Are Hip Thrusts Overrated Or Underrated? DEBATE!

Real Scientists Debate the thumbnail war will continue but uh since you're the authority in my mind on glute training can you sign us off with a tip that you've discovered maybe recently or that not a ton of people know people really struggling with glute growth and let's say they've read all the Articles they've trained themselves they're female their glutes are budging but slowly what is the one or two things people aren't doing in your experience very commonly that can really unlock some new games for them in their glutes hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength and today I'm having a live video debate with Mr doctor also Dr Brett contras who is the expert in the world on glute training we had some slight disagreements on the hip thrust which is fighting words to Brett so he sent me a letter soaked in Blood and I thought well why not just debate this on the internet so we got on let's find out what's going on Brett is going to have the first stab maybe literally 3 two 1 hit it Brett okay the letter was the letter was not soaked in blood I haven't had br read it over to make sure it was [Laughter] polite but Brad was the one who encouraged me to do it cuz I was like it's not I you've been becoming more clickbaity and your popularity is going through the roof so you use hip thrust as like don't like a scientific way to train your glutes and then there's a hip thrust with an X through it and I'm like you could just make your point without putting an X through the hip thrust that's my my issue so oh I see complain about it to Brad He's like debate him ask him to debate and I'm like okay I will and I will give you some props because I've asked I've challenged so many people to debates they never do it because charlatans would never debate anyone real scientists accept debates um in fact I challenged someone the other day and he just blew it off and I I was going to make a post about you but then it would have been just me it would been immature of me but I was going to say here's what happens when real scientists challenge each other hey Mike let's debate okay let's do it that's the way it is with with real scientists so thank you for accepting this of course I'll I'll intro this by saying this I I would like to talk about the muscle length debate too so uh kind of like make it two for one and then with glutes so I I want to say this muscle length Muscle Length stuff I've been geeking out on since 2006 uh I started riding for a teenage in 2009 and I feel like all the stuff becoming popular now I was geeking out on in you know what 15 years ago so we didn't have all the research then but I was not a good scientist back then I was trying to fit the research to to fit what I'm seeing in my gym and I was like oh I invented the hip thrust I'm doing it in my gym I feel like people's glute results are are expedited so it must be that the glutes respond better to short muscle Lanes I tested the EMG you get higher EMG with hip thrust and you do a squats end of discussion hip thrust is superior fast forward many years now we know that EMG doesn't accurately predict muscle growth it might produ it might predict the act the active portion of muscle growth if there's different mechanisms but not the lengthen the stretch not the passive contribution we know that from the Plotkin study that meno henselman and I helped uh fund and Daniel plin wanted to get rid of that because he's like Andrew Andrew vski said EMG doesn't and I'm like well we need to know that let's keep it in you know it's this is this will be good to know and I owe Daniel a beer because I thought EMG would be predictive of hyper trvy and it was not so you old enough to drink I'm kidding a little bit good good point maybe I ow a um a Shirley Temple marijuana blunt no wait same age same so um so you evolve as a scientist you evolve you got to be flexible and I am being flexible I think it's hard because when I was trying to understand maybe like you know I'm I'm going to be the most biased person in the world for hip thrust cuz I invented it and so I've been all about short muscle L for glutes not necessarily for all the other muscles so I'm always looking at so when I read the new research when I see things I'm very scrutinizing of you know I remember when the barbalo study came out years ago I'm like this is fake this is fake and I told everyone it's fake and I'm like I've never accused a study being fake but this is fake it doesn't add up this is not real real life results this is not what happened when you really train people it's fake and then the statisticians the guys who are way better than me it stats came along and showed yeah the all the lab studies are fake but anyway I I'm very scrutinizing but if it was like Pro hiip thrust I'm not as we all have biases and it's important for me to mention that you are probably biased towards long muscle lanes and like full range because you've been saying this for a very long time um and so you're going to be the opposite and like Milo you a lot of the guys in the industry have been preaching the long length then there's me who's going to be Pro hip rust so it's good that if we it's good for us to have a debate because I'm on one side you're on the other side but I actually think we're going to meet in the middle here because now all right so fast forward many years we now the evidence is all I mean there's probably like almost 30 studies published at this point and they're broken into four categories there's isometrics where you do isos at long vers versus short muscle lengths there's partials like full range versus shorten range and then now there's partials versus partials long range versus or sorry long length partials versus short length partials or full range and then finally differing torque angle curves where you use the same range of motion but one has more torque in the stretch one more torque in the The Squeeze so with those four categories the overwhelming evidence supports long muscle Lanes having the greater the stretch on the muscle the better and the greater the torque at long length the better there's a fifth category as well this recent it is long muscle lengths versus uh very stretched long muscle lengths so for example if you take a bicep curl and you start to apply pressure through a cable from here and you do it like this the most tension is at the lengthened position the least at the shortened but then if you do a bicep curl with a cable where the bicep is stretched maximally same Force curve one has an extreme stretch one doesn't and for what I've seen Milo's recent summation of that is that they end up being roughly the same in hypertrophy so it turns out long muscle lengths probably are more important than getting a stretch stretch perceptively but in most exercises it's going to be basically the same thing that yeah that's the zabaleta corta study and it's like it was in women they give him curls beginners and they did not only one only one measurement was statistically significant and it looked at preacher curls versus incline curls but uh but the problem was the incline curl didn't was was with a dumbbell if it was with a cable it would have been even better so we need more we we need more of those studies um and then there's a I guess there's a fifth category too with lung with training a muscle to failure versus then extending the set with length and partials and then we finally have one study on that just like a couple weeks ago with the Cavs and so okay so the overwhelming majority of studies Point towards the lengthened portion being beneficial I do want to point out that the arguments there are people in this industry who believe that uh who don't think that long length training is beneficial for every muscle group there's kind of different camps uh would say Chris beard and Paul Carter being very vocal about I don't I don't want to I don't want to mention Paul Carter he's not a scientist he doesn't know anything and totally no no we'll keep it in uh it's irrelevant to me what he thinks because he changes what he thinks based on who he's hanging out with and he doesn't have original thoughts Chris Beardsley is interesting but I would say he's kind of reversing the standard of evidence where there's no good data to support that some muscles actually grow better from positions that are not the lengthened he's kind of I think saying well we haven't studied all muscles so there could be muscles that benefit from a shortened position but there's no conclusive evidence that they've ever found a muscle that actually behaves like that so i' say this an interesting way to guard yourself against concluding every muscle is best at length which we can't conclude a scientist not yet because we haven't studied every single muscle think it's quite a bit of a stretch to say some muscles are optimized for for hypertrophy from shorten position I haven't seen any research to confirm that or even suggest that maybe a research exists and I haven't not quite a stretch pun intended oh sorry thing on so I think what they're saying is looking at the the the length tension relationship of a muscle and if it operates on the descending limb but uh and they point to the arm the biceps and triceps research not always showing but then there is new triceps search so um but they base it on this neuromechanical matching Theory yeah just made that up that there's make believe there's evidence with the respiratory muscles this is something interesting that I was looking into when I was doing my PhD thesis and there were only two studies on that topic one on the delts one on the glutes uh and the the delts showed some evidence of like respon like the motor units that are activated are more to do with what has the better l Lage the better moment arm at that position and and then that seems to match up with the glutes being activated higher in the shortened position um most of those studies are fine wire Andrew vazi has pointed out that there could be uh geometry issues uh with heavily pened muscles especially so like you're getting it's it's it's a a an artifact it's not a true reading but I think there is one fine wire EMG study um but I do think so my my arguments against long length training for glutes but I'm I want to St restate my position I think there might I think the glutes might respond best to stretch I think I'm reversing my opinion because back in the day I looked at the the the length tension relationship on open SIM this is a biomechanical modeling software program and I'm like oh Peak active force with the glutes is around neutral and then the passive Force doesn't get that high it doesn't exceed active Force so you're not getting a big stretch signal in the glutes and you're getting way more the most Force you get is in neutral and then interestingly this was like a year and a half ago casm was I I showed him open SIM and he geeked out on it and he was like going crazy with it and he kept and it was funny cuz it was like the Olympia weekend here I'm at my Vegas house and so people were here visiting me and I was entertaining everyone and he keeps sending me these texts and he really looked at it and we realized open SIM has some serious flaws with it so that caused me to cast out it's like EMG has flaws opensim has flaws muscular skill modeling the everything has flaws even training Studies have flaws because you don't really know how they do the exercise if they're just if the coaches know what they're doing or if they're just you know going through the motions of something bastardized yes like did the the Kubo study we might talk about did they use a like they just reported knee range of motions so did they did they Lean Forward did they stay ight you don't know so anyway nothing's perfect but with enough puzzle pieces I think the evidence is converging on Long muscle lanes and the evid the arguments against the long muscle lanes for the glutes would beur mechanical matching theory that the the glutes the glutitis Maximus has better leverage in full hip extension in the squeeze than it does in the stretch when you take the hip through hip flexion the glutes kind of flatten out and get closer and it it