10 weeks (from 6.0% to 9.3%)—a substantial bump from a single added exercise.¹³

The hip thrust also has practical advantages over the squat and deadlift—it causes just as much muscle growth, but doesn’t compress your spine or fatigue your lower back or legs.¹⁴ This allows you to keep training your glutes after the rest of your body is gassed or if you have an injury that makes squatting or deadlifting off limits.

That said, the hip thrust isn’t quite the “non-negotiable” glute exercise it’s often made out to be. Research shows that the squat grows the glutes just as much as the hip thrust, so treat it as a valuable addition to your squatting and deadlifting, not a replacement for it.¹⁵

How to:

Sit on the floor with your upper back against a bench set perpendicular to your body.
Roll a barbell over your legs so it rests in your hip crease.
Plant your feet shoulder-width apart and about 12–18 inches from your glutes.
Drive through your heels to lift your hips until your torso is parallel to the floor and your shins are vertical.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: Two cues to make every rep safer and more effective. First, tuck your chin to your chest and look straight ahead throughout every rep. Second, keep your back flat from start to finish (no arching), and as you thrust up, tuck your tailbone toward the ceiling to keep the work on your glutes.

Alternatives:

Machine Hip Thrust
Smith Machine Hip Thrust
Cable Pull-Through

4. Hip Abduction Machine

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 8–12 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: There’s little direct evidence that hip abduction exercises like the hip abduction machine grow the glutes meaningfully more than other exercises, but there’s a solid theoretical case for including it.

The squat, RDL, and hip thrust all train hip extension—driving your hips from a bent position to a straight one. The hip abduction machine trains a completely different movement: hip abduction, where your thighs move away from your body’s centerline.

This preferentially recruits the smaller glute muscles (the gluteus medius and minimus) that the bigger compound lifts don’t train as directly.

And since the abduction machine is easy to perform and recover from, there’s almost no downside to including it.

How to:

Sit on the machine and place the outsides of your knees against the pads.
Grip the handles and keep your back against the seat.
Push your knees out as far as the machine or your flexibility allows.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: You don’t have to mount the hip abduction machine in several different ways (facing toward it, facing away, half-standing, etc.) to get the benefits. Find a position that’s comfortable, lets you train through a full range of motion with heavy weights, and stick with that.

Alternatives:

Cable Hip Abduction
Banded Lateral Walks

The Best Dumbbell Glute Workout for Women

Bulgarian Split Squat: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 minutes rest

Single-Leg Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Dumbbell Hip Thrust: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Dumbbell Walking Lunge: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

The best workout you can do to build your glutes is the barbell version above. But if that’s not an option right now—because you train at home, your gym is limited, or you’re traveling—a dumbbell workout is a decent substitute.

It follows the same general format: a squatting exercise, a hinging exercise, and a thrust. The main difference is that there’s no good dumbbell substitute for the hip abduction machine, so this workout ends with a walking lunge—a single-leg dynamic exercise that challenges the smaller stabilizing glute muscles to round out development.

Just be aware that this workout will eventually become limiting, so graduate to the barbell version when you can.

1. Bulgarian Split Squat

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 3–5 minutes rest

Why: The Bulgarian split squat is the best dumbbell substitute for the barbell back squat. By putting your rear foot up on a bench, you shift most of the load onto your front leg, which makes lighter dumbbells feel much heavier and lets you train your glutes hard without needing massive weights.

How to:

Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand 2–3 feet in front of a bench.
Place the top of your left foot on the bench behind you, with your right heel planted on the floor.
Lower your hips by bending your right knee until it reaches about 90 degrees.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.
Complete all reps on your right leg, then switch sides.

Expert Tip: To find the perfect front foot position, sit on the bench, extend one foot out in front of you as far as you can while keeping it flat on the floor, then stand up without moving it. That’s where your front foot should stay.

Alternatives:

2. Single-Leg Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The single-leg RDL is the best dumbbell substitute for the barbell RDL. Like the Bulgarian split squat, taking most of the load on one leg makes lighter dumbbells more challenging. It may also recruit the gluteus medius and minimus more, since they have to stabilize your pelvis on one leg.¹⁶

How to:

Stand upright holding a dumbbell in your right hand in front of your right thigh.
Keep your back flat and push your hips back as you lower the weight straight toward the floor, letting your left leg extend behind you for balance.
Lower until you feel a deep stretch in your right hamstring or just before your lower back rounds.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.
Complete all reps on your right leg, then switch sides.

Expert Tip: If you struggle with balance on the single-leg RDL, set up an incline bench beside you and rest your free hand on it for support. At home, anything around waist height will work—a chair, a sturdy table, or a countertop.

Alternatives:

Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift
Dumbbell Good Morning
Dumbbell Deadlift

3. Dumbbell Hip Thrust

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The dumbbell hip thrust has all the same benefits as the barbell version. The only drawback is that it’s much harder to load heavily.

