Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Bret Contreras on Squats vs. Hip Thrusts for Glute Gains

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

If you want to grow your glutes, and you’ve looked around online for tips, you’ve almost certainly come across hip thrusts. But are they better than squats for getting a bigger butt? Should you do squats or hip thrusts?  Well, after years of speculation among booty-building enthusiasts, we now have a scientific study that directly compared hip thrusts and squats in terms of hypertrophy. And I thought, who better to discuss this study than “The Glute Guy” himself, Dr. Bret Contreras. Not only is Bret a glute training expert, but as the cherry on top (or should I say peach?), he was actually one of the head honchos involved in conducting the study. In case you're not familiar with Bret, he's a PhD in Sports Science, renowned researcher, educator, bestselling author, and a personal trainer for over two decades, whose title "The Glute Guy" reflects his unmatched expertise in lower body training, making him the foremost authority on building a great butt.  Our discussion includes . . . - The surprising results of the hip thrust versus squats study, including how they compare for glute hypertrophy and non-specific strength transfer - Bret's take on a potentially fabricated study that stirred the fitness community - The benefits and challenges of studying beginner trainees - An exploration of training the glutes at varied muscle lengths - The relationship between EMG studies and muscle hypertrophy -The importance of technique over "feeling the burn" in compound movements - Nuanced insights into the complexities of muscle growth mechanisms - Practical strategies for those seeking to optimize their glute training - And more . . . So, if you want to learn about the nuances of glute training and how to grow a bigger butt, or want to know what the science says about hip thrusts versus squats, don’t miss this episode!  Timestamps: (0:00) - Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (2:39) - Why was this research essential, and what drove its inception? (13:59) - What's the rationale behind focusing on novice trainees? (17:58) - How would outcomes differ with more advanced lifters? (25:49) - Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! (28:59) - The role of EMG in predicting muscle hypertrophy. (31:42) - EMG's Relevance in Bodybuilding Science (35:04) - How does this study redefine our understanding of biomechanics and other exercises? (39:22) - What larger impacts does this study have on fitness research? (45:13) - Additional insights from the findings and final thoughts. (49:35) - How to connect with Bret Contreras and his work. Mentioned on the Show: The study: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.21.545949v1 Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! Bret Contreras’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bretcontreras1/ Bret Contreras’s Website: https://bretcontreras.com/

Hello, I am Mike Matthews and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode on the science of glute gains. Specifically, you're going to learn about a new study on glute hypertrophy that looked at the efficacy of squats versus hip thrusts. And this has been an ongoing debate in the glute growth space. How good are squats for growing your butt and how do they compare to hip thrusts? And then you are also going to get some training tips, some practical programming tips for maximizing the efficacy of your glute training. And in today's episode, you're going to be learning

from one of the people who conducted this study, the glute guy himself, Dr. Brett Contreras, who is a PhD in sports science. He is a renowned researcher, educator, and best-selling author, as well as a personal trainer for over two decades. And as you will learn in this interview, the results of this study that Brett conducted with Menno Henselmans surprised him a little bit. They were not what he was expecting. But when you are an active researcher, you get used to such things. You get used to your hypotheses being disproven. The god of glutes has returned, has descended from his lofty throne to regale us with tales of hypertrophy and aesthetics. And okay, I'll stop now.

Hey, Brett, it's good to see you again. Thanks for having me on again. It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a long while. You've been busy doing lots of things. Congrats on your book. I know it's been a little bit now, but I've seen that it's done quite well. And I can appreciate that as a dude has written some books. Yeah.

Yours is always recommended, wouldn't it Yours is always recommended. Blame Amazon, blame Amazon. Well, yeah, again, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. And we're going to be talking about your specialty, of course. But it is a great topic for even though it's something that you've spoken a lot about, but a lot of people listening love to learn more about it. And I do think today's discussion is going to be interesting and going to add some context to maybe what some people see people doing in the gym or what's just kind of generally recommended on social media or opinions that go around on social media. And that is specifically, I thought a good framework for the discussion is this study that you and Menno funded and worked on. And we can get into some

of the details of that and then maybe some of the broader implications that we can take from that. So maybe a good place to start is this is a study that you had said you'd been wanting to do for a long time. You were a little bit surprised or is this is a study that you had said you'd been wanting to do for a long time. You were a little bit surprised or there were some outcomes that proved you wrong. So can you talk a little bit about just why you wanted to do this study and then we can get into some of the details? Well, yeah. First of all, the name of the study was just published. Well, it actually hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.

We posted it on pre-print server. The title is Hip Thrust and Back Squat Training Elicits Similar Gluteus Muscle Hypertrophy and Transfers Similarly to the Deadlift. So if you type that title and it comes up, you can download the PDF. So this has been something when I invented the barbell hip thrust so many years ago, 17 years ago, almost 18, I remember I would stay awake at night because my clients started telling me, Brett, I'm running faster. I haven't gone running at all in the last two, three months since training with you and I just ran a mile and I'm faster and I quit running.

It's the hip thrust. And I'd be like, how do you know it's the hip thrust? We do like 20 exercises here. thrust and I'd be like, how do you know it's the hip thrust? We do like 20 exercises here because I feel like when my foot touches the ground, I feel like more power, you know, kind of like I, like, like I'm using my glutes more like in a hip thrust. So that I remember back in 2006, I would stay awake at night thinking about it. You know, what's different between like a squat and a hip thrust? Well, squats are hardest when you go down deep, squats and lunges, you know, hip thrusts are hardest when you lock out. It took me a long time to learn that all you have to say

is they have different hip extension torque angle curves. At that time, I didn't know, you know, I didn't speak biomechanics. So I went and got my PhD and I didn't like not knowing the answer to things, you know, I didn't like, and this study, like most studies, provides more questions than answers. So from the very beginning, I've always said, all my articles on my books, hip thrusts are superior to squats for growing the glute. Based on this study, I'm wrong, they're equal.

