I recently turned to one of my favorite reformer strength-Pilates teachers for a few beginner-friendly exercises you could do to build strong glutes and open tight hips.
If you sit during the day for long periods or find your glutes can be lazy during workouts, these moves are for you. They're rooted in Pilates principles: control, endurance, precision and breath, but you can add weights, such as the best adjustable dumbbells, to overload the muscles toward growth (over time, of course, not just from one workout).
Below, Pilates instructor Bojana, who teaches at Strong Pilates, demonstrates how to do each exercise with perfect form and why we love these particular glute exercises.
Watch: 3-move Pilates workout for glutes
Your glutes are part of your core musculature, helping to protect your lower back, alongside your hip flexors and hamstrings. If you sit for long periods or don't move around often, you may experience tight, weak hip flexors and glutes, which could lead to potential imbalances or injuries over time.
Your glutes also help keep your pelvis stable, rotate the hip joints and support balance, which is why this routine is designed to hit your hip flexors and glutes and build strength and space.
Check out the video above for a step-by-step guide to each move.
1. Glute bridges
The glute bridge contracts your glutes and stretches your hips, also activating muscles along the posterior chain, like the hamstrings and lower back. Lift your hips to the count of three and lower to the count of three, remembering to give your glutes a healthy squeeze at the top of the bridge.
Try to draw your knees forward and toward each other so that they are parallel. Lifting your toes will engage more of your hamstrings, whereas lifting your heels will activate your calves better.
Before you start, ensure you can just about touch your heels with your hands, and think about peeling your back away from the ground vertebrae by vertebrae on the way up, then slowly lowering down from the top to the bottom of your spine.
Bojana (featured) encourages you to lift your arms into the air to progress this exercise or keep them by your sides for extra support.
2. Single leg glute bridges
Test your balance and control by raising one leg into the air at a time and performing your glute bridge. This teaches your body to control movement and build strength and stability on one side of the body at a time, isolating your working muscles.
Focus on driving through your standing foot, extending your leg upward, and keeping your chin tucked while squeezing your glutes; your hips should be square to the ceiling.
Again, you can raise your arms into the air for an extra challenge during single-leg glute bridges, or hold one dumbbell to your hips for more resistance. Remember, lifting one leg will send your balance off, so this is about resisting those wobbles and driving through your standing leg.
3. Hamstring curls
You don't need a reformer to do this exercise, but it helps, as you can attach as many springs as you like to increase the resistance your muscles work against. Moving the carriage back and forth also requires your muscles to stay under tension throughout the entire movement as you curl your heels toward your butt and extend your legs outward again, known as time under tension.
If you choose to try this without a reformer, use a towel, dishcloth, or sliders beneath your feet on a wooden floor (or similar) so that you can mimic the carriage and push and pull with your legs.
Hamstring curls performed this way hit your glutes and hamstrings, moving the knees through flexion and extension while keeping a stretch in your hips. However, it's crucial to engage your core throughout this movement to protect your lower back; focus on bracing your stomach and breathing out through pursed lips expansively.
Keep your hips high and stable and try to drive all movement through your legs and heels while holding your body still and squeezing your core, glutes, quads and hamstrings.
Aim to complete 60 seconds of each movement without rest, switching sides during the single-leg glute bridges when you reach 30 seconds. Take a brief recovery, then repeat for 3-5 rounds or tailor to your own workout style.
I would recommend this as a glute burnout at the end of a Pilates routine or as a way to fire up your glutes before leg day.
Benefits of the Pilates glute workout
Underactive glutes are more common than you think, especially as you get older. And it doesn't just crop up in inactive people; quad-dominant runners can also struggle to activate their glutes, and repeated underfiring could mean overloading other muscle groups and putting more strain on your hips or lower back.
A regular Pilates routine can improve posture, balance, control, strength and endurance, and it's not about how heavy you can go, either. Range of motion, proper movement mechanics, slow and high reps and stabilization all feature heavily, and this will build a more robust, injury-resistant body.
Alongside Pilates, glute activation exercises that work the body through different planes of motion can help fire up all the glute muscles, not just the big and powerful maximus. For example, abductions (moving the leg away from the midline) help strengthen the medius muscles (think of the side lunges above).
This will help you move more efficiently by targeting all the muscles responsible for different actions, like lifting your leg upward, outward, backward, or in a circle.
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