it shortens the leverage the moment arm um and it it changes the angle too to where it's not as effective pulling angle compared to at full like neutral where it's uh a more perpendicular particular Vector pulling Vector even though it's a curved path and it's a long a little bit longer length so that theory would be that the brain knows or the CNS knows like look why waste time in the bottom of a squat I'm going to activate the adductor Magnus because it has better leverage instead of the gluteus maximus and and in support of that kind of the second argument would be some muscles get my electric silence when they get fully stretched we've known this about the Erectors for like since the 80s it's called the lumbar flexion relaxation phenomenon and it does happen with the glutes when you get the full deep squat the glutes that's where they have their least Activation so I clung to those for a while kind of thinking uh I doubt I doubt it with glutes because because of you know the Lesser activation we're going okay Titan is maybe the main signal and if Titan is the main signaling you Titan has to be activated like actin myosin cross Bridges have to form to pull the Titan along with it so I kind of doubted it then we had the Plotkin study so so in so the Plotkin study and the casano paper there's four papers worth mentioning Plotkin showed that squats and hip thrusts grew the glutes equally and this was true in the lower glut Max the middle glute Max and the upper glute Max neither glute grew the glute medius or hamstrings squats led to better growth than the quads and adductors so that was interesting so to me that was well maybe the glutes maybe there's two mechanisms maybe there's a mechanism for stretch and a mechanism for Activation in support of that hypothesis I realize there's you've seen these recent studies on just stretching like extreme stretching with the pecs and the calves and you get muscle growth without even activating the muscle through just passive stretch I think they there is some neural activity cuz in that recent PEC one they kept ratcheting it down further as the muscle relax yeah but oh yeah the fact that you can get growth without activation just through stretch proves that there's pure stretch related growth mechanisms but then I was looking into EMS because I got an EMS unit and I was you know having my my clients use it my before like you know during prep I have them put them on put the electrodes on their glutes and activate I wanted to know the research behind it and you have you know studies comparing EMS to training showing not I mean it wasn't statistically significant it looked like you do get better with actual training but this was like so they have stretch versus resistance training the one group did PEC stretching versus pec deck and they got the same muscle growth and then they have a biceps one where you had like curls dumbbell curls versus just EMS applied to the biceps not in an extreme stretch so that's activation without stretch and you got growth now these are on beginners so it does bring up the the does it depend on the muscle can you stretch the glutes for example and get and just stretch the glutes and get growth I don't know because pecs you feel that a lot you know calves you feel it a ton it might depend on the muscle but anyway there might be multiple mechanisms we don't know the mechanisms yet which makes it hard to kind of so right now we're relying on the papers but there's some contradictory results so the papers in support of training of in supportive short lengths for glutes would be the Plotkin paper because squats should have beat out hip thrust for glute growth and the casano paper was interesting because it showed one group just did leg press and stiff leg deadlifts the other group did leg press stiff leg deadlifts and hip thrust but you look at the growth and it was like 6% or something like that for stiff leg Deft and leg press and then like 9% for stiff leg Deft leg press and hip thrust meaning you didn't get a drop off with additional volume it kept up at the same slope so hip thrust have to be at least equally as effective as the stiff legs and the leg press for glute growth but it was a difficult study to interpret because it was volume was not equated so people just say well could just be the additional volume at any rate those kind of support hip thrust and then the long length research supports uh that supports long length for glutes would be the Kubo study where one group did shallower squats and the other group did deeper squats and the glutes grew much greater with the deeper squats and then finally the ma paper that's not published they did like the four-way hip extension machine like the Kickbacks they did straight leg Kickbacks in just the length in portion versus full range and the length in got greater glute growth go ahead so you said that um the stiff legged dead leg press plus or minus hip thrust study is in support of hip thrust to some extent and I definitely see the logic there because they're still robust additive but another way to see it I was wondering if you could comment on it is similar to the Plotkin squat study is like if hip thrusts from that study don't seem to be any more hypertrophic unit per unit maybe maybe they do it's unclear that there's a chance they're just as hypertrophic per number of sets as lag presses and as stiffle a deadlifts it becomes a a little bit of a different conversation from hip thrusts are a great glute exercise to hip thrusts are a very isolation sort of glute exercise and they're not particularly amazing at hypertrophy but they might not cause CA you a lot of fatigue if you have a hip thrust machine it might be very easy to set up and there's actually only so much volume you can do that does your hamstrings and your legs as well so some people can recover from glute training quite substantially I've spent a long time in prison and let me tell you firsthand experience my glutes going to recover fast Brad I mean real fast the guys were just baffled how can he do this every day they asked themselves and so I think that maybe the the way I see the hip thrust is it's a good movement for really focusing in on glutes specifically and if you have a good setup it may be easy to set up in lots of opportunities to pound in a ton of volume when you can no longer do any stiff legged deadlifts because stiffle deadlift you do two sets your hamstrings are done there's no way your glutes grow maximally from two sets of stiffle a deadlifts they can take way more sets and what are you going to do you're going to squat well that's going to attack your quads okay now your quads are done what are you going to do you still want bigger glutes and also there's another category of people a lot of bikini competitors the judges will say look your hamstrings in qu and adductors are plenty big but you need bigger glutes well the squats are out stiffly defts are out leg presses are out well you got to go to hip thrust because they're that specific and the last thing I'd say about hip thrusts while I'm being uh very complimentary is that they're an excellent tool to teach the Mind muscle connection to the glutes because some people have a little bit more trouble kind of feeling out where they are in space and if their glutes are working a hip thrust can solve that problem really well whereas some exercises like my personal favorite for glutes is the front foot elevated Smith machine lunge you don't really feel a whole lot on that exercise except for grotesque pain you're not like oh my glutes are active you'll find out after the set and then later when you get Doms but hip thrusts are I think an excellent exercise to teach someone how to really activate their glutes and get them a lot of practice with that layer in some extra volume make it isolation so that it doesn't affect the rest of the body and then I think it's an awesome movement but as like hey I really need glutes I need to grow them what's rank one I don't know if I put hip thrust in rank one I would say I'd put various front foot elevated lunges in rank one because they meet all the biomechanical criteria uh of uh lengthened tension and High degree of stability they also to me personally give me way crazier pump and Doms than hip thrusts do but I know there's some individual variation and some people really respond well to hip thrust so those are kind of my thoughts what what do you think about that yeah very good points and I had this on my Hip Thrusts as an Isolation Movement? list I had 10 things to cover but the oh snap which one are you on we covered it they're kind of mixed but okay like that that was Point number one the whole mrv and stimulus to fatigue ratio um but I also want to point out that like I did okay it when you just mentioned the biomechanical requirements it's comes down to hip flexion and hip extension torque in that maximum stretch position so we can if we wanted to we would we could break down exercises if we really had the top biomechanical experts you'd film the sets being done you'd say what degree of stretch do we get get on the glutes when we do a front faded front front elevated re reverse lunge on the Smith machine how how much stretch do we get on the glutes and what is the torque in that position and so my that'd be cool and then we can look at a hip thrust Etc so I don't know if you have your phone on you I just texted you do you have your phone on you no of course sorry but uh I I I showed this video you can see it this is how I'm doing hip thrust now see how I'm kind of like I I control it all the way down yeah I'm doing them differently so that's why I wish you had access to a plate like my and I this is not a plug I don't make shit I don't make much money through BC strength it's a passion of it's a but I love the BC trength Thruster Pro because Hammer Strength came out with theirs and I'm like this is awesome with two issues you need a bigger foot plate to accommodate shorter people and and then you need a bigger plate Peg to accommodate very strong people you could only fit four plates on theirs some people can use like eight plates so yeah that's what I did but I elevated the foot plate a little bit so you do get deeper also when you have a barbell and a pad and you're big guys like us it's it's uncomfortable to go down into the stretch guys aren't going to like hip thrust as much as women because like the bikini comp headers are like thin they have no they're these tiny little they can go deep as hell it doesn't it doesn't doesn't feel awkward when you're you know got bulk belly like me or you're a bodybuilder with big abs and it pushes out that's what I tell people it's the big ABS you get the big ABS you get it pushes out it's it's uncomfortable in that stretch position and that's a flaw that is one of the main flaws with a horizontal hip extension exercises you kind of need something in the uh because I have like a Rogers reverse glute ham you got to put a belt on I have a um the gluteator you got to put a belt on you got to wear a belt with things so and and it's kind of uncomfortable but anyway men bigger men feel more uncomfortable with these going deep but with the with the Hammer Strength and my BC strength Thruster Pro it's a it's a belt it's just a belt and we put a pad around it and you can go deeper it doesn't I've used those machines they're great way better than the others and and it's plate loaded you can load them up the and so you're going deeper also so you can go deeper into the stretch it's more comfortable in the stretch and what we found with my PhD thesis is that and I I can just Envision San Diego glute lab with all my girls back in the day slamming the bar on the ground it was like with with Olympic lifters and deadlifts they don't lower it they drop it we lift weights we don't lower weights um so that's you would would not so in my PhD thesis we found that people use like with squats you're using like 90% of the force on the way down as you do on the way up the Ecentric force is 90% of what the concentric Force is with hip thrust with barbell hip thrust it was like I think I think it was like 60% or maybe even less it was like they use they let gravity come down