Statistically speaking, they're very similar. Hip thrusts got a slight edge, but not statistically significant. They grew the glute similarly. Now we'll get into the nuances, but before I get on this subject, there was a study published in 2020 and kind of a frustrating topic for me because it was a study published by Barbalo. I could go on and on about this, but I remember like, I've never been reading a study and thought like, this is fake. This is fake. But the year before this study was published, I was reading a study by Barbalo and it's his Palo Gentil's lab. He's a professor in Brazil. And I'm like, I was showing it to my team, my glute lab trainers. And I remember like it was yesterday,

I was showing them this study and I looked at the data and I go, this is fake. Data never comes out like this. It's never clean. Like they have 20 different graphs and they're all perfect. I published so much with Brad Schoenfeld and we're always like trying to make sense of the data. And we're like, well, why did this work for this work? This showed to be the case for quadriceps, but not for the biceps? Why would they be different? And we're trying to make sense of it. And I'm like, in all the studies that I've published, you know, which is over 50, I've never had anything this clean. And I go, this is fake. I called my buddies at the time. I called James Krieger. I called Brad Schoenfeld. I called Andrew Vygotsky. And I'm like, I think this study is fake. And how could we prove it? And they're like, they didn't care enough back then.

They're like, I don't know. I don't know how you'd prove it. So then, like a year later, this hip thrust versus squat study gets published, and I look, and it's the same group. And I'm like, and so I glanced over, and I'm like, this is so fake. If you're a trainer, like I'm in the gym every day,

seven days a week. I think I'm the only evidence trainer, like I'm in the gym every day, seven days a week. I think I'm the only evidence-based guy that's in the gym all day long. Every other evidence-based guy couldn't wait to become wealthy so they could be behind the desk. And I couldn't wait to become wealthy so I could build these gyms and not charge. So I just have clients that I train.

I don't have to charge or I don't have to make revenue from it, but I train people every day. When you train people already, you know that if you, someone starts off with like squats. So say you start training someone, their squats, you know, in six, let's say 12 weeks, their squats will go up 20 pounds, 30 pounds. Their hip thrust will go up like a hundred pounds. It's just the way it is. You know, within a few months I'm getting people are hip thrusting 225 already. You know, it's just the way it is. So the study didn't pass the personal trainer test. So then I wrote this write-up about it saying this is BS. This is like

a bunch of crap. It's not true. Here's all the reasons why it's fake. And I thought everyone was going to be like, yay, Brett showed us that this is fake. Oh my God, I got, yeah, I was not prepared for this. The industry, this was the first time I've, you know, I was well-liked before this, or I thought I was. And so this is the first time I've been slammed to this degree. Memes were made, Brett can't accept the truth,

trying to pretend like the study's fake. And I'm like, it's so obvious that it's fake. Like, it's so blatantly obvious that it's fake. No personal training, no one who actually works with people could even believe this. But a lot of the evidence-based people were like, what a great study. And I'm like, that's what kind of made me realize some of the evidence-based crowd is not as smart as they think they are. So at that time, my friend Mano Hanselman and I talked and I'm like, Mano, the study's fake. And so at that time, the statisticians started looking at all the top sports scientists. And these guys spent six months analyzing, scrutinizing all of Barbala and Gentile's papers. And they basically concluded that they're all fake. They're all fabricated. They made these white papers and then like Greg Knuckles put it on his

blog. It's hard to understand. I have a PhD and I don't understand much of it because it's high level statistics, but Greg's blog post does a good job of basically explaining in terms of probability and stuff like that. Like there's a one in 13 million chance that this would happen. Like it wouldn't, it's just not the case. But they took so many different angles at it. It was hilarious. Like none of the stats lad up,

but even like you're taking these, these power lifters went from like amateur to elite within 16 weeks. And like from this crappy protocol, and it was like this weird periodization protocol where like every fourth week, you're doing super high reps with no rest time, like sets of like 12 to 15 with 30 to 60 seconds rest.

So I had my niece do that. So you're going down to the bar, essentially. Exactly. So I had my niece do it. She could squat 205 pounds, but by the fourth set, she was doing 45 pounds and she couldn't finish the 12 reps. And she couldn't sleep on her stomach because her quads were so sore. Like she was messed up from that. Poor Gabby. Anyway, so then when the white paper came out and all the top sports scientists came out and said,

look, these are all, then the industry, they didn't believe me because they're just like, oh, Brett's being a hater. He's just pissed that his precious hip thrust lost out. Now they can see, okay, these statisticians are saying it. Now it doesn't pass the sniff test with the sports scientists or the coaches and trainers. And then about four of this group's papers

have been retracted since. So now everyone knows it's just, it's fake. But at the time I was talking to Menno and I was like, Menno, we should do this study. We should duplicate it. And he's like, yeah, and we should use MRI because ultra, they used ultrasound. Ultrasound's hard for the glutes. It's, ultrasound's fine for some muscles, but the glutes, there's no bone underneath. You don't see this clear skin, fat, muscle. It's a fascial border that's kind of hard to see. You got to be a skilled technician. So we wanted to use MRI. And then we just kind of lost touch. COVID happened and life goes on. And then coincidentally, I'm talking to Mike Roberts.

He wanted to talk to me for some other reason. And I'm like, Mike, I'd love to do a, like a glute study with you, like a squat versus hip does. You guys have MRI capabilities you got. And he's like, I got this guy, Daniel Plotkin. He's an awesome PhD student. He could do the studies, a coach. He's a trainer and we could do it. And then I'm like, okay, how much would it cost? Okay. We'll get an estimate

for you. And they're like 80 grand. I'm like, Oh God. Okay. I'm going to do it. Is it worth vindication though? It's so I was like, you know, I'm getting old. I don't have kids. I'm not married. I've got money. I've been lucky to make a lot of money. And this is like, I'm so curious, but it needs to be done. So I'm like, I'm just going to pay the 80 grand. Well, Menno calls me up and Menno's like, Brett, we got to get this done. And I'm like, okay, what do you have in mind? He's like, I got these guys in Norway. I'm like, well, coincidentally, I've been talking to Mike Roberts. He can do it, but it's really expensive. It's going to be 80 grand. And he's like, okay, coincidentally, I've been talking to Mike Roberts. He can do it, but it's really expensive.

It's going to be 80 grand. He's like, okay, I'll split it with you. I was like, what? Like, Menno stepped it up. Didn't bat an eyelash. All right, let's do this. So we both put in 40 grand. We funded the study.

And, you know, it's tough because when you create the methods, you have to equate volume. You have to make things fair. To get it accepted by peer reviewers, you can't have different volumes and frequencies. So basically, you know, we said, well, we'll have them hip squat or hip thrust twice a week. Week one, they're starting out with just three sets. By the end, by like week nine, they're doing like six sets a day, so twice a week. So like starting off with like six sets a week of glutes, which is not much, ending with 12 sets a week for glutes. But I was always like, you know, that's the one thing about this study, that everything's nuanced. The caveat there is that, yeah, we equated volume, but everyone can

do way more hip thrusts than they can squats. Squats beat you up, good, especially if you go to failure. Hip thrusts do not beat you up as much. You could do more. So that's where I still think in the real world, you talk to people and they're like, my glutes never start growing until I start hip thrusting. I squatted for years. You know, people will say that. I squatted for years, Brett. My glutes never grew until I started hip thrusting. And I think that's because you're doing a lot more volume. And you're probably pushing to failure, close to failure more often on the hip thrust simply because it's safer, it's more comfortable to do that than it is to squat. Even if it's not to absolute failure, let's say it's like zero RIR, that is less intimidating on the hip thrust than

it is on the squat. Well, the hip thrust, you just, you come up like three quarters of the way. You don't quite lock it out. You know, the squat you're worried about. Dying once the weight gets heavy. Yeah, it's scarier and it's just that last rep. You're like, sometimes my, actually, my voice right now is a little deeper than normal because I squatted yesterday and I scream as I, you know, like I just like on my last rep. And yeah, I don't do that with hip thrust, you know.

Okay. So that's why we needed to do this study. Now what? I'm curious why you went with beginners rather than more experienced trainees. So I wanted to go with advanced because I want people to take it seriously, you know, but they said, no, the first study should be beginners because we want the best chance of growing muscle. Beginners are going to grow faster than, you know, if we're going to tease out significant differences, we should go with beginners. I said, okay, that's a fair point. Future studies will use advanced, but the first

study should be on beginners. Some people have, it's funny, I never thought about this at the time, but some people said, well, that gives the hip thrust the advantage because it's an easier lift. It doesn't require as much coordination. And then also they think, you know, well, beginners grow from anything, so this doesn't tell us much. But I don't think I've seen a lot of studies where advanced grow very differently than beginners. Like, they tend to respond similarly. It's just that beginners will grow more. But that's a theory out there that some people believe that the more stretch-related growth,

you know, they call it stretch-mediated hypertrophy. My friend Andrew Vygotsky thinks it should be called stretch-moderated hypertrophy because mediated, I don't even know why, he's a genius. But anyway, some people think like Chris Beardsley, Paul Carter, they're of the opinion that as time goes on, you don't get as much longitudinal, like sarcomeres in series, because a muscle can only get so much longer. After a certain point,

once it does elongate a little bit, then it's just sarcomeres in parallel. I always explain this in my seminars. In series, they're like sausage links, end over end, you're adding sausages, whereas sarcomeres in parallel are like sardines in a can. You're adding more sardines. After a while, it's just going to be gains and increases in cross-section, not increases in length. So that's a theory. It could just be that long-length stuff in most muscles signals the muscle to grow. It's a better

like tighten tight tightens stretches that is activated more and it's just better growing muscle or it could be that's growing better growing muscle in beginners. Cause right now that I think there's 25 studies on this topic of muscle length. I have them all in like four different categories. There's isometrics at like long versus short lengths. There's full range versus partials. There's partials versus partials, like partials in the stretch versus partials in the squeeze in the top. And then there's different force length exercises

that are easy in the stretch and then harder at the top versus exercises that are harder in the stretch and easier at the top, different force length curves. And they're all kind of looking at the same thing. Should you try to have an exercise stretch you more and be harder in the stretch or is there benefit to that? And I think probably out of the 25 papers, like 21 of them or 22 of them all show a benefit towards

long length training. And it's been in a lot of muscles now. But what about this study? So some people have said, well, this study wasn't designed to answer the question of whether glutes should be trained at long or short lanes. They want a more targeted study, like using a multi-hip machine or something like that.

