The 20 Best Hip Exercises for Muscle Growth, Athletic Performance, and Strength

Strong hips are the foundation of a strong body, essential for everything from explosive athletic power to preventing lower back pain. Weak hips sink ships.

But building powerful and healthy hips requires more than a few sets of squats once a week.

You need variety.

You need to hit your glutes, your adductors, your abductors, your flexors; the whole shebang.

That’s why we’ve put together this list. Forget guesswork. These are the 20 best exercises for building hips that are as strong and powerful as they look.

Hip Muscle Anatomy and Function

The hip muscles are a group of muscles around the pelvis that control the movement and stability of the hip joint, including flexing, extending, rotating, and abducting the leg.

You can organize them into groups based on the direction they move your leg.

Here’s a rundown of the major groups, some of the most prominent players, and their primary functions:

• Gluteal Muscles (Your Glutes):
  • The gluteus maximus is the biggest of the bunch and one of the main muscles that work when you do squats and lunges. Its primary job is hip extension, which means straightening your hip or moving your leg behind you.
  • The gluteus medius and minimus are located on the side of your hip. They help with hip abduction (moving your leg out to the side) along with another hip abductor, the tensor fasciae latae, and prevent you from waddling by stabilizing your pelvis when you walk or stand on one leg.
• Hip Flexors: These guys are at the front of your hip and do the opposite of your gluteus maximus.
  • The iliopsoas is a deep-lying muscle that connects your spine to your femur. It’s your most powerful hip flexor and brings your knee up towards your chest.
  • The rectus femoris is one of your quadriceps muscles, but it also crosses the hip joint, which means it helps with hip flexion.
• Adductors: These are your inner thigh muscles.
  • Their main job, true to their name, is hip adduction, which is bringing your leg back toward the midline of your body, like when you crush a watermelon between your thighs.
• Lateral Rotators: A group of smaller and deeper muscles hiding underneath your gluteus maximus.
  • Their main job is external or lateral rotation of the hip: turning your leg so your foot points outward. The piriformis is the most well-known muscle in this group (because who has really heard of the gemellus superior?)

How They Work Together

A hip muscle rarely works in isolation. Most movements you do involve a team effort.

A few examples:

• When you walk or run, your hip flexors pull your leg forward and your glutes and hamstrings extend it backward to propel you forward while your gluteus medius and minimus keep your pelvis level.
• If you do a squat, you use your gluteus maximus to power the movement (hip extension) while your adductors and abductors stabilize your knees.
• When you kick a ball, your hip flexors bring your leg forward, and your adductors swing it across your body.

The 20 Best Hip Exercises

Here are the 20 best hip exercises you can do, sorted by movement patterns. There is significant overlap, especially with compound exercises (exercises that involve movement over several joints), but here they are sorted by their main movement pattern.

All exercises are detailed in our workout log app, StrengthLog, so you always have proper form at a glance when you’re training.

Squat & Lunge Patterns

This group involves significant flexion and extension at both the hips and the knees.

They are compound movements that train more than one muscle at a time, which is very time-efficient.

Squat

The squat is the most popular lower-body exercise. It’s a tippity top choice for bodybuilders, powerlifters, and sportspeople who want mass, strength, and athletic performance. It’s also essential for older people who want to stay mobile and independent. If you had to pick only one lift to do for the rest of your life, the squat should be a top contender.

If you regularly do deep, heavy squats, you’re well on your way to some powerful hips. They are great for building your gluteus maximus and adductors, especially if you use a wider stance, and strengthening the surrounding stabilizer muscles.

There are several ways you can make the barbell squat even more of a hip exercise:

• Place the bar lower on your rear delts (a low-bar squat) instead of high on your traps (a high-bar squat). You’ll lean further forward and involve your hips more to move the weight.
• If you start the descent by pushing your hips back like sitting in a chair, you’ll encourage a hip-dominant squat pattern.
• Try to squat to at least parallel (where your hip crease is in line with your knee) or slightly lower to put the hip joint through a full range of motion.