How to:

Sit on the floor with your upper back against a bench set perpendicular to your body and a dumbbell in your hip crease.
Plant your feet shoulder-width apart, 12–18 inches from your glutes.
Drive through your heels to lift your hips until your torso is parallel to the floor and your shins are vertical.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: Place a folded towel, small cushion, or pad in your hip crease before resting the dumbbell on top. Without it, the dumbbell can dig into your hips, and you’ll often end the set because of the pain—not because your glutes are fatigued.

Alternatives:

Single-Leg Dumbbell Hip Thrust
Dumbbell Glute Bridge
Single-Leg Dumbbell Glute Bridge

4. Dumbbell Walking Lunge

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The dumbbell walking lunge may recruit the gluteus medius more than other dumbbell exercises, thanks to the stability demands of stepping forward onto one leg at a time.¹⁷ That matters in a dumbbell-only workout because you have fewer good ways to target the smaller glute muscles directly.

How to:

Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart.
Step forward 2–3 feet with your right foot, then lower until your left knee touches the floor.
Push off your right foot to stand back up, bringing your left foot forward to meet it.
Repeat, leading with your left foot.

Expert Tip: Take long steps—roughly 2–3 feet—each time. Short, choppy steps make the exercise feel harder but shift the load onto your quads. A longer stride keeps the work on your glutes and hamstrings, which is what you want.

Alternatives:

The Best Bodyweight Glute Workout for Women

Bodyweight Split Squat: 3 sets | 10–20 reps per leg | 2–3 minutes rest

Bodyweight Squat: 3 sets | 10–20 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Bodyweight Glute Bridge: 3 sets | 10–20 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Side-Lying Clamshell: 3 sets | 10–20 reps per side | 2–3 minutes rest

The bodyweight workout is the most limited of the three. With no external load, you can’t apply progressive overload past the first few weeks, so your results will quickly plateau.

That said, it’s a perfectly good starting point if you’re new to strength training and want to build a base before adding weights. Just treat it as a stepping stone, not a destination.

1. Bodyweight Split Squat

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 10–20 reps per leg | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The bodyweight split squat is the best bodyweight option for stimulating glute growth. Taking most of your weight on one leg loads each glute with significantly more of your bodyweight than a regular squat does—which is what makes the exercise actually challenging without external load.

How to:

Stand upright with your hands on your hips.
Step your left foot back 2–3 feet so the ball of your left foot is on the floor and your right heel is planted.
Lower your hips by bending your right knee until it reaches about 90 degrees.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.
Complete all reps on your right leg, then switch sides.

Expert Tip: Take a long step forward—roughly 2–3 feet. A shorter stance shifts the load onto your quads, but a longer stride keeps the work on your glutes, which is what you want.

Alternatives:

2. Bodyweight Squat

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 10–20 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The bodyweight squat trains the same movement as the back squat, just with much less load. Doing it after the split squat is intentional—your legs are already fatigued from the single-leg work, which means the lighter resistance of a two-leg squat is enough to push you close to failure without needing weight.

How to:

Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and your toes turned out.
Keep your back straight, sit down, and push your knees out in the same direction as your toes.
Lower until your thighs are parallel to the floor.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: Sink as low as you comfortably can—ideally to the point where your thighs are parallel to the floor or below. Stopping above parallel means your glutes have to do less work, which generally results in less glute growth.

Alternatives:

Bodyweight Jump Squat
Bodyweight Box Squat

3. Bodyweight Glute Bridge

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 10–20 reps | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The glute bridge is the best bodyweight option for training your glutes without involving the rest of your legs much, which makes it a useful addition to a workout that’s otherwise heavy on squatting movements.

How to:

Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor, about hip-width apart.
Plant your arms by your sides for stability.
Drive through your heels to lift your hips until your torso forms a straight line from your knees to your shoulders.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.

Expert Tip: When the regular glute bridge becomes too easy, switch to the single-leg version. Plant one foot and lift the other off the floor, then perform the rep using only your planted leg. This effectively doubles the load on each glute and lets you keep progressing without needing weights.

Alternatives:

Single-Leg Glute Bridge
Bodyweight Hip Thrust
Frog Pump

4. Side-Lying Clamshell Raise

Sets, Reps, and Rest: 3 sets | 10–20 reps per side | 2–3 minutes rest

Why: The side-lying clamshell raise is the closest bodyweight equivalent to the hip abduction machine. It won’t grow your glutes meaningfully on its own, but it adds a different movement pattern to a workout that otherwise leans heavily on hip extension.

How to:

Lie on your side with your forearm on the floor, your knees bent, and your knees and feet stacked together on the floor.
Press your bottom knee into the floor to lift your hips, and at the same time, rotate your top knee up and away from the bottom one.
Reverse the movement and return to the starting position.
Complete all reps on one side, then switch.

Expert Tip: Drive your hips up and forward until your body forms a straight line from your knees to your shoulders. This adds a thrusting motion to the abduction movement, which gets a little more out of the exercise.

Alternatives: