You can get fitter in a variety of ways. Find out what the benefits of glute bridges are, how to get these to a larger extent, and whether they are for you.
While glute bridges are not always unique in these benefits, these could still be enough to make you consider this exercise.
Even if it is only as a convenient way to work your glutes and hamstrings at home.
1. Glute bridges can tone your muscles
Glute bridges are an exercise that falls in the resistance training exercise category.
In simpler words, that means they are mostly effective for muscle-related goals like growth, strength, and endurance improvements.
The main muscles worked with glute bridges are your:
- Glutes (butt)
- Hamstrings (back thighs)
- To some extent erector spinae (lower back)
Something important to keep in mind is that just working these muscles with glute bridges is not always enough to tone your butt and back thighs.
You also still need to do the exercise with enough resistance and repetitions.
How many glute bridges you should do depends on your training goals.
However, for something like growing and toning your glutes and hamstrings, you would do something like 3 to 6 sets of 6 to 25 glute bridges with enough resistance to make these amounts very challenging.
Since these muscles are relatively strong, most people will need to do glute bridges with weight to achieve this.
Another option is doing single-leg glute bridges. By putting your weight on only one leg, your glutes and hamstrings will have to work a lot harder.
2. Glute bridges could help reduce belly fat to some extent
To lose weight and more specifically reduce belly fat, you need to get in a situation where your body uses up more energy than the things you eat add.
You then stay in this situation for long enough until you reach your fitness goals.
Glute bridges help with this in two main ways.
First of all, doing this exercise tends to burn more calories than typical daily activities.
Secondly, the glutes and hamstrings are relatively big muscles with a lot of room for mass increases.
By increasing your weight in a healthy way, you will start using up more energy throughout the day.
It is important to keep in mind that glute bridges are not always enough to get this benefit. You may need to pay extra attention to other lifestyle habits too.
Additionally, there are glute bridge alternatives that can help you burn more calories and/or build more muscle mass too.
3. You can do glute bridges at home
For many forms of exercise, you need to be in a certain place or need certain equipment options that are too big for the average house.
This is a downside because you have to spend extra time going to this location and/or your local gym.
A 10-minute trip once does not sound that bad but if you consider the number of workouts you will do, this really adds up.
One of the benefits of glute bridges is that the downsides above don’t apply. You can simply lie down on the floor and do your 100 glute bridges a day.
This can save you a lot of time and extra mental effort.
4. Glute bridges can improve athletic performance
Sometimes doing the same sport or activity more often or intensely is not the optimal way to get better at it.
More specifically, there are a variety of sports where you benefit from being able to generate more force with your muscles over longer amounts of time.
Glute bridges have the ability to help you improve these things in your glutes and hamstrings.
This can be valuable since these muscle groups play a big role in running. In turn, you can say that glute bridges can help you improve athletic performance.
Keep in mind that how you do your glute bridges influences what areas of your fitness you focus on. For example, to improve sprinting speed, you would train in a way that improves muscle power.
5. Glute bridges are relatively budget-friendly
Besides a specific location, you also often need pieces of equipment to do sports and exercises effectively. Even a gym subscription does add up over time.
Investing in your health can be a great idea but you do not always need to do this either.
Luckily, glute bridges do not really require a (big) fitness budget.
Even if the two-legged glute bridges are currently too easy, you can start with one-legged glute bridges or by holding something like a heavy backpack on your thighs.
Additionally, when these methods stop being enough, there are relatively budget-friendly equipment options like workout sandbags that can improve your glute bridge results.
6. Glute bridges have an easy technique
There are many sports and exercises where the technique or skill required is not that straightforward.
This is a downside in the sense that it increases the time before you can do the activities to their full extent and/or with a low-injury risk.
In turn, you miss out on certain health benefits to a tiny extent.
The main thing to keep in mind during glute bridges is to not raise your hips too much. Since this is relatively easy to do if you keep your movements controlled, it is fair to say that glute bridges have an easy technique.
7. Glute bridges workouts can be short
Many people have the impression that you have to spend hours on a treadmill to have any chance of getting in better shape.
Luckily, this is often not the case. Especially when it comes to resistance training exercises like glute bridges.
To get the muscle-related benefits of this exercise you just have to pressure your muscles with enough resistance and repetitions.
While this will inevitably take some amount of time, the number of minutes a good glute bridge workout requires tends to be low. Especially if you are more of a resistance training beginner.
To speed up the process even more, you really want to switch over to weighted glute bridges as soon as your strength level allows it.