How to Squat

1. Place the bar on your upper back. Inhale and brace your core slightly, and unrack the bar.
2. Take two steps back and adjust your foot position.
3. Squat as deep as possible with good technique.
4. With control, stop and reverse the movement, extending your hips and legs again.
5. Exhale on the way up or reset your breath at the top.
6. Inhale and repeat for reps.

Bulgarian Split Squat

Bulgarian split squats are single-leg squats with your rear foot on a bench or box. They are fantastic for your hips and build strength, stability, and mobility at the same time. You can do them with a barbell on your back, a pair of dumbbells in your hands, or with your body weight only.

The glute max on your front leg extends your hip and pushes you back up to the starting position. That’s where you get the strength and muscle-building stimulus that makes the split squat so good for bodybuilding and strength sports.

Because you do it on one leg, your hip’s stabilizing muscles, especially the gluteus medius on the side of your hip, pitch in to prevent your pelvis from dropping and your knee from caving inward. You improve your balance and become more powerful in pretty much every athletic movement, because you rarely do athletic stuff standing still on both legs.

Lastly, while your front leg works, your back leg gets a nice dynamic stretch in the hip flexor. If your hip flexors are tighter than a drum, the Bulgarian split squat actively lengthens them on one side while strengthening the glutes on the other: a winning combination for happy hips.

How to Do Bulgarian Split Squats

1. Stand with your back to a bench, which should be about knee height. Stand about one long step in front of the bench.
2. Place one foot on the bench behind you.
3. Inhale, look forward, and squat down with control until right before the knee of the back leg touches the floor.
4. Reverse the movement and extend your front leg again, while exhaling.
5. Inhale at the top and repeat for reps.

Lunge

A lunge is any movement where you step forward or backward with one leg and lower your hips until both knees are bent at about a 90-degree angle. They activate large parts of your lower body, from your quads to your glute muscles (all three get in on the action), adductors, and almost every other hip stabilizer.

You can do lunges in many different ways, and they are all great hip exercises:

• The classic forward lunge hits your quads a bit more, but your hips still have to work to control the movement and push you back to the start.
• Many people, myself included, have a soft spot for the backward/reverse lunge. Stepping backward emphasizes your glutes and hamstrings to control the descent and power you back up, and it can be a bit easier on the knees.
• The walking lunge is a dynamic variant where you move forward with each step. It’s a great way to challenge your balance and coordination while your hip stabilizers fire to keep you steady.
• The plyometric jumping lunge involves jumping and switching your legs mid-air for more advanced agility and power training.

Note: The side lunge gets a special mention in the Frontal Plane section below.

Step-Up

The step-up is as simple as it sounds: you step up onto a box, bench, or chair, and then step back down.

It’s one of the best functional hip exercises you can do, especially if you’re looking to build your butt. Some studies have even shown that step-ups work the glute max more than squats and hip thrusts, two exercises known for their butt benefits.¹ The gluteus medius and minimus also help as stabilizers. They keep your pelvis level and prevent your opposite hip from dropping down as you balance on one leg.

You can make step-ups even more effective for your hips by 1) using a higher box to increase the range of motion at your hip (within reason; don’t go so high that your form breaks down), and 2) hinge forward a bit at your hips as you prepare to step up to pre-load your glutes and hamstrings. Then, as you drive up, squeeze your glutes hard to extend your hips.

You can use dumbbells or a barbell to make the exercise heavier, like this:

How to Do Step Ups

1. Stand in front of a chair, bench or something else that you can step up on.
2. Place your foot on the chair.
3. Lightly brace your core, and step up until your leg is straight.
4. Lower yourself in a controlled motion.
5. You can keep your foot on the chair, and repeat for reps.

Hip Hinge Patterns

A hip hinge is the movement of bending forward by pushing your hips back while keeping your spine neutral, kind of like you’re trying to close a car door with your butt.

All deadlift variations and kettlebell swings are top gym examples of hip hinge exercises.

Deadlift

The deadlift is one of the purest expressions of strength, where you pick up a heavy barbell off the floor. The main movement in any deadlift is a hip hinge; you fold at your hips and then extend them to stand up straight.

Deadlifts train large parts of your body, from top to toe, and make you stronger all over. There are three main types of deadlifts, and they are all excellent hip exercises.

