If you focus on your back, hip extension (better known as hyperextension) is a top-level hip exercise to strengthen and develop the musculature of your hips. While many people turn to obvious choices like the Romanian deadlift and hip thrust alternatives, hip extensions have an advantage that they don't. When done with a full range of motion, this movement can also help work the part of the body we're often afraid to exercise: the lower back.
“As a fitness culture, and in society at large, we fear spinal flexion, where the lower back flexes in a C-shape,” says Greg Pignataro, CSCS, founder of Never Past Your Prime. “But this is a fundamental movement. When we bend down to pick up something, it's something we do every day. “And just like any other movement, it's something we can train to be strong at.”
Below, we'll explain how you can use your glutes to increase your strength, prepare your glutes and hamstrings for more hip movement, and protect your spine from injury when doing heavy squats or deadlifts.
Related: Split Squat vs Lunge: Which is Better for Gaining Size and Strength?
What is Glute Extension, also known as Hyperextension?
Glute extension or hyperextension is an exercise performed on a back extension bench. This bench sits at a 45-degree angle, has two flat pads at the front for the thighs and two round pads closer to the floor to keep the lower legs in place.
The original use of the back extension bench was to perform back extensions, an exercise that helps strengthen your lower back and core muscles. While performing this movement, the thighs are placed on flat pads and the backs of the lower legs are locked by the round pads. The intern bends at the hips as his head moves towards his feet and the ground, and finally folds in half, turning his back. It is extended upwards from the bottom to the back.
When exercisers refer to this movement as “hip extension,” they're often using different strategies to help the back extension target the hips more and work their back less.
How to Install Glute Extension?
Most often, hip extension is done by pressing the chin towards the chest and arching the upper back throughout the movement. But Pignataro and Shawn Arent, Ph.D., CSCS, chair of the Department of Exercise Science at the University of South Carolina, don't recommend doing that.
Instead, they recommend two different strategies to increase the effectiveness of this movement for hip growth while protecting the lower back.
Lower Thigh Pads to Mid-Thigh
In rear extension, thigh pads are generally placed higher on the thighs, almost up to the crease of the hips, says Arent.
“If I move the pad a little bit lower so that it hits the middle of my hip or the flesh of my thigh, you're changing the leverage point a little bit,” he says. “You'll get a little more hip and hamstring engagement when pulling back because you've moved the fulcrum.”
Shorten Range of Motion
As you bend all the way down on this bench to round the lower back, the lower back muscles are used to straighten the back and the glutes are used to straighten the hips.
Pignataro says this is good if you want to work your back and hips. However, if your focus is solely on your glutes, you can stop the movement before your back starts to round.
So from the very beginning of the movement, you will begin to fold your hips forward, keeping your back straight. Pignataro says to stop when the angle of your hips reaches about 90 degrees. Here you will tighten your glutes to return to the starting position.
Related: How to Activate Your Glutes Before Running or Lifting
How to Perform Glute Extension/Hyperextension?
If you're adding hip extension to your workout, consider doing it later in your leg workout, says Arent. Other movements you can do, including squats, lunges, deadlifts, and Romanian deadlifts, will require your hip-hinge muscles and back-stabilizing muscles to be strong, and hip extension can fatigue them.
Both experts recommend doing the move with lighter weights and focusing on form and the mind-muscle connection with your glutes and back. For your glutes, this means actively trying to feel the movement of your butt as your hips move.
Beth Bischoff
How To
- Adjust the back extension bench according to your height. For a more hip-focused extension, adjust the thigh pads to hit the mid-thigh. For a “normal” back stretch, move the pads toward the curve of your hips.
- Stand on the bench with the thigh pads on your thighs and the round pads on the back of your lower legs.
- Stack your head, shoulders, waist and knees in a straight line. Maintain softness in your knees while supporting your core.
- If you're doing the exercise with just your body weight, cross your arms in front of your chest or place your hands lightly next to your ears. If you're holding a light weight, hold a dumbbell by its sides or plate in front of your chest with your elbows bent. This is the starting position.
- Push your hips toward your hips and maintain a neutral curve in your spine as you begin to lower your chest toward the floor. If you're focusing solely on your glutes, stop leaning forward when the angle of your hips reaches 90 degrees. If you prefer full range of motion, continue leaning forward until you can no longer hinge at your hips, then round your back to fold yourself fully in half.
- Tighten your core, tighten your glutes, and use the muscles in your back to return to the starting position.