with these machines you don't do that with these machines you control it all the way down you could get a better stretch and uh and if you wanted to what's nice about the plate loaded I can sit when I'm training CL I can sit down on one side and overload the Ecentric and then stand up during the concentric oh yeah I'm doing a lot of that too so I'm going crazy at my fort ludero glute lab I feel like I'm really rolling now on my own training I've been doing length and partials I've been doing tons of stuff myself and with clients so with the length and stuff I've got really got a good grip on it now go ahead that's awesome maybe one thing that I think is interesting if you want to create an even better glute thrust hip thrust machine what could be cool is if you set the weight up not on straight weight but on a offset or a cam mechanism such that you can leverage it so that when people are at the bottom it's actually the hardest and when at the top it's the easiest that way you get the benefits of that PE contraction for the glutes and you get maximum tension at the stretch position with a cam mechanism on a machine it's a it's a nominal engineering Fe if you can engineer that man that starts to look like a really awesome machine because not only is it benefiting there's a Simplicity to hip thrusts like you don't have to balance you don't have to do shit just go up and go down and it hits your glutes directly it doesn't hit anything else if we can get it to have a huge degree of tension at the bottom and a smaller degree of tension at the top which a cam mechanism can easily accomplish then we don't suffer from the limitations of gravity and then we've got a real awesome machine in our hands not even just the cam you know on the Hammer Strength they call it the squat lunge but it's the deadlift deadlift and shrug machine we do deadlift and shrug off of it the Hammer Strength there's two loading positions so yeah with that Hammer Strength it's so cool because the top one the top one has a shorter lever but as you go down it ex it lengthens out so that works the stretch P the problem is if we deadlift up we got to load up both positions because the plate pegs aren't long enough a reoccurring theme with some of the hammer stre but when you load up the bottom it stays pretty even but it gets out a little further as you rise up also like the pendulum squat I think you use that the Rogers pendulum squat you can load up and then the old strive equipment now it's prime or whatever they so that's what we could have yeah and you can load up the stretch but we've been doing this we took this this is okay the Rogers pendulum reverse glute ham you lay down on it and it it comes down it's okay it's it's built to work the end range position It's actually an amazing lengthen partial machine if you just load it up heavy and just do partials yes that's true so we took the Hammer Strength model the old school Hammer Strength and we're trying to that's what I'm trying to do here is I don't know if you can see it's sunny but the sun's coming in but we're trying to get it to its maximum torque in the stretch position that's smart and then that's what I want with what I want with all of my units how cool would it be if you could okay cuz here's what they're all doing now all the equipment manufacturers they're they have band attachments but no one wants to care around bands bands disappear in gyms what would be nicer is if the plate loaded companies had one to load up just the pure stretch position and then it tapers off as you come up and then one to load and then one that that loads The Squeeze position so you wanted to make it more top range you just put a plate there that would be that that's what my goal is to do I told that to my BC strength team um we make like like home equipment we're now we're trying to likeing in the garage my buddies are T and hack on their own glute Builder and and booty Builder and they have all this fancy technology and I'm like I'm wealthy why don't I have this but I just I don't have the connections to make this so it's me and this guy TC he's like a 800 lb dead lifter raw powerlifter guy all Natty freakishly strong but we're in there I bought him a welder and we're in there trying to and I'm like you know Engineers would know how to like get this torque angle curve and we're we're on like our third round but that is a goal of mine but anyway my my my thing to you is I think with the hip thrust because I've been doing and that's what I wanted to tell you you say like squats for glute growth deadlifts Squats for Glute Growth for glute growth every deadlift for glute growth should be an RDL where you have vertical shins and you're sitting back as far as possible because that maximizes torque and stretch on the glutes and then every squat should be leaning reaching back and leaning if you want glute growth it should be the opposite of squatting for quads when you when you lunge for glute growth it should be leaning forward you almost want to just go to parallel and lean because at parallel is when your hips are furthest back that's when you get the greater resistance moment arm with all squatting movements soats lunges step UPS it should be you should be around a parallel thigh position with leaning forward that's how you're going to maximize torque and stretch yeah I've seen some of your Instagram videos on that kind of like ways to alra the exercises to hit the glutes more and they're brilliant I highly recommend people go check them out because you can do something like a lunge that you say is for your glutes but if you're super upright and you're lunging real close uh stance and your knees way over your toes like that's actually a really dope quad exercise but your glutes are kind of like eh but if you do a glute uh based lunge kind of like how you would do an equipped squat from back in the day sitting back as far as possible that's going to get the glutes going much much better so the the differences there are pretty Stark so I've been doing like squats back again I was doing full squats for so long and I started doing low bar sumo