• You can’t go wrong with mastering the conventional deadlift for powerful hips. It builds strength through your entire posterior chain.
• The sumo deadlift requires more external rotation of the hips (turning your knees out) and can be a good choice if the conventional stance feels uncomfortable on your lower back, and it’s great for improving hip mobility.
• The trap bar deadlift is an effective and safe way to train the hip hinge. It involves the quads quite a bit more than a conventional deadlift, but you can lift heavier with it, so you still provide a massive stimulus for your hips. It’s my favorite and the one I usually program for beginners and athletes.

But the best thing is that you don’t need to get married to just one. Try them all out and see which one feels best for your body and works with what you’re trying to build.

Romanian Deadlift / Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift

The Romanian Deadlift (RDL) and its single-leg counterpart are fantastic exercises for building powerful hips.

• The regular Romanian deadlift is the quintessential hip hinge movement, training your hamstrings, glutes, lower back and teaching your body to move correctly from the hips. It’s a staple for building a bigger and better rear end and improves athletic performance in any sport that requires hip extension (anything involving running, jumping, or kicking, for example).
• The single-leg RDL is the same movement, but done standing on one leg. You activate the stabilizing muscles around your hip (gluteus medius and minimus) more to prevent you from toppling over and force your weaker side to pull its own weight.

In short, the standard RDL is a fantastic way to load up the glutes and hamstrings for strength and size, while the single-leg version is a surefire way of improving hip stability and ironing out imbalances.

Note: you can do both variants with either a barbell or holding a pair of dumbbells.

Kettlebell Swing

The kettlebell swing is an explosive hip hinge. The power to move the kettlebell doesn’t come from your arms, as it might look at first glance; it comes from a powerful thrust of your hips.

When you perform a kettlebell swing correctly, you’re working a whole host of muscles, with your hips at the center of the action. It hits your lower back, hamstrings, and adductors, but the explosive hip extension at the top of the swing is all glutes.

Kettlebell swings do more than build muscle; they improve flexibility and range of motion in the hips, build stability around the hip joint, and the thrust itself boosts athletic performance in any sport that requires jumping, sprinting, or quick direction changes.

Also, a great advantage of the swing is that it’s easy to learn. It offers many of the benefits of Olympic lifts, like the power clean, but is so much easier and faster to learn.

How to Do Kettlebell Swings

1. Place a kettlebell on the ground, about one or two feet in front of you.
2. Take a wide stance, lean forward, and grip the kettlebell.
3. Brace your core slightly, and swing the kettlebell back between your legs, while inhaling.
4. Swing the kettlebell forward by extending your hip, while exhaling.
5. Try to swing the kettlebell to about chest height.
6. Repeat this for reps, and put the kettlebell back on the ground when you’re finished.

Cable Pull-Through

The cable pull-through is a neat little hip hinge exercise that distinguishes itself from deadlift and kettlebell swings in enough ways to make it a valuable addition to your arsenal of hip movements.

It’s good for both beginners learning the hip hinge movement pattern and for experienced lifters who really want to zero in on the glutes.

If you’re new to lifting or struggle with deadlift form, the pull-through is a great teacher, with the constant tension from the cable giving you feedback and guiding you through proper hinging motion.

Plus, because the resistance comes from a cable behind you, it’s more forgiving on your lower back than piling a ton of weight on a barbell: a great option if you have back issues or if your back is already fatigued from heavy lifts.

How to Do Cable Pull-Throughs

1. Fasten a rope handle in the lower position on a cable pulley. Turn your back to the pulley, with the cable between your thighs, and take a few steps forward.
2. Bend forward by hinging in your hips, and let the rope handle move backwards between your thighs.
3. Extend your hip again, and return to standing.

Glute Bridge

The glute bridge and its one-legged cousin, the single-leg glute bridge, are two excellent hip exercises with several applications in and outside the gym.

The regular glute bridge is awesome for beginners for training glutes and hips at home without equipment and for learning the basic hip extension movement pattern, but it also doubles as an activation exercise for trained lifters who need to wake up their glutes before a heavy leg day.

