Bret Contreras, PhD, CSCS*D - Latest News and Information
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Biomechanics researcher and coach; practical, evidence‑driven strength training and injury‑smart progress.
Love this unique spin. People doing much more experimentation this past year on slight rotation, abduction, and abduction during hip extension exercises.
The lower gluteus maximus grows the most from strength training, followed by the upper gluteus maximus, and then the middle gluteus maximus. Frankie is crushing it lately by focusing on horizontal hip extension exercises. Not only do they grow the...
We do box squats all the time at Glute Lab for two reasons: to teach you how to sit back more and use the hips, and for a a consistent depth marker. People tend to cheat as the set goes...
Back in the day, it was “take every single set to complete, utter failure.” Recently, it’s been “don’t ever train to failure and always leave a couple of reps in reserve.” The truth is in the middle. More strenuous exercises...
Roundback lifting: should you avoid it altogether, or should you purposefully do it to safeguard against injuries?
How to build total glute development. Is it as easy as picking one hip extension movement and one frontal plane hip abduction movement? Ot do we need a vertical and horizontal hip extension movement to maximize lower and upper glute...
Individuality is really important and we don’t have a lot of objective ways of measuring this as personal trainers. We are all unique and must figure out the optimal exercise variations that suit our anatomy and physiology.
What should the core be doing during hip thrust? Many will say staying in neutral throughout the entire movement. Someone will say that you should be in a posterior pelvic tilt at the lockout. Most people agree that you should...
I think this glute growth formula would work very well. The main thing is to get super strong at the big, basic glute growing movements.
Hinge and scoop methods are both incredible. You may like both or you may have a strong preference for one or the other. They both work the glutes very well.
A little bit of knee cave is NOT dangerous. Even a lot of knee cave might not be. Stop letting Jeremy from Planet Fitness tell you how to lift.
Not a fan of supersets. Both exercises are great but you’ll see better results doing them traditionally instead of back to back.
You can modify technique off the V-squat machine to work more glutes, more quads, more adductors, or more hammies.
An exercise either causes hypertrophy or it doesn’t. Some exercises might be better suited at causing distal versus proximal hypertrophy but I digress. All exercises listed here are great. I’ve seen this topic being discussed since the 90’s and it’s...
If you think “RDL” on the way down, you’ll keep the spine and neutral and get more passive stretching of the hip extensors. If you think “Thrust” on the way up, you’ll posteriorly tilt the pelvis and avoid hyper, extending...