And I'm going, that doesn't have ecological validity. This does. So I do think this is a critical, one piece of the puzzle. I think there's a bunch of puzzle pieces that are needed to answer that topic. But glutes could be different. People just assume the physio muscles have the same physiology.

You know, what were the glute muscle going to have different receptor, like tighten and things like that, or the things that probably not, but there are different neural strategies for different muscles. And one thing about the squat or like going deep into deep hip flexion, the glutes don't activate very high. They don't maximize their neural drive as you go deep. So that could be a flaw. It could be a limitation with a longer length training. We need a lot more research on this topic. And based on what you saw in this study and your extensive experience training many muscle groups and also your understanding of the literature, do you have a hypothesis if you were to conduct a study like this with more advanced trainees? I'm just curious what you think probable outcomes might look like

for people maybe who are a bit more advanced in their training, if there's anything that might just be interesting for them to think about. Yep. I should let you know that Brad and I always joke around. Brad's my best bud. We always joke around that we're about 50-50 in our hypotheses. We're not very good. We're not very good at our hypotheses. We feel confident about something and we do a study and we're like, oh, wow, look at this study. But I'm also biased. I invented the hip thrust. Of course, I'm going to be biased.

So I do think that advanced subjects would see better growth with the hip thrust. And when you say that, are you thinking, so let's say somebody needs to do a fair amount of volume per week just to get anywhere with their glutes because they've trained them quite a bit. They're strong now. And so they need to do 15, let's say, sets per week for their glutes to really see any progress. And when you say that you think that it's possible that the hip thrust would beat out the squat, how would you break that up? Are you thinking the majority of their volume would be hip thrust or? No, I believe in the rule of thirds, which I'll get to in a second. But one thing I want to talk about is I had made videos a while back saying the glutes are different than other muscles. And the reason why they're different is they have the most active, they don't get a lot

of passive tension. Think of muscles that get a lot of passive tension, like your pecs. When you're at the bottom of a fly, your pecs are like, you know, you think of the hamstrings when you do either like a seated leg curl at the top, if you're sitting very upright, or if you're at the bottom of a stiff leg deadlift or something, the hamstrings are rock solid. Some muscles like the delts, they don't even get much tension in the stretch. You can't stretch them that well, you know what I mean? But it's not just that. It's how the muscle, it's kind of like the resting sarcomere length and the moment arm, how much it gets stretched, you know, and like it's the muscle physiology itself. So I was basing that off of muscle modeling and biomechanics use this software called OpenSim and it's a free

software. And I looked at this OpenSim model and I saw that the peak active tension for the glutes was at neutral. So that's where it gets the most, you know, I'm like, what's more important, active tension or passive tension? If pure passive tension were that important, then stretching would be huge for muscle growth. It does grow muscle. It's just not very efficient. Like you can grow from stretching. It's just, you got to do a lot of it. Yeah, or we could just hold weights and just do like isometrics and we wouldn't need to lift them. Yeah. So what I theorized back then was, well, it doesn't get a lot of passive tension. Passive tension doesn't go skyrocket as you go through the range of motion. Active tension gets higher than passive tension. So the total tension is

highest. So that's why I made that video. I'm like, God, I was dead set. Glutes are going to grow best with short muscle lanes, not long. And then I came across another study and they referenced a different open sim model. So I downloaded it. It's funny. I sent it to Coach Kazem and he and I dissected it. But he modeled, what if the glutes were even bigger if you had hypertrophy glutes? Because these models, they're stringy little, they'd mimic elderly people with no muscle. What if you actually had muscle? So he actually went ham on this model. He modeled if you had hypertrophy well then you're getting much greater stretch with the bigger muscles and this different model we we looked at had different parameters and it

showed the active tension now peak active tension wasn't it neutral it was now at around like i think it was like 30 degrees of hip flexion and i'm like what's the difference between the two models how can this be and we looked and the only thing they changed was the tendon slack length. So it's like, do you think they really measured tendon slack? How do you even measure that? How do you measure that with a gluteus maximus where like 80% of its fiber is attached to fascia?

You can't, it's not an easy thing to do. I think they just throw in numbers. When you model, you make these assumptions and you gotta make it fit. So now I'm like, okay, now I don't know what to think. The muscle modeling I don't agree with. Now with EMG, I would have predicted that EMG would have accurately predicted hypertrophy,

but it didn't in our study. And it's funny because they didn't wanna do, Daniel and Mike didn't wanna do the EMG. And I'm like, yes, we're doing the EMG because, and Menno and I really wanted it because we wanted to show, Menno was like thinking EMG is not predictive of hypertrophy. And I'm thinking it is. I haven't told Daniel, I'll buy you a beer. If you're wrong, the loser has to buy you, so I own my beer now.

EMG did not predict hypertrophy. And what I think is the deal is, yes, hip thrust gets you much more active tension. They activate the glutes to a higher degree, but they don't stretch you as much. The squat gives you more passive tension, more tension in a deep stretch. And so it's a wash. That's why they were equal. That's why they tied. And the EMG doesn't measure the stretch. That's why they were equal.

That's why they tied. And the EMG doesn't measure the stretch. So now it's like you have all these things that we use. We use muscle modeling. Well, that's not all that because it relies on assumptions. We have EMG. Well, that showed not to be the case. We have sensations. Everyone felt their glutes.

All the subjects felt their glutes working more with the hip thrust, but how much you feel it didn't equate to more muscle growth. Go even deeper. All right, what gets you more stretch? The squat. That didn't predict muscle growth. What gets you more sore?

The squat. That didn't line up in our study as being predictive. So there's more to hypertrophy than meets the eye and probably means we should do both. So to answer your question about how would I, if I had advanced subjects, I have this rule of thirds, meaning a third of your volume for glutes

should be vertical hip extension exercises. Those maximize the tension in the stretch and those involve squats, lunges, split squats, step-ups, deadlift variations, good mornings. Another third should be horizontal. That includes your hip thrust, glute bridge, kickback, back extension, all those variations, right? Reverse hypers.

And then the remaining third should be abduction. The reason why you need abduction in our study showed this. Squats and hip thrust didn't grow the glute medius or minimus much at all. I think it was like one, zero, 1% for the squat and like 3% for the, for the hip thrust. So you're not meaningfully growing your glute medius. And you know, women want that shelf. Men should want it too. The glute medius is important. It's a big muscle group and it's a very functional muscle. You should be doing some abduction. And this study showed if you just do hip extension, you're not going to grow that muscle. So the remaining third should be abduction,

sometimes in the frontal plane, sometimes in the horizontal plane. Horizontal plane, working more glute maximus, frontal plane, straight side to side. But actually, when you work the glute medius, you probably shouldn't go straight out to the side. You should kind of think about the shape of the pelvis. Because if you go, if you move in the plane of the glute medius, you should probably go at an angle at around, say, 30 degrees back. So it's more abduction than extension, but a little bit back as you basically staying in full hip extension as you abduct. And so that's how it's split up the volume. So if they, like you said in this, in the example with 15 sets, I do five, five and five, you know. That's great. That's very practical. do five five and five you know that's great that's

very practical and it makes sense why you would set it up that way did you know that you don't need supplements to build muscle lose fat and get healthy that you don't need any pills powders and potions whatsoever if you know what to do in the kitchen and in the gym. You can get into fantastic shape without supplements and stay that way for the rest of your life. But if you have the budget and if you have the inclination, the right supplements can help. And that's why over 300,000 discerning fitness folk have chosen my sports nutrition company, Legion. Well, that's not the only reason why they chose us. They also chose us for our 100% natural and science-based formulations, our fanatical customer service, and our no-hassle 100% money-back guarantee. Now, what do those things

mean exactly? Well, by all natural, I mean every product of mine is 100% naturally sweetened and naturally flavored and contains no artificial food dyes or other chemical junk. And by science-based formulations, I mean that every ingredient in my supplements is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research demonstrating clear benefits, and every ingredient is included at clinically effective levels, which are the doses used in those scientific studies. And I like to say that we are fanatical about our customer service because our policy is to do whatever it takes to not only make our customers happy, but to help them reach their fitness goals. That's why, for example, everyone on my customer experience team is a certified personal trainer,

and they are there to not only answer product-related questions and help people with their orders, but also to answer any and all questions they might have about diet and about training. You know, the questions that are actually more important than the questions about supplementation. And our money back guarantee is really simple. If you don't absolutely love our stuff, you let us know and you get a prompt and courteous refund. No forms, no return is even necessary. So if you want to add some all natural science-based supplements to your regimen that can help you build muscle, lose fat, get healthy, you want to try Legion today, just head over to buylegion.com, B-U-Y Legion.com. And if you use

the coupon code muscle at checkout, you will save 20% on your first order. And if it is not your first order with us, you will get double reward points on that order. So you will get 6% cash back. And remember, if you don't absolutely love our stuff, just let us know and we will give you your money back. No questions asked, or we will send you something else if you'd rather try something else. So you really have nothing to lose. Go to buylegion.com now, use the coupon code MUSCLE at checkout to save 20% or get double reward points if it is not your first order and try my supplements risk-free. I'm curious with the EMG, if you could share some more details about why you thought it would have been predictive of hypertrophy and what happened and why that might be. The reason being is I think that that's a

topic that's just relevant to other research and other discussions around which exercises are best for which muscle group. Well, because you don't just get a little bit more activation with the hip, you get a lot bit more activation with the hip, you get a lot more glute activation. And I thought that would matter if there was like, just a little bit, like in the case of the, I've always said this for decades, like you'll see like wide grip lat pulldowns activate the lats a little bit more than, than close grip pulldowns. They're like supinated pulldowns, but I've always said, but supinated gets you a bigger stretch. So which one's better for hypertrophy? One gets you probably, who knows, you know, 20% more stretch. The other gets you 10% more activation. Do both until we know more.

But in this case, hip thrusts are getting a lot more glute activation. So I just thought, and based on my experience as a trainer, and it's funny because like I told my glute squad about this study and they're like 20 girls and I'm with like 20 of them. They're like, Brett, I don't believe it. I don't buy it. I never started growing until I started hip thrusting and I train people.

Their glutes grow way better from hip thrust. I'm like, well, this is just one study. We need a lot more, but they're not equating volume. People do more volume with hip thrust. I mean, how many sets of heavy squats close to failure can you really do in a week? I mean, I would challenge somebody to do more than like eight. Right.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I would challenge somebody to do more than six. Yeah, really hard sets, I know. So, and with hip thrusts, you could do, if all you did was hip thrusts, you could do them five days a week. You really could. They don't beat you up much, you could do, if all you did was hip thrust, you could do them five days a week. You really could. They don't beat you up much and you could do different variations.