Doing glute bridges one leg at a time makes it significantly more challenging and adds a stability element by calling in your side glutes (medius and minimus) to keep your pelvis level and prevent your unsupported hip from dropping.

Hip Thrust

Is the hip thrust a good hip exercise? Yes, arguably one of the best hip exercises you can do, especially for the glutes.

Hip thrusts are pure, loaded hip extension; you’re training the function of the muscle you’re trying to build. And it’s a rather unique exercise in that it checks all the boxes for a compound lift, but it behaves almost like an isolation exercise because most of the load lands on your glutes.

You can do hip thrusts in a dedicated hip thrust machine, too, if your gym has one. Neither is “better,” but they might be better for different goals.

If you want to maximize functional strength gains and hit as many of your hip stabilizing muscles as possible, pick the regular barbell hip thrust.

But if your main goal is to grow your butt, I suggest you try thrusting in a machine. When you don’t have to spend energy (mental and physical) stabilizing a wobbly barbell, you can channel all your effort into your glutes. With heavy barbell thrusts, I can see your smaller stabilizing muscles giving out before your glutes are fried. But with a machine, it’s a fixed path, so the only thing stopping you is the force your glutes can produce. Also, it’s a tremendous amount less hassle to set up and get into it compared to a heavy bar.

Frontal Plane Strength (Lateral Movement)

A frontal plane pattern is any side-to-side movement, like a side lunge or a lateral shuffle, that strengthens your hips to keep you stable and prevent you from tipping over.

Cossack Squat

The Cossack squat is like a combination of a squat and a side lunge where you shift your weight to one side and drop into a deep squat on that leg while extending the other leg out straight.

Most lower-body exercises, like regular squats, lunges, and running, happen in the sagittal plane (front-to-back). Your hips, however, are ball-and-socket joints, which means they’re designed to move in all sorts of directions. The Cossack squat works you in the frontal plane (side-to-side), a direction a lot of people, even experienced lifters, often neglect, and adds a healthy dose of rotation while it’s at it

If you’ve never done Cossack squats before, expect to be sore in places you didn’t know you had. We’re talking inner thighs, the sides of your glutes, and your quads and hamstrings in a whole new way.

It’s also a tremendous exercise for improving the mobility and flexibility in your entire lower body.

How to Do Cossack Squats

1. Stand with your feet spread wide and maintain an upright posture.
2. Bend one knee and lower yourself deeply toward that side, while extending the other leg straight out to the side.
3. Keep your foot flat on the bent leg, and try to point the toes of the extended leg upward.
4. Push through the heel of the bent leg to return to the starting position.
5. Repeat on the opposite side, alternating legs for the desired number of repetitions.

Side Lunge

The side lunge differs from regular lunges in that instead of stepping forward or backward, you take a big step out to the side. It gets its own spot because you move in a different plane and hit hip muscles that many other exercises miss.

• Those muscles on the side of your butt, like the gluteus medius, get a good workout when they stabilize your pelvis and push you back to the starting position.
• But your inner thighs, the adductors, that’s the money-maker. The side lunge gives your inner thigh on the straight leg a very nice, active stretch, then, on the bent leg, your adductors control the descent and help you return to standing.

In addition, when you sink into the lunge, you actively improve your hip mobility and flexibility as the movement itself dynamically stretches and opens up the hip joint.

If your body weight feels too easy, you can hold a weight at your chest (goblet style) or a dumbbell/kettlebell in each hand or a barbell on your back to add some resistance.

How to Do Side Lunges

1. Stand up straight with plenty of space to your side for you to step out.
2. Lightly brace your core, and take a big step to the side.
3. Go as deep as possible without your heel lifting from the ground and while maintaining control.
4. Push yourself back up by pressing your foot into the ground.
5. Repeat for reps.

Abduction

Hip abduction is when you lift your leg straight out to the side, away from the center of your body. Basically, you train the muscles that prevent you from walking with a wobble.

Cable Hip Abduction / Machine Hip Abduction

The cable hip abduction and the machine hip abduction exercises are both straightforward ways to isolate your side glutes, the gluteus medius and minimus, and the tensor fasciae latae that runs along the outside of your hip.

