You've watched the videos. You've done the hip thrusts, the kickbacks, the cable pull-throughs. Your workout clothes drawer is overflowing with leggings that promised to make your glutes look better just by wearing them.
And your glutes? Still the same.
Here's the pattern I see constantly: A woman trains glutes 3-4 times per week, feels sore the next day, and assumes she's doing everything right. Soreness means it's working, right?
Wrong.
The Real Problem: You're Doing Glute Exercises, Not Training Your Glutes
There's a difference between doing exercises that should work your glutes and actually making your glutes do the work.
If you've ever finished a set of hip thrusts and felt your quads burning more than your glutes, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The exercise is correct. The execution is what's missing.
A client came to me last year—late 30s, had been training for three years, religiously doing "glute days" twice a week. She could hip thrust 225 pounds. Impressive numbers. But her glutes hadn't changed since year one.
When I watched her lift, I saw the problem immediately: she was driving through her toes, hyperextending her lower back at the top, and essentially doing a quad-dominant back extension. The weight moved. But her glutes weren't doing the moving.
Within three weeks of fixing her setup and cues, she messaged me: "I can finally feel my glutes working. They're sore in a completely different way."
Pro Tip
If you feel your hip thrusts mostly in your quads or lower back, try this: Before you push, squeeze your glutes HARD for a full second. Don't drive up until you feel them engaged. This one cue changes everything.
Why Exercise Selection Is the Wrong Focus
Instagram will have you believe that glute growth comes from finding the "perfect" exercise. The one secret movement that fitness influencers supposedly discovered.
This is backward thinking.
The pattern I see repeatedly: women collect exercises like stamps, adding new ones every week, never mastering any of them. A Bulgarian split squat done with quad-dominant form is just a quad exercise—regardless of how many glute-focused hashtags you saw on the post that taught it to you.
The women who actually build their glutes do fewer exercises, not more. They master the hip hinge. They master the split squat. They understand exactly what "glute engagement" feels like in their body—not theoretically, but viscerally.
The Three Shifts That Actually Work
1. Setup Before Everything
Where your feet are. Where your weight is distributed. Where your spine is positioned. These decisions happen before you lift the weight—and they determine whether your glutes do the work.
If you set up wrong, no amount of "mind-muscle connection" will save you. Your body will use whatever muscles are mechanically positioned to move the load.
Coach's Note: Most women set up for hip thrusts with their feet too far away and too flat. Try bringing your feet closer—heels about 12-16 inches from your glutes—and driving through your heels, not your whole foot. You should feel an immediate difference.
2. Tempo Beats Weight
Here's an uncomfortable truth: If you can't do 12 slow, controlled hip thrusts with 95 pounds while feeling your glutes contract every single rep, you have no business loading up 185 pounds.
The pattern I see constantly: women chasing weight, bouncing at the bottom, using momentum, never actually making their glutes work through the full range.
Slow down. Take 3 seconds to lower. Pause at the bottom. Drive up with intention. Feel the squeeze at the top.
Lighter weight, done this way, builds more glute muscle than heavy weight done with momentum.
3. Frequency Matters Less Than Quality
If your glute sessions are low-quality—lots of exercises, poor execution, chasing fatigue rather than tension—doing them more often won't help. You'll just accumulate more poor-quality stimulus.
Two quality sessions per week, where every rep targets your glutes, will out-produce four mediocre sessions where you're just going through the motions.
Note
If you feel your glutes for 2 days after training them, that's inflammation—not necessarily productive muscle stimulus. The goal is to feel them working DURING the workout, not necessarily to be wrecked after.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Here's a simple test: Do 10 bodyweight glute bridges right now. Squeeze at the top for 3 seconds on each rep.
Did you feel your glutes working? Or did you feel your hamstrings take over? Or your lower back?
If it wasn't clearly glute-dominant, adding weight won't fix the problem. It will just make you better at using your hamstrings and lower back to move heavier loads.
The women who build impressive glutes master this basic movement pattern first. They can do a bodyweight glute bridge and feel it ONLY in their glutes. Then they progress to weighted hip thrusts. Then heavier. But the foundation never changes.
Your Glute Training Audit
- Can I do 15 bodyweight glute bridges feeling ONLY my glutes?
- Do I set up hip thrusts with intention, or just get under the bar?
- Am I chasing weight or chasing tension?
- Do I feel my glutes during the workout—not just soreness after?
The Real Transformation
A woman in her early 40s started working with me convinced she had "bad glute genetics." She'd been training for five years with zero visible change.
We didn't add exercises. We subtracted them. We went from 6 glute exercises per session to 3. We focused obsessively on her setup, her tempo, her engagement cues.
Eight weeks later, her husband asked if she'd been doing something different. Her jeans fit differently. She could finally see the change she'd been chasing for half a decade.
Her genetics didn't change. Her exercise selection barely changed. What changed was her execution quality—and that made all the difference.
If you're feeling stuck trying to figure out which of these shifts applies to your specific situation, that's exactly what the Pretty Strong method helps clarify →. We assess your movement, identify your weak links, and build your program around what YOUR body actually needs.