- Once your body forms a straight line again, stop at the top.
- This is 1 rep.
Pro Tip
Pignataro recommends performing this move in 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 20 repetitions per set. Once you can perform this with good form, add a five- or 10-pound dumbbell, working up to 10 to 20 percent of your body weight.
Safety Concerns Related to Hyperextension
While it's good to exercise your lower back, when done incorrectly, this movement can cause unwanted stress on the lumbar spine and, in the worst case scenario, lead to a disc herniation. Here are a few tips our experts recommend to keep this move safe.
Don't Excessively Extend at the Top
Although the move is sometimes called “hyperextension,” one way this exercise can result in pain or injury is by overextending your hips at the top of the movement, Arent says. In this position, you pushed your hips forward, your chest bulged out and your head came behind your hips.
“Here your spine is in a less-than-ideal position,” he says. Instead, try to keep your head, shoulders, waist and knees in a straight line. Although there is some natural arch in the back, do not push the hips forward to overextend in this movement.
Use Low Weight and More Reps
You may have seen videos online where trainees perform this exercise by lifting heavy dumbbells over their shoulders. But Pignataro says locking your knees to the bench is a risky position.
“To strengthen your lower back, I think once you can do 20 reps with good form, you can hold maybe a 5- or 10-pound dumbbell,” he says. Hold the dumbbell by its ends in front of your chest and perform back/hip extension.
Pignataro also thinks it's best to do this move with lighter weights when focusing on the glutes.
“If you do this in high-rep sets, it's really good to strengthen the mind-muscle connection with the glutes,” he says, meaning you'll be better at engaging the muscles in the back instead of flattening your hips. compensated by the low back. “Many of us struggle with this because we spend so much time sitting.”
If you want to train your glutes to be as strong as possible in a shortened position (which is what hip extensions do), Pignataro recommends doing other hip exercises that work this part of the hip joint's range of motion more slowly.
“Hip thrusts, hip thrust machines, Romanian deadlifts – these will offer a safer way to load the glutes [in this shortened position] and still challenges the same thing,” he says.
Related: Are You Fit Enough to Finish the 28-Day Gym Challenge?
Muscles Working in Hip Extensions
As you hinge your hips in this move, you primarily use your glutes and hamstrings, the muscles on the back of your thighs. When your back returns to the bottom of its range of motion, the movement focuses on the spinal erectors, or erector spinae.
The erector spinae isn't just your lower back, says Arent.
“This is the column of muscle that runs from your lower back to your lower trapezius, [the muscles that shrug your shoulders]”It's like a series of cables running up your back,” he says.
When these cables flex, they pull your spine straight. And by working in this way on the lower part of the hip extension, they straighten the back. The glutes and hamstrings straighten the hips, pulling the now flat back towards the top of the movement.
This exercise works mostly the glutes in a shortened position, Pignataro says.
This means that the muscles have an extended position and a shortened position. When you begin a biceps curl with your arm straight at your side, the bottom half of the movement is the extended position. At the top of the movement, your biceps are in a contracted position. In this case, training only the upper part of the curl will work the muscles in a shortened position.
Hyperextension for the glutes essentially works like this: It mostly works the glutes in a shortened position. Other movements, such as the Bulgarian split squat, work better in the extended position.
Related: The 10 Best Bodyweight Leg Exercises for Size and Strength
Glute-Ham Raise vs. Back Extension
Courtesy Image
The glute-ham raise is an exercise similar to the back extension/hip extension exercise, but is performed on a different type of bench. The hip-ham raise bench has two sets of round pads on the back to lock the feet in place and a large, half-moon-shaped pad where the knees and lower thighs are usually placed.
When performing this movement, the practitioner usually starts in a kneeling position with the body forming a straight line from head to knees. They keep this line straight and bend their knees to move forward until their entire body is parallel to the ground while still having a slight bend in their knees. From this position they pull themselves back to the start.
“You're pulling more with the hamstrings and glutes compared to the recliner,” says Arent. This move, he says, is similar to a bodyweight version of the false leg curl.
The glute-ham raise (GHR) bench can also be used for a different type of glute extension exercise, he says. To do this, turn around so that you are facing the foot locking round pads. Many GHR benches have handles here. Catch them. The front of your hips will be on the half-moon pad and your legs will hang from it. Keeping your legs straight, squeeze your glutes to prevent your legs from bending 90 degrees until your body forms a straight line. This movement looks like the opposite of the leg raise on a Roman chair.