Neither variant is inherently better; the cable variant gives you an unrestricted range of motion but requires more balance and coordination, while the biggest advantage of the machine is stability. You can push heavier weight, which is great for building muscle (hypertrophy), and there’s less that can go wrong with your form.

Both are good hip exercises, especially at the end of a leg workout to completely fry your glutes.

Clamshells

Imagine a clam opening and closing its shell, and you’ve got the gist of the clamshell. It’s a neat little hip exercise for the muscles on the outside of your hip and deep in your glutes that stabilize the pelvis.

They are more of a stability and activation exercise, so you’ll need to incorporate heavier, compound exercises for significant glute growth. That being said, doing some clamshells is a fantastic way to wake up your glutes before a workout to make them fire properly. And, they are brilliant for prehab/rehab, especially for runners.

To make the exercise more challenging, place a band around your thighs, just above your knees, and you’ll feel the burn faster.

How to Do Clamshells

1. Lie on your side, with your legs bent at about a 90-degree angle.
2. Tuck your pelvis in to activate your glutes properly.
3. Lightly brace your core and lift the upper leg by using your glutes. Lift as high as you can while maintaining contact with the glute muscles.
4. Lower the leg in a slow and controlled motion, and repeat for reps.

Fire Hydrants

The fire hydrant gets its name from the fact that you kind of look like a dog marking its territory doing it. It is a bodyweight exercise for your glutes and hips, especially the gluteus medius and minimus, the muscles on the side of your butt that are often ignored in favor of their bigger brother, which you sit on.

When you move your thigh bone within the hip socket in the fire-hydrant-y outward-and-upward rotation, you essentially grease the joint. You maintain and improve a range of motion that you might not regularly use during your day.

To build muscle mass in the hip area, you want to stick to heavy compounds like lunges or squats, but fire hydrants are great for hip health, stability, and function. Perfect for prehab and as an activation exercise to wake them up before a big workout.

How to Do Fire Hydrants

1. Stand on all fours, with your gaze on the floor.
2. Lightly brace your core and lift your leg to the side by using your glute muscles. Lift your leg as high as possible while maintaining contact with your glutes.
3. Slowly lower your leg and repeat for reps.

Lateral Walk With Band

The lateral walk with a band is a sideways walking exercise where you place a resistance band around your legs and then step sideways. It sounds easy enough, but your hips will tell you a different story after a few reps.

The banded walk is a go-to for warm-ups and activation drills, but it can also be part of rehab for injuries like knee valgus and low back pain, and if you’re a runner, it can help with IT band issues and lower body stability.

The key to effective band walks is to maintain tension on the band the entire time; don’t let your feet snap back together. Placing the band just above your knees is a good starting point, but for more of a challenge, you can move it down around your ankles, like in the video above.

How to Do Lateral Walks With Band

1. Place an elastic band around your ankles.
2. Walk sideways, keeping tension by bringing your leg out against the band.
3. Choose for yourself if you want to change direction after every step, or if you, for example, want to walk ten steps in one direction followed by ten steps in the other direction.

Adduction

Hip adduction is when you squeeze your leg back toward the centerline of your body using your inner thigh muscles.

Cable Hip Adduction / Machine Hip Adduction

Much like the cable and machine hip abduction I talked about earlier, the cable hip adduction and the machine hip adduction are two neat isolation exercises for your hips, this time for the muscles that bring your leg toward the midline of your body.

And again, both have advantages and disadvantages.

• The cable allows for a more natural range of motion (no fixed path), but the lack of stability means you can’t overload your muscles as effectively. And fiddling with an ankle strap isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time.
• The machine dictates the path of movement, which might not be ideal for everyone’s individual biomechanics. On the other hand, it’s a very straightforward movement (great for beginners), and you can lift heavier weight than with the cable version.

Note: You can also do hip adductions with a resistance band if you don’t have access to gym machines.

Dynamic Copenhagen Plank

The dynamic Copenhagen plank is like a souped-up version of the side plank, but instead of stacking your feet on the floor, you prop your top leg up on a bench. The dynamic part comes from adding movement to an already wobbly position by lowering and raising your hips.

