While hip thrusts are a great exercise to benefit your hamstrings, many people don’t do them correctly isolate the target areasharing the load with other muscles instead. To prevent this form failure, Boston Barbell Head coach Chris Martin has a solution.
“Most people who struggle with hip thrusts aren’t weak – they’re just wasting energy all over the place,” Martin said in a brutal Instagram post on the Boston Barbell channel. “Because there’s no bar in their back, they’re not strong. Their joints aren’t stable, so all the muscles except the hamstrings have picked up the slack. The bottle ends up sharing the work with muscles we never tried to grow.”
Most hip thrust fans practice hip thrusts because they effectively train the gluteus maximus, the primary hip extensor. Other muscles involved include the adductor magnus (inner thighs) and hamstrings of your upper leg, but if your form is incorrect, you’ll lose focus on the glutes and overuse other muscles, such as the core, for stability. “Here’s the fix” explained Martin. “Counter pressure.”
How to do the correct hand-to-knee position
With IFBB Pro and certified trainer Deborah Assuncao helping to demonstrate this unilateral exercisesMartin admitted that it “has never been an easier version of the hip press.” But if you want a more muscular angle and dream of a challenge, here’s how to try it:
- Sit with a softbox or your back on the floor
- Put one foot on the floor and raise your body with the back of your head
- Bend the other leg at a right angle and push both hands on the knee
- With chin and chest, push the knee into your hands
- Bring the hands back to the knees to create an opposing force
- Get about half way off the ground, squeeze and come up
Why the hip-to-knee press is great for getting glute-focused benefits
“This tension locks every link in the chain into a stable position. Once the chain is fixed, only the collar has anywhere to go,” Martin said, providing more insight into how to master your reps. “Rock it about halfway. Squeeze the bottle at the bottom,” he advised. “Move from that compression—not from momentum, not from your hamstrings, not from the hip flexor pulling the leg through. The push you feel at the top is real. That’s tension. That’s how the muscle is supposed to work.”
Best of all, you don’t need a barbell to activate those glutes. “If you’ve been doing hip thrusts and never felt your hamstrings the next day, this is it. Joints not locked. Abdominal movement was voluntary. That makes it mandatory. Single leg. Man down. Knee to hand. Hand to knee. Push up.”
Sill, adding weight can make this move even more advanced, provided you follow Martin’s muscle-building strategy. “When you do it in a way that every bodyweight hurts, you get stronger. And then, and only then, do you add weight. That’s the standard.”
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