But what's optimal, that's hard to, it's a different study design and I've thought about it a lot, but that's a whole different topic. We'd need a lot of studies to really clue us in on the optimal way to train the glutes. This is a one small step if we need that. Start writing those checks, Brett. I will. It's more of a problem is there's not many labs that can do MRI and have a coach that you don't want like someone who's never trained anyone

doing the study. You got to have someone who knows what they're doing, you know? Otherwise, you find out you look at their hip thrust and they were five inches shy lockout. You look at their squats and they were, you know, five inches above parallel thinking it's, you know. And then if you're Barbala was the name, then you just make up data and then the problem solved. But anyway, coming back to EMG, is there anything else that you would add? Again, I'm just thinking of many discussions that I've seen people have on social media where that will be used as the barometer of the effectiveness of the exercise. And so I'd say our study was the very first to

show that it did not predict hypertrophy. So it's not all that. I still think it's useful. Obviously, like if you do like a hammer curl and a supinated curl and like the hammer curl activates the brachialis more and the, you know, the supinated curl activates the biceps more, then that matters. If things matter, but it's not, you got to consider other things too. You have to look at functional anatomy. You have to look at stretch, activation, feel. And ideally, you'd have longitudinal research because that shows you what really does happen. But then in this case, the only longitudinal study

is one showing with beginners training each lift twice a week. Yeah, which has limited applicability. Well, that makes sense. And you mentioned that some of the subjects felt, or maybe even many or most of the subjects felt their glutes were... I think it was all of them. Like, yeah, when they did the testing, the head researcher, Daniel Plotkin, asked him,

he said, which exercise has you feeling your glutes more? And everyone said hip thrusts. Funny, it's very rare. I have a client right now, Bobbi Mono. She's a wellness competitor, and she gets such a crazy glute pump from squats. She's the first I've ever trained. Like, she racks it, and she's like, ah, and her butt's pumped up. You can see it.

Also, she has, like, the hammer strength, you know, the squat lunge machine's pumped up. You can see it. Also, she has like the hammer strength, you know, the squat lunge machine that you do deadlifts off of. We'll do light RDLs and she gets such a crazy glute pump. It's funny because I feel RDLs all in my hamstrings. I feel squats all in my, I mean, I feel a little bit of glutes in the stretch, but like, interestingly, I did chain squats the other day.

On the 10th rep, like the ninth and 10th rep. I felt like a hip thrust because it's harder at the top. And I was kind of like shooting my hips just up a little bit and then pushing my hips forward with the chain. It was 135 pounds of chains. So that lockout was like so much glute. But I don't always feel my glutes with squats. I don't always feel my glutes with squats. I don't always fill my glutes with

deadlifts. I remember one time I pulled 405 for 20 and I, God, it was brutal, but I'm like rep ATL is not something you'll never need to do. I mean, it's sets of 10 sets of 10 taken close to failure already. I like spent time working up to it. Like I did like 16 and two weeks later I got 18. Then I got like nine, I tried, I failed. And then I got 20. I actually don't think I locked out the 20th, but it was close enough. But anyway, I'm like 18, 19 and 20. It was my glutes that were like limiting me. And I'm like, what? I never feel my glutes with these, but they were like fatiguing more than anything. But anyway, in general, I would say most people feel, there are people who don't feel hip thrusts. And I'm like, how do you not feel hip thrust working your glutes? But everyone is

so different. Everyone's so unique in anatomy. I think anatomy is the most important thing, but then just also their experience and their mind muscle connection, stuff like that, their ability to, if you've never tried to hone in on the muscle, probably don't, that's an ability you can improve at big time and what does that tell us about just biomechanics in general and just about other exercises just to this point where it's very common for people to say you know i don't really like that exercise because i don't feel it enough in the target muscle group and i prefer this one in the one they prefer might, by other measures, be considered suboptimal, but they feel like because they feel it more in the target muscle group,

that's the one to do. Think about when you were a beginner. I hated compound. Like when you first started, the first two months you lifted, I hated compound movements. I'm like, I don't feel this anywhere. When I first start out, you're like, I want to do tricep extensions and curls.

I don't feel when I do these movements. And so you, so you can relate, you can relate to that way of thinking, but quickly guys become obsessed with strength and their bench press and then their pecs grow. And then over time you learn how to feel your pecs more in a bench press. You learn techniques and things, you know, but what this does show is like, sometimes you shouldn't care so much about feeling it. When you and I were, you know, three years into lifting weights, we didn't try to squeeze everything. We wanted to get stronger because we were weak and you want to be benching, you know, you want to hit 225 and then eventually 315. You want to squat four or five. You want to throw six, seven, eight plates on the leg press. It's embarrassing if you can't do a chin-up or a dip. You want to get your dead

lift up. You care about all these numbers. And you look around, you're like, man, that guy's doing this. I want to do that too. I want to be able to get 20 dips or I want to be able to get 10 chin-ups or I want to be able to get even like, I remember walking lunges. I thought it'd be so cool to be able to get 10 chin-ups or I want to be able to get even like I remember walking lunges. I thought it'd be so cool to be able to do walking lunges with 225. That's not easy to do. Walking lunges are brutal with 225, but they look so cool. But you have these goals that you make. When you're doing those walking lunges, you're not like, I need to feel these in my glutes. You're just trying to like use good form and set PRs. Bench press, you're not like, I need to feel my pecs. You're just trying to, you know, touch your chest, come up, you only use whatever you can and things grow.