not Sumo cuz I I know Sumo doesn't stretch as much but I can't go like narrow with squats and reach back hurts my hips so I go wide enough to where I can reach way back and keep my shins mostly vertical and my glutes are getting more sore from squats than ever before but like I do two hard if I go you know to failure one hour R I can only do two hard sets they get they Hammer my adductor Magnus 2 they beat myors take forever to he deal also they just get so I'm 47 yeah they take forever I'm 47 so it's like when I was a young buck I could have handled much more volume but like so for me it's like okay I'm getting really strong and it's funny because I feel like I'm I just did this is interesting I just did full squats off my lever machine and I've never been the best squatter but I put four plates on each side and hit eight reps like bottoming out and that was a PR for me an all-time PR and I'm like oh my god I've been doing the sitb back squats which is not as much knee flexion but with those sitbs box squats I'm trying to keep vertical shins trying to lean and trying to reach back with my glutes my glutes are getting more sore than ever so I think that's the way you squat for glute growth and I've been doing RDL length and partials off the I don't like doing barbell or lengthen part like lengthen partials with vertical exercise are tricky cuz they're already hardest in the stretch the lengthen partial so I've been doing off the pit shark machine you like good idea you like doing um uh uh belt squats but I put the C to row handle there and I get it nice and deep you got to put a block down underneath it because if so the handles with the cedaro you have to set it down and you have to like Let It Go yeah there's no way to do it unless you want to lose three fingers exactly exactly so you had to put a block down there but this is my squad's favorite deadlift variation but anyway you get a when you have the weight in between you in between your legs you can it's like it just feels more natural you sink so deep and the top lockout with that feels weird anyway so it's like eliminate the lockout yes it totally does cuz you're locking into yourself it's like it's weird so you just do the length and partial but I feel such a crazy stretch on my glutes and my hamstrings but it's almost scary for the like sometimes it's almost scary like how because I put I think I put 10 plates on I'm really strong at deadlifts compared to my squats but I put 10 plates on each side um and I was just doing lengthen part I'm like this works so well but it almost can work too well where you're it might like tear a hammy or something you know or they just get your hamstrings or they fill up Using Hip Thrusts When Passing MRV their mrv you just can't hit hams anymore they're going to get sore I think that's when hip thrusts come in really handy is when you've squatted you've done your your other stuff or even hip thrusts first come into the workout let's say you want your glutes to be the limiting factor and everything and you have all trouble engaging with them hit a crapload of volume in hip thrust your glutes are cooked because even though I say hip thrusts are not like the most optimal exercise on biomechanical basis um that doesn't mean they're not a great exercise it it so like you can still do them and get a great effect out of them once you've done that if you move on to the modified squatting and stiff leg a deadlifts after I mean then the glutes are a huge limiting factor there more than they would have otherwise been you end up creating less systemic fatigue because you don't have to go as heavy and do as much volume on stiff like a deadlifts rdls and those modified squats for glutes you let the easier hip thrust take most of the effort at the beginning or at the end it really just doesn't much matter you can even pepper it in the middle you start out with some squats you go to the hip thrust machine for four or five sets then you finish off with some rdls in that uh the um belt squat machine and all of a sudden you got yourself a super great workout so I think that the isolation and the comfort factor especially if you're doing hip thrust off a machine to be completely honest bro like when people set it up off a fucking bench and they got like eight plates and they're trying to slide them on like to me the ROI and just setting up and tearing down I'm like man I God did not make me that hardworking I'm sorry I check out at that point but if you have a machine like one of the ones you make I mean it's just too easy and it's super effective when you guys get that cam mechanism to work so it's tougher at the bottom your boys looking into buying one of those because your glutes can never be too big I always say and they loved when I said that in prison BR so so that and that's what I my whole point was like in my opinion male bodybuilders there's some muscles that just go along for the ride you don't have to if you just focus if you're a male bodybuilder and you just do leg training it's it's like you know your traps just get big through training your delts you do L raisins and your traps get big you do dead you're just you carry on dumbbells glutes are kind of like that with men so men train legs one day a week typically male bodybuilders they annihilate their quads and hamstrings their glutes get fine for their liking they're not really trying to maximize glute growth most most male body they also get some work from B bent row and stuff yeah the glutes get some little bit of work from that and back extensions when you do you know yeah exactly so yeah so like women and in and this is where I'm glad you touched on this women care more about glutes than we do about pecs and biceps and like they they want glutes and they don't always not all women want glute their glute growth to come from the leg exercises there are some women that are happy with their legs and especially like I'm glad you mentioned bikini a lot of my girls are being told your quads are perfect I want a little more detail in the hands which is just getting leaner you know and then we need more upper