Hip Thrust Alternatives: Pick One by the Reason You Need It

Most articles about hip thrust alternatives are really just glute exercise lists with a different headline. That is not what you need when the bench is taken or your hip pinches at the top of every rep.

What you need is a direct substitute: something that does the specific mechanical job the hip thrust was doing in your program. This article is organized by the reason you need one, and every option is scored on what it matches and what it does not.

What You Are Actually Trying to Replace

The hip thrust is not special because it works the glutes. Plenty of things work the glutes.

It is useful because it does three specific things at once, and any real substitute has to be judged against those three rather than against a vague idea of glute training.

One, a horizontal force vector. You are lying on your back and pushing your hips up against a load that resists straight down, which means the resistance opposes hip extension along a line roughly parallel to the floor rather than stacking on top of you.

Two, peak tension at end range hip extension. The hardest point of the rep is the top, where your hips are fully straight, which is the opposite of a squat where the hardest point is the bottom.

Three, a knee flexed position. With your knees bent, the hamstrings are already shortened and cannot contribute much to hip extension, so the glutes take a larger share of the work.

If you know which of those three you actually needed, picking a substitute stops being guesswork. If you need a refresher on the movement itself before replacing it, our guide to hip thrusts with dumbbells covers the setup.

A Match Score for Hip Thrust Substitutes

Here is a way to compare candidates on the same terms instead of arguing about which one feels better.

The formula, in plain text:

Match score out of 8 = horizontal force vector points (0 to 3) + end range peak tension points (0 to 3) + knee flexed position points (0 to 2)

How the points are assigned:

• Force vector, 0 to 3. 3 if the resistance opposes hip extension roughly parallel to the floor at the hardest point of the rep, 2 if it is angled, 0 if it is straight down through a standing body.
• Peak tension position, 0 to 3. 3 if the rep is hardest at full hip extension, 1 or 2 if it is hardest in mid range, 0 if it is hardest with the hip deeply flexed.
• Knee position, 0 to 2. 2 if the knee is bent through the whole rep, 1 if partly, 0 if the leg is essentially straight.

The scores:

Every assumption, stated out loud. The score measures mechanical similarity to the barbell hip thrust and nothing else, and it is judgment applied to the mechanics rather than a measurement of muscle activity or growth.

It says nothing about how much load a movement can carry, which is the single biggest reason a high scoring option can still be the wrong pick.

It assumes a standard barbell hip thrust as the reference. It also assumes the back extension is done on a horizontal bench with a rounded upper back and a deliberate glute finish, not as a lower back exercise.

How the answer changes if an assumption changes. The frog pump and the bodyweight glute bridge both score 8 and both cap out at loads most trained lifters pass in a few weeks, so if progressive loading is why you thrust, a 6 you can add plates to beats an 8 you cannot.

If your reason for substituting is hip pinching at the top, the knee criterion stops mattering to you, so drop it and re total everything out of 6. The cable pull through moves from sixth place to a tie for first.

If your reason is a crowded gym, add a fourth criterion for setup time and the band and cable options climb.

This is a WorkoutHealthy planning estimate for comparing movements, not an industry standard and not a measured finding.

If You Have No Bench or No Barbell

Use the floor bridge. Lie flat, feet planted, and press a dumbbell or a loaded barbell across your hips, then drive up until your hips are straight.

It matches the hip thrust on all three criteria, which is why it scores 8. What it does not match is range of motion, because the floor stops your hips well above where a bench would let them drop, so you lose the bottom third of the movement.

The practical answer is to accept the shorter range and add reps. In my view a set of 15 floor bridges with a hard 2 second squeeze at the top is a fair trade for 8 heavier thrusts when the bench is not an option.

Use the single leg glute bridge when you have no external load at all, since one leg roughly doubles the demand on the working side without any equipment.

If the Gym Is Too Crowded for the Setup

A barbell hip thrust needs a bench, a bar, plates, a pad, and usually a corner where nobody will walk through your setup. That is a lot of real estate at 6pm.

Use the cable pull through. Face away from a low pulley with a rope between your legs, hinge back, then stand tall and finish by squeezing the glutes hard.

It matches the horizontal force vector and the end range peak tension, which are the two criteria that matter most. It does not match the knee flexed position, so your hamstrings share more of the work than they would in a thrust, and it takes about 20 seconds to set up.

Use the horizontal back extension if your gym has a flat back extension bench. Set the pads so your hips clear them, round your upper back slightly, and think about finishing with the glutes rather than arching with the lower back.

On a truly horizontal bench the resistance is hardest at the top, in full hip extension, which is exactly the hip thrust's signature. That is also the reason the 45 degree version scores so much lower: on an angled bench the hardest point drifts toward the middle of the range and the top of the rep goes light.

If Your Hip or Lower Back Hurts in the Thrust Position

Before substituting, check whether the problem is the bench height or the finish, because both are fixable without changing the exercise.

If it persists, the cable pull through is usually the best first move, because you are standing, the spine is not pinned against a bench, and you control exactly how far you extend.

The reverse hyperextension is the other option if your gym has one, since it loads end range hip extension with the torso supported and no bar across the hips. Very few gyms own one, which is the honest limitation.