Dynamic Copenhagen planks are great for improving adduction strength and are extra useful if your gym (or you train at home) has limited or no suitable equipment.

They are also often sold as a groin injury preventer, but the evidence for that is limited.² Logic suggests that a stronger groin area should lead to fewer groin strains and injuries, but research hasn’t found such a link, at least not yet.

How to Do Dynamic Copenhagen Planks

1. Lie on your side with your top leg resting on a bench.
2. Place your forearm on the floor directly below your shoulder for support.
3. Engage your core and lift your bottom hip off the ground so your body forms a straight line.
4. Keep your bottom leg off the ground, hanging under the bench or lightly touching it for balance.
5. Lower your hips toward the ground in a controlled motion.
6. Pause briefly at the bottom, then squeeze your obliques and adductors to raise your hips back to the starting position.
7. Repeat for the desired number of repetitions, then switch sides and repeat.

Hip Flexion

Hip flexion is when you bring your knee up towards your chest, a basic movement you use for everything from climbing stairs to sprinting.

Banded Hip March

The banded hip march is a strength and activation exercise that isolates the hip flexors. It’s a rehab staple and a superb exercise for runners and (especially) sprinters to improve performance and stability.

I’ve seen many athletes feel tight in the hips, and it’s often because of weak hip flexors (or, not necessarily weak per se, but the weak link in the complex hip muscle area). A weak muscle feels tight, and the solution is not the one that often feels the most intuitive, to stretch it, but to strengthen it with direct weight training. And the banded hip march is one of the most effective options.

Choose a band that provides resistance throughout the entire range of motion, but not so much that you have to focus more on balance than on working the muscle.

How to Do Banded Hip March

1. Stand upright with a mini band around your feet. Engage your core and maintain a neutral posture throughout the exercise.
2. Lift one knee toward your chest while keeping the other leg stable.
3. Pause briefly at the top.
4. Lower the leg back to the starting position in a controlled manner.
5. Repeat the movement with the other leg.
6. Continue alternating legs until you reach the desired number of reps.

Hip Workouts for Muscle and Strength

Before we close this one out, let’s take a look at what an effective hip workout can look like.

Our Glutes and Hamstrings Workout works your entire hip area, and it builds muscle and strength throughout the rest of your lower body as well:

StrengthLog’s Glutes and Hamstrings Workout

Exercise	Sets
Bulgarian Split Squat	3
Leg Curl	3
Hip Thrust	3
Romanian Deadlift	3
Step Up	3

Train it as part of your regular workout routine, and read more about it here.

The Glutes and Hamstrings Workout is available in our workout tracker as a premium workout, meaning it requires a subscription to follow in-app (free trial available).

For a free workout, and if you want to target the hip area specifically without working your quads and hamstrings too much, give this hip workout a go:

StrengthLog’s Hip Workout

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Hip Thrust	3	8
Cable Hip Abduction	3	10
Dynamic Copenhagen Plank	3	Max reps
Clamshell	3	15

This workout hits all planes of hip motion:

• Extension (hip thrusts)
• Abduction (cable hip abductions)
• Adduction (dynamic Copenhagen plank)
• Rotation (clamshells)

To follow these workouts, download our workout log app and start tracking your workouts today.

And with that, let’s bring it home. If you scrolled all the way down here hoping for a single, magical exercise, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

The “best” hip exercise is the one you can perform with good form, load progressively, and stick with.

But the good news is that you don’t have to choose.

Build your workout plan around a heavy compound movement that feels right for your body, be it a squat, deadlift, or hip thrust, and supplement it with other exercises that work your hips from different angles.

Or follow one of our balanced training programs.

Good luck with your training! Now go lift something; those hips aren’t going to build themselves.

Last reviewed: 2025-09-05

References

1. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2020) 19, 195 – 203. Gluteus Maximus Activation During Common Strength and Hypertrophy Exercises: A Systematic Review.
2. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2025 Aug 19;35(8):e70119. The Copenhagen Adduction Exercise Effect on Sport Performance and Injury Prevention: A Systematic Review With Meta‐Analysis.