glutes more more glutes in general and then it's like okay so that's what's annoying about training bikini competitors so you're going okay we can't build the quads we've got to build the glutes without building quads you got to get the Chisel in there you can't just do General stuff and so I'm glad you mentioned that because when you try to get all your glute growth out of vertical hip hip extension exercises you're going to get a good blend of adductor quad hamstring and glute growth and if you just train them one day a week with good form like you a spouse really controlled for that's the one thing I love about you is the controlled form because at at some point when you get stronger and stronger that's a mistake I made with my San Diego Squad we did strong lifting we pushed squats deadlifts hip thrusts and it's funny because if you if you deadlift conventionally and you're going for max strength you always round rounding is less hip flexion it's less stretch on the glutes but then you start getting hurt eventually setting further PRS and you start making dumb decisions like your low back is feeling off and you still deadlift anyway so Progressive overload is a is Paramount but with caveats and if you use a really strict form and controlled Tempo that you've always done you don't get the injuries yep and no one talks about that the the best one of the most important aspects to Long term hypertrophy is don't get injured and don't get sick all the time like my girls are always sick they're going on like they're not consistent with their training so I'm like you know because they're younger they're partying still and so I'm like quit drinking so much or like get you got to sleep more and and don't get injured don't get sick you're going to grow you're going to grow a lot better than if you are so anyway but I do think when you add in the horizontal hip extension exercises now you got you know the 45° High ERS the hip thrust the cable Kickbacks which men tend to hate but I start doing them and I actually like them they work by and they're set up to work because they actually can maximize tension at the stretch position and minimize it the contraction it's just like if I'm going to put one leg into a cable and kick out like I better have a pink handbag with me bro because your boy's got some masculinity standards now that's just misogynic speaking of course it's a great exercise I'm one of those body no I know I know right oh yeah oh yeah the good girl bad girl but I but but I think that the women are training glutes three days a week and that's a whole argument about like what's the you know because all the studies equate volume but these girls will do anything and I I agree with them like if I want maximum arm growth and all I care about is getting my biceps and triceps bigger I can train them three times a week and my arms would get bigger you with with typical bodybuilding training you could always be doing a little more for a certain muscle if you want as the recent Studies have shown 30 40 50 sets for a short time can maximize hypertrophy so if you're saying look only deadlifts and squats for glutes you're just never going to be able to get the glute volume that your glutes specifically can handle and hip thrust are an excellent tool to make that happen and as soon as they have that lengthened stretch uh emphasis component uh for the tension that's going to be a killer exercise so that's what I was saying how I've changed with my hip thrust it used to be the set stops when you can't go all the way up yes we we always made videos back in the day quit hip thrusting with your ego and that was argue the way they were doing it might have been better for glute growth yeah so now what I do is I don't let the weight crash to the floor I control it on the way down but then right at the bottom I kind of pause and then I go a little deeper into the stretch and then I use momentum on the way up I want to maximize torque there so I'm not trying to go slow I'm trying to explode out of the bottom and then maybe I do a set of eight but the first five are all the way up then the next two are you know maybe 6 in shy of lock out and then the last one you know you could you could keep going and doing length and partials that's a hard topic to discuss because I do think length and partials extended set like where you push the set like when you do a Hammer Strength chest press I I'm it's hardest up in here for me you know yes so I could always do like four more reps and I've been doing that now I've been doing that now doing like four extra reps in the stretch position and with this preacher curl machine I have I will do I I reach failure it's it's hard up here then I get I can get four 2/3 of the way up and then four one/ third the way up I'm getting eight more reps in this that that hit the stretch position and in the most fatigued state which is really hypertrophic I think there's going to be there's going to have to be a change in how we build machines whoever wants to make some decent money give contact Brett and I and we will teach you how to build machines to bias it for the force curves you want because most machines now leg presses all these other machines lap hold Downs they're one cam installment away from being amazing but they're just okay because they still bias the bottom too much and the top lockouts too easy or bi sorry bias the stretch too little and the and the contraction point a little too much but I think we're entering a world where hopefully especially with maybe electric cable machines you could set the resistance profile even just with free weights properly positioned that's going to be really good so Brett because in the interest of time we got to get going here in a sec if you could uh uh I want to speak to two things one the thumbnails we do thumbnails that maximize engagement thumbnails are Tips for Glute Growth always jokes they're never serious we never lie in the thumbnails we exaggerate for comedic effect but in the videos were always nuanced and give Mega respect so the thumbnail the thumbnail War will continue uh but uh since