Build Glute Strength With Bridges

Weak glutes are fairly common in our seated culture, which is a problem because they are a large muscle group that keeps us upright and propels us forward. When your glutes are weak, other parts of your body have to work harder to do these tasks, leading to pain, strains, and injury. Bridges are one of my favourite ways to build glute strength, because there are lots of variations. Strong glutes will help you keep moving through the day with ease and more power in activities like running, riding, dancing, and climbing (even stairs).

How To Do a Basic Glute Bridge

Before we get to variations on the glute bridge, here is how to do the basic version.

Lay on your back
Bend your knees and place your feet on the floor
Line up your feet so that when you lift your hips, your lower legs are perpendicular to the floor
Space your feet and knees about a fist gap apart so that your hips, knees, and ankles track in line with each other (not allowing your knees to fall to the sides).
Press your arms down firmly into the floor.
Elevate your hips just until your body is in a straight line from shoulders to knees
You can lift up by articulating (lifting your spine segmentally) or in one straight line. Or try a bit of both!
Focus on pressing your feet/heels firmly down into the ground to feel a deeper activation of the glutes and hamstrings.

Build Glute Strength with Bridge Progressions

Once you have mastered your form, incorporate these variations to challenge your balance and add difficulty.

Bridge Variations for the Gym or at Home

Foot Raises. Once you lift your hips, stay lifted and raise one foot an inch or so up, then alternate sides.
Heel Glides. Once your hips are up, hover one foot about 1” off of the ground. Then lengthen your leg out nice and close to the ground while keeping your hips high. Alternate sides.
Single leg Glute Bridges. Option 1. Take one foot and rest it on the opposite knee then lift and lower. Option 2. Extend one leg straight up to the ceiling then lift and lower. Do 8 – 15 reps on one side then switch. Be aware of the position of your hips, as you want to keep them stable and not twisting from side to side.
Elevated Feet. Place your feet on a step or bench. Progress this further to single legs.
Elevated Feet with Instability. Creates instability by placing your feet on a Bosu or exercise ball. Be sure you can stay stable on solid ground before you try these options. One leg is an option for the Bosu, but I don’t recommend trying this on a ball.
TRX Bridges. By placing your feet in the straps, you create instability because of the swinging motion. You’ll need some strength already to do this butt-burner safely and with control.

Bridge Variations in Pilates

Like many Pilates movements, glute bridges can be sneaky. There is the traditional glute bridge on the mat but it shows up in other places as well.

On the Mat:

Glute Bridge. This is the same as above, and we can add in marches, heel glides, leg lifts, and leg circles.
Spinal Extension. From the basic bridge, we progress by placing our hands on the small of our back while lifted. Again, leg lifts or circles can be added.
Exiting Exercises. We can bring ourselves down from the exercises scissors and bicycle into a shoulder bridge by keeping our hands at our waist. This is a challenge that we work up to as we get stronger in scissors and bicycle; they help build strength in the glutes, upper back, and arms to hold your body up in the hands-on-waist bridge.
Leg Pull Back. This is a form of bridge, and as you get stronger you can eventually start from the tabletop position.

On the Tower/Cadillac:

We can hook our knees over the roll down bar and do shoulder bridges when facing the tower.
We can turn around and hook our knees over the bar and do shoulder bridges and work towards doing the exercise called Rolling Stomach Massage.
The exercises parakeet (shoulder bridge with your feet on the push through bar), chest expansion, thigh stretch, and waterwheel all have elements of shoulder bridge.

On the Reformer:

The exercises chest expansion and thigh stretch have elements of the shoulder bridge.
More obvious examples include long back stretch, control balance back, semi circle, long spine massage, pelvic lift, and high bridge.

A lot of these are more advanced exercises that we work toward through other exercises on the reformer, but also on the mat and the other apparatus.

Bridges Aren’t the Only Way to Build Glute Strength

There are lots of other ways to build glute strength, which I’ll save for another day (split-squats, anyone?). Until then, spice up your glute bridges with these variations, and keep moving forward with strength. Your body (especially your back) will thank you.