Kas Glute Bridge vs Hip Thrust: Which One is Better?

Kas glute bridge vs hip thrust. Which one should you choose when working out your glutes? Both these exercises are valid options for different reasons and in this article, we’ll help you decide which one aligns better with your fitness goals.

We’ll provide you with a detailed comparison of these two exercises, focusing on technique, muscle activation, benefits, variations, effectiveness, workout integration, and user experiences. Read on!

Kas Glute Bridge Vs. Hip Thrust: Comparison Of The Techniques

To know the differences between Kas glute bridge vs hip thirst exercises, we first need to know how each of them is performed.

How Is Kas Glute Bridge Performed?

The Kas Glute Bridge consists of resting the upper back against the edge of an elevated surface, typically a bench while placing the feet flat on the ground. Lift your hips by exerting force from your heels until your body forms a straight line from neck to knees.

There’s a big focus on controlled movement with a low range of motion and squeezing your glutes at the top of the movement.

Here are the steps for doing this workout.

1. The exercise begins with your back against the elevated surface of your choice and feet planted flat on the ground. If you are using a barbell, now it’s time to place the barbell across your hips.
2. Push through your heels and lift your hips until your knees are at about 90º angle and your torso is a straight line parallel to the ground.
3. Lower your hips in a controlled manner about 2 inches.
4. Slowly come back up and remember to squeeze your glutes at the top of the movement.
5. Repeat for the desired number of reps and sets.

How is Hip Thrust Performed?

The hip thrust is very similar in setup and execution. You’ll still lean against a bench and elevate your hips with your feet flat on the ground.

However, the big difference is in the range of motion and explosiveness of the movement. Hip thrusts require the hips to drop lower in their execution than the kas glute bridge and to come back up faster. This results in the activation of the hamstrings, making it a double duty workout, but more on that later.

1. Rest your shoulder blades against the edge of an elevated surface of your preference and keep your feet flat on the ground
2. Place a barbell with a challenging amount of weight across your hips.
3. Stabilize your spine by engaging your core muscles and push up with your heels until your torso forms a straight line from neck to knees.
4. Allow your hips to drop further than the Kas glute bridge and bring them back up while squeezing your glutes at the top of the movement.
5. Repeat for the desired number of reps and sets.

Hip Thrust Vs Kas Glute Bridge: Muscle Activation

As you can see both exercises are very similar in execution, but the slight change in range of motion makes all the difference when it comes to the goal of the workout.

Kas Glute Bridge

Focusing on a smaller range of motion and concentrated movement makes the exercise stellar at isolating the glutes and working them as a whole (maximus, medius, and minimus). This makes the Kas glute bridge the best option if your objective is solely to give the glutes some extra attention and get that round butt of dreams.

Hip Thrust

The hip thrust is more of a whole lower-body exercise. It also targets the glutes, but the broader range of motion makes it a compound exercise. It primarily engages glutes and hamstrings, but also benefits the quads and lower back. If you’re interested in more compound exercises, you should check out the compound chest, compound bicep, and compound tricep exercises here on the Flex blog.

Kas Glute Bridge Vs Hip Thrust: Benefits

Here are the main benefits of each exercise so you can make the best decision when picking between the two:

Kas Glute Bridge Benefits

• Glute Isolation: Excellent for isolating and strengthening the glutes, so you can get that shelf butt!
• Lower Back Friendly: The Kas glute bridge has a lower strain on the lower back compared to other lower body exercises.
• Core Stability: Enhances your core stability thanks to the greater controlled movement.

Hip Thrust Benefits

• Strength Gains: Promotes overall lower body strength since it works for multiple lower body muscle groups.
• Muscle Hypertrophy: the exercise’s greater range of motion helps with muscle hypertrophy.
• Functional Improvements: The hip thrust improves hip extension which is especially beneficial for athletes.

Kas Glute Bridge Vs. Hip Thrust: Exercise Variations

Since they are fairly similar, both the Kas Glute Bridge and the Hip Thrust can be modified in the same way to add variety and increase the difficulty of your workouts.

• You can do single-leg variations of both exercises. To do this, extend one leg until it is parallel to the ground and perform the exercise. This increases the load on the leg that is not extended and provides greater muscle activation.

• You can also utilize resistance bands to do both exercises. Resistance bands can be useful when you don’t have access to a barbell or any other form of adding weight to the exercise. To do so, you place each foot on the ends of the resistance band and pull it to your lap. This will create resistance when trying to bring your hips up during the exercise, making it more difficult.

Kas Glute Bridge Vs Hip Thrust: The Internet’s Opinion

Both Kas Glute Bridge and the Hip Thrust have been around in the weightlifting world for a while now Thus, many people have had the chance to share their opinions and stories about these two exercises. In this section, we’ll take a look at some of those opinions to help you choose which exercise is best for you.

There are several posts on social media, like Reddit, of users asking other people where they stand on the Kas glute bridge vs hip thrust debate. User Setsugeka has an opinion similar to ours:

“KAS bridges strictly isolate your glutes - it's not worse form, the point is to keep the movement slow and controlled the entire time, with the shortened ROM ensuring you keep tension on your glutes (when performed correctly).

Hip thrusts typically depend on your glutes for the movement, but some of your quads and hamstrings will/*might be recruited slightly - this can vary depending on foot placement.

since you use a bit more of an explosive force (though still controlled) with hip thrusts compared to KAS bridges, you might find that you can go heavier with HTs as a result. personally, I go a bit lighter with KAS bridges to ensure I control the movement and primarily recruit my glutes to move the weight, though I feel this is a YMMV situation. I don't see why you couldn't do them both in the same workout, so long as your form is good for both.”

User kfcpotatowedge shared their set and asked for another user opinion:

“Need an honest opinion. I just started training glutes. I do 10 KAS and 6 hip thrust right after. (3x). I hear a lot of people saying KAS is more optimal because of the pulses/squeeze at top but I honestly feel it more when I do the full range of motion hip thrust + squeeze at the top. Like when I go down to when my butt touches the floor, I feel a nice stretch and then as I go up, I squeeze. Thank you ladies!!”

To which user Greeneyed_dream replied:

“Personally I love hip thrust. I feel it in my lower booty for sure. BUT!!! your little super set of putting these two together is chefs kiss. I say keep it up! Keep that protein high and eat at least at maintenance calories and that booty will be POPPING!!”

The Takeaway

Both the Kas glute bridge and the hip thrust are excellent exercises. It is up to you to decide which one is better suited for your fitness goals.

Do you want to focus solely on the glutes? Kas glute bridge.

Do you want to focus on your whole lower body? Hip thrust!

If you can manage to add both to your workout routine, that would be even better!

The most important thing is that you maintain steady in your fitness journey, with discipline, hard work, and proper form, results will show up no matter which exercise you pick.

Ready to take your glute gains to the next level? Download the Flex APP and enjoy all its benefits, from an auto-progression tracker to a plate calculator and a community that cheers you on. Get fit with Flex!