you're the authority in my mind on glute training can you sign us off with a tip that you've discovered maybe recently or that not a ton of people know people really struggling with glute growth and let's say they've read all the Articles they've trained themselves they're female their glutes are budging but slowly what is the one or two things people aren't doing in your experience very commonly that can really unlock some new gains for them in their glutes I'm going to give three tips one is for when you have one is like no one can do because they don't have my machines I have the Glu do you know what the gluteator is you sit in I've seen it in a sexual context only but never in a machine that helps you lift weights it does hip extension and abduction at the same time oh that's cool when you lean forward in it it's a lengthen partial machine if you lean forward so I and I put pads on on the insides so I go to my girls I want knees touching and I want knees to chest it is like your knees are here and then since you're abducting at the same time it takes your adductors out of it Y and for the first time like you mentioned you get a pump in the glutes from lunges most people get better pumps from horizontal hip like hip thrust back extension Kickbacks compared to squats deadlifts good morning step UPS Etc but this machine is a length and partial and and then I've been doing like I've been with me having plate load of machines and me being the trainer I'll have them do you know 15 reps on their own then I have them do five reps where I'm I'm helping them during the concentric and then pushing during the Ecentric then I have them do a 10-second ISO hold pushing against me in the stretch position then I have them doing 10 length and partials now you could say oh my God you're going past failure it these are easy machines to recover from it has to be better for glute growth I I would love I mean we we we we need studies for so many things I want to study for hip thrust full range versus short and partial versus length and partial that would be cool to see but anyway um like that glor machine a gladiator a glor machine lean forward and like that Rogers pendulum like if you have that that's a length and parti so there are ways to make you able to have a lot of stretch volume and not and it doesn't fatigue you much and if you really wanted to grow your glutes you get some of these machines and it's like such an unfair Advantage okay that's that's for people like who who can afford yeah have machine money for the general masses it's hard like I tell people you want to hip thrust 315 for 20 now I know that's a very broad what if you weigh a lot what if you don't 3 15 for 20 with good form controlled you're using it looks athletic it looks pleasing when you get there male female I don't care if you're big small like I have myund 110 pound girls can do it um and it doesn't matter if it's like the barbell or the the hip thrust machines like the BC strength hip Thruster but you have to give people a goal or else they'll just use like 135 yes yes they'll just get in there and do stuff so basically your point number for you is like try to climb up in strength with good technique keep pushing your strength on the exercises third technique you might realize that you know you've been using you've been using like you've been just focusing on moving weight but if you actually picture the glutes like when I squat now when I RDL even when I hip thrust picture feeling the glutes in the stretch that might make a big difference you know just like thinking the and like augmenting your form a little bit to take advantage of that stretch position instead of just uh pushing through the Reps without thinking about it and what you find is when you get the nice added benefit of having strong glutes is it seems to help people tolerate more volume with their quad and hamstring training it it spares structures the strong glutes will help prevent low back issues knee issues things like that so it can have a and they make you better at almost every sport um because hip extension is critical for almost every sport and the best part is when you're in the locker room and someone sees your tushy it might put a smile on their face because damn is it round and bulgy and uh that's really why I train glutes is to have a good locker room interaction okay so and one last Point there's eight studies now looking at squats versus hip thrusts on [Music] performance all your listeners will be listening we know that the squad is the Cornerstone of strength and conditioning programs straight the old guys say I will say with these eight papers if you read them you would say hip thrust are the better exercise for athletic performance and I think it's because you do explosive concentric hip extension yes that's very curious need more studies but I'm telling you they're better for Sprint speed obviously you should do both and obviously playing the sport or sprinting jumping is Paramount but strength training help helps you with your athletic Endeavors and hipur are very good I'm going I'm going to try and write a paper on this because um I was I I didn't realize there were eight papers looking at performance uh measurements but um anyway thank you Mike thank you so much for having me on you're a true scientist I appreciate it and uh and I knew we I knew when we talked we'd see more eye to eye yeah of course man um dude huge pleasure having you on thank you so much folks that concludes our ravenous blood soak debate Brett has YouTube channel and he's got an Instagram that pops off and the one of the best things about his insta he has tons of videos of himself doing glute exercises you have never heard of but are incredibly effective and you need to try and also he has a ton of different peoples of shapes and sizes female male trying these exercises where he gives really insightful very small Corrections that can make a big difference in your own glute training check it out uh see you on Instagram see you on YouTube don't go on Tik Tok it's aess pool I'm kidding see you on Tik Tok peace homies [Music]