You know, I don't ever think I've felt my, well, when I do military press, I'm not like trying to lock it out and be like, oh, my shoulders are burning so bad. They're not, but they're getting worked, you know? So on the one hand, quit obsessing about feeling everything. getting worked, you know? So on the one hand, quit obsessing about feeling everything. It's okay to like your first exercise to not focus on the feel, focus on good technique, full range of motion and setting PRs. And then later in the workout, worry about the mind muscle connection, feeling the, getting it, getting a pump, feeling the burn, et cetera. And the mind muscle connection, it seems to work best with isolation exercises anyway.

Like practically speaking, it's hard to be back squatting and trying to focus on your quads, especially when you're getting deeper into a set and you're just trying to not get stuck. Like that's all you can focus on. It's so true. And so I hear twice this week, I've had girls tell me, you know, but I don't like going heavy on squats or I don't like going heavy on RDLs. If I keep it light, I feel it all in my glutes. If I go heavy, I feel it in my hamstrings, I feel it in my quads.

I'm like, you're supposed to feel squats in your quads. You're supposed to feel RDLs in your hamstrings. Like, don't just go light all the time and never go up. You'll actually see better glute results if you do go for progressive overload on those. Not saying just don't even try to feel it in your glutes at all, just quit obsessing about it. Work on filling your glutes with kickbacks and abduction and things, you know, like lighter hip thrusts that's not on your heavy compound movements. And that goes for every muscle. You know, don't try to feel your biceps during a chin-up or a pull-down. Don't try to feel your triceps during a bench press, you know.

Try to feel your triceps when you're doing a, when you're using the cable column, you know, when you're doing curls for your biceps. Yeah, and just do the exercises properly, the compound exercises properly, and know that it's going to recruit the target muscle groups, even though you may be more... And you're going to grow all over and get leaner. If you're bulking, you'll gain a ton of muscle. If you're cutting, you'll lose more fat. If you're maintaining... And hopefully less muscle or no muscle. So my next question then is, are there any kind of broader implications of this study that we haven't

touched on? I think you've done a great job breaking down everything in this paper as regards to glute training, what you learned and some practical training implications. I'm just curious if there are some, even if it's just kind of questions that it's raised for you about other muscle groups or some other component of training. Yeah, here's what would be cool to know on the hypertrophy front. Like, what are the signals and sensors of hypertrophy? We don't know. We don't know enough. There's a classic paper by Brad Schofield and Henning Wacharach and other authors.

I can't remember their names. But basically, it was like, we don't know how muscle grows. We don't know what the initial signals and sensors are. In that paper, they brought up a different, a host of possibilities. I know Mike Roberts just wrote this novel. I have it saved on my computer that I need to read, but it's, we know Titan probably is a good candidate,

you know, because Titan, when you're lifting weights, Titan, when it's activated, it binds to the actin. We used to think it was just actin and myosin. Now we know it's the three-filament model, actin, myosin, and Titan. Part of it binds to the actin, and then the part that's not bound

gets a greater stretch. That's probably a signal's hypertrophy. So Titan is one candidate. Maybe the nucleus getting flattened out. When you stretch a muscle, stretch as it gets tight and the nucleus flattens out. Maybe that nuclear flattening

activates the hippo pathway or the yaptas or something like these different, they have these different names. Maybe there's parts in the sarcomere, you know, in the Z disc or whatever that this, like one candidate is this filament C bag three or filament three bags. I can't, I never get it right.

But it's, it's basically would be when a muscle is activated, you know, when, when those sarcomeres shorten those, those, the parts where the sarcomeres connect to feels that it gets stretched and activated. Maybe it's parts in the, you know, I have all this folder full of papers and it's like different researchers have different takes on it. One group says the primary cilia of the satellite cells

are the primary signals of muscle growth. And I'm like, what the hell is the primary cilia on satellite cells? Different groups of researchers have different takes. I was just talking about the sarcomere itself, but there's other researchers that have primary cilia on satellite cells. Different groups of researchers have different takes. I was just talking about the sarcomere itself, but there's other researchers that have, I have a folder full of papers and it's like one group, the title of the paper is like the primary cilia on satellite cells are the main signalers of muscle growth. And another paper like the extracellular matrix is the main signaler of muscle growth. And it's like,

maybe everything helps grow the muscle. Maybe all the things in the cellar have some responsibility. Maybe there's a lot of different mechanosensors and things like that. Maybe the integrins are important. Maybe there's all sorts of different things, but maybe some of them respond better to stretch. Some of them respond better to activation. If that's the case, then hip thrusts might have grown the glutes more through this filament three bag C or whatever the heck it is. I always get it wrong. And maybe squats led to better, more glute growth through Titan or nuclear flattening or something like that. So then you theoretically, you would get more better results doing both. They'd be synergistic or maybe hip thrust move your glutes you know

people think hip thrusts are a short length movement they do stretch the glutes you do go down into like you go to it's like almost doing like a parallel squat you know what i mean it's just not rock bottom but maybe it's deep enough and then maybe they only act admit some people think tighten is the only is the only signaler of hypertrophy. So maybe hip thrusts go deep enough and then, you know, you get the same hypertrophy from them. So we don't know. That's what future research needs to have a combined group and look at are they synergistic? Like if one group does six sets of squats, the other group does six sets of hip thrusts, the other group does three sets of squats and three sets of hip thrusts. Who grows best? Are they all going to tie or is it the combined group sees better results? We need a study looking at advanced subjects, not beginners.