Skip the 45 degree hyperextension here if lower back discomfort is the issue, because the temptation to finish that movement with lumbar extension instead of hip extension is exactly what you are trying to avoid.

If You Get Pubic or Hip Flexor Pinching at the Top

This one has a specific cause: the bar sits on the hip crease and compresses the front of the hip at the exact moment you are trying to close the joint.

Use the cable pull through or the band standing hip extension, since neither puts anything across the front of your hip at all. Drop the knee criterion from the score and both jump to the top of the list.

Use the frog pump if you want to stay on the floor. Heels together, knees wide, and the abducted position moves the load off the pinch point for most people while keeping the mechanics almost identical.

The frog pump's ceiling is low, so treat it as high rep finishing work rather than the main lift.

If You Want to Train the Glutes at Longer Muscle Lengths

The hip thrust is hardest where the glutes are shortest, and some lifters want the opposite: load in the deep hip flexion positions where the glutes are stretched.

This is where the Bulgarian split squat and the deficit step up belong, and it is also where the match score is the wrong tool, because both score near zero on similarity while doing something genuinely useful.

Be honest about what the evidence supports here. The general research on training at long muscle lengths is encouraging but has mostly been done on other muscles, and a 2025 trial in trained lifters found lengthened partial reps and full range reps produced similar growth in the arms rather than a clear advantage for either (Wolf and colleagues, 2025).

There is no good direct trial on the glutes specifically at long versus short lengths, so the sensible position is that these movements are a reasonable complement to the thrust and not a proven upgrade over it.

Run both if you can. Something end range loaded and something long length loaded covers more of the curve than either alone.

If You Train at Home With Only Bands and Dumbbells

Dumbbell floor bridge for load, run in the 12 to 20 rep range since the dumbbell you can balance on your hips is the ceiling.

Band standing hip extension for volume, anchored low, one leg at a time, driving the working leg back and finishing with a squeeze. It matches the end range peak tension well and the force vector reasonably, and the band gets hardest exactly where you want it to.

Single leg glute bridge for the hard sets, with a dumbbell on the hip of the working side once bodyweight gets easy.

For a wider set of loaded options with the equipment you already own, our list of 25 dumbbell glute exercises covers far more ground than this article does.

Adjacent, but Not Substitutes

The kettlebell swing is a horizontal hip extension movement, which is why it scores a 5, but the tension at the top lasts a fraction of a second because the movement is ballistic. It is conditioning and power work that happens to use the same joint action.

The step up and the Bulgarian split squat are excellent single leg movements, but the force vector is vertical and the hardest part is the bottom, so they replace a squat far better than they replace a thrust.

The 45 degree hyperextension is a fine posterior chain exercise that is simply not a hip thrust substitute, for the reason covered above.

If what you actually want is a broader glute session rather than a like for like swap, our guide to the 5 best exercises for glutes is the better starting point.

What the Research Does and Does Not Show

The hip thrust has a reputation built largely on one type of evidence, and it is worth separating what has been measured from what has been assumed.

On muscle activity, a 2015 study in 13 trained women found the barbell hip thrust produced roughly double the mean gluteus maximus activity of the back squat at matched 10 rep loads, along with higher biceps femoris activity, while quadriceps activity was similar (Contreras and colleagues, 2015). That is a real finding about activation during a rep.

What it is not is a finding about growth. Activation measured over a set has never been a reliable predictor of hypertrophy over months, and treating the two as the same thing is where most of the overclaiming happens.

On growth, a 2023 trial had 34 untrained participants train either hip thrusts or back squats twice a week for 9 weeks and measured the results with MRI. Gluteal growth was comparable between the two, with point estimates slightly favoring the hip thrust and confidence intervals that overlapped heavily, and deadlift strength improved similarly in both groups (Plotkin and colleagues, 2023).

The squat group did gain more quadriceps and adductor size, so the exercises are not interchangeable overall, just closer on glutes than the activation data suggested.

Two honest limits on all of this. The growth trial used untrained people over 9 weeks, which is the easiest population and the shortest timeframe to show an effect in, and the activation study used 13 people in a single session.

The reasonable conclusion is that the hip thrust is a good glute exercise and not a uniquely necessary one, which is exactly why substituting it is far less costly than the internet suggests.

Glute Bridge Video Demonstration

The floor glute bridge is the simplest hip-thrust substitute when a bench or barbell setup is not practical.

Where to Go Next

Once you have picked a substitute, the question becomes how many sets and at what rep range, which our strength programming guide works through in detail.

References

1. Contreras B, Vigotsky AD, Schoenfeld BJ, Beardsley C, Cronin J. A comparison of gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, and vastus lateralis electromyographic activity in the back squat and barbell hip thrust exercises. Journal of Applied Biomechanics. 2015;31(6):452 to 458. https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jab/31/6/article-p452.xml
2. Plotkin DL, Rodas MA, Vigotsky AD, et al. Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift. Frontiers in Physiology. 2023;14:1279170. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2023.1279170/full
3. Wolf M, Androulakis Korakakis P, Pinero A, et al. Lengthened partial repetitions elicit similar muscular adaptations as full range of motion repetitions during resistance training in trained individuals. PeerJ. 2025;13:e18904. https://peerj.com/articles/18904/