We need a study looking at different volumes and frequencies, higher volumes and frequencies to see maybe squats fatigue you too much and hip thrusts prevail that way. But the other thing is with strength. I would venture to guess that squats, you know, let's say I was just doing deadlifts, right? One group does squats and deadlifts. The other group does hip thrusts and deadlifts. All right. Because this study showed they transferred equally to the deadlift. Like they gained exactly the same strength, deadlift strength. What would be cool to know is if squats help you with more, and this you could do off a force plate. Do squats give you more strength off the floor and hip thrusts give you more strength at the lockout? Probably, because I've taken strong powerlifters. I remember this guy back in the day, 180-pound powerlifter, had a 730-pound deadlift, but his lockout was weak. I had him start doing

tons of hip thrusts. He's like two months later, he's like, Brett, my, I feel like now my lockout is my strong point. It was my weak point. Now it's my strong point. So in that case, then you should do both for maximizing deadlift strength and basically hip extension strength through a full range of motion. So lots of hypotheses generated. This is, like I said, just one puzzle piece out of like 30 that are needed to really allow us to have a really good understanding of glute training. And for people who want to get more questions answered, buy Brett's book and maybe, well, you said you don't even charge for your gym, support Brett's work somehow, help him pay for these studies. Yeah. Joined booty by Brett. That's my main one.

That's, and I was going to, I was going to get to that, but before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask. So if there's anything else, those were the main questions that I had that I wanted to get your opinions on. Is there anything else that I didn't ask or that is still kind of bouncing around in your head that you want to say before? I was training people right before this. I was trying to get home in time. I meant to call Andrew Vygotsky because he's so much smarter than me about statistics, but I wanted to ask him, you know, Jose Antonio asked this on a podcast. He said, look at the individual plots. He's like, the hip thrust group, you got guys seeing huge growth but also people losing size what beginner loses size with a squad group the class because we have the individual plots which i

really like that's it i love when when researchers post all the individual but the the squat groups are more clustered in the middle whereas the hip thrust group you got people up here and people down here is Is that just due to chance, like statistical noise? Or is there something about the hip thrust where you either respond really well to it or you don't at all, you know, and you see more variance? Because that was really interesting that the groups don't look alike in the lower, middle and upper glutes. You saw more variance with the hip thrust. So it could be that, you know, some people, for some reason, grow really well with hip thrust and then some people don't at all.

Whereas with a squat, it's more predictable. It's more in the middle. Interesting. So I guess something that people could think with is, I suppose, just progression could be a proxy for that because we can't go by which do you feel like, oh, you're not feeling it all that much in your glutes. No, it comes down to training. Do it and see for yourself what works best and trial and error. And yeah, like you said, progress on them and see which one you feel like is doing a better

job at growing your glutes. But the problem is, most people are always doing both. Like I'm always doing some squatting movements and some hip thrusting movements, but you can prioritize one or the other. And you should, because training is boring. You should try new things out, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can also, you could, let's say you're going to keep your squatting in, you could swap out that hip thrust volume for a different exercise maybe and then see how your body responds to that. But yeah, that is interesting. I'm sure I'll talk to Andrew and be like, no, Brett, that's a normal variance. You can see in the standard deviations, you can see that he's like so smart and it makes me feel stupid all the time. But I never, my professor, John Cronin, he was always yelling at me, Brett, you need to take statistics more seriously. You're a PhD. And I'm

like, it's so funny because even with writing, I'm like, I don't write my papers. Brad is better at writing papers. Andrew's better, you know? So I would rather, I provide value to these papers with practicality and stuff, like, and also readability. I'm like, Brad, this abstract, I have my PhD, I don't even know what it's saying. And why are we throwing these crazy statistics in the abstract? You gotta keep it simple.

That's where my value comes into play. Or like planning this study, the study design and stuff. I feel like I've got a strong, you know, background with personal training. I can make sure they're fair, make sure I'm gonna think of the things that coaches think about for ecological validity. You know, I like, I remember when I defended my thesis that one of the guys was going off on me going, why did you equate the range of motion between like the squat and the hip thrust? I'm like, okay,

you can only go so deep in the hip thrust. So if I were in a hip thrust versus a half squat or something, say I did low bar, low low bar half squat, you're going to be leaning a lot. So you will get hip flexion, but it's going to be about, you know, maybe like a hundred degrees of hip flexion in both. Then people would have been like, he purposely tried to give the hip thrust the advantage by not going deep enough that you took away. You got to have ecological validity. So, and it's funny because I was a high school math teacher. I'm really good at algebra and geometry and trigonometry. I just hate statistics as its own animal. I hate it.

But yeah, I got to ask Andrew, but it could be that it's just no big deal or there could be something to it. It's interesting, fascinating to think about. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting with statistics. That is certainly something I think that you need to have a real affinity for to excel at if you don't like it.

But anyway, this has been a great discussion. Very informative. Thank you again for doing it. And why don't we now wrap up with where people can find you, find your work, anything specifically that you would like them to know about? Mainly, I'm on Instagram these days. Brett Contreras1. If you type in the glute guy, I'd probably come up.

Although now there are a lot of glute guys out there. I was the only one for like 10 years. But so mainly on Instagram, like I have a newsletter that I send out, not enough, like once every few weeks. But yeah, I try and keep people up to date with stuff. But yeah, just find me on Instagram. Cool.

And then you did mention booty by Brett. Am I remembering? Yeah, it's a monthly, I film my one thing that I do that's good is, you know, most people create an app and then they just film the exercises once. And then you just come up with a new routine each month. Well, I actually fly like I'm in Fort Lauderdale right now, but I fly to San Diego every month. I film it with my client, Ashley Hodge, and I write new programs every month based on what I learn in the research and based on what I learned training all these people. And I'm always training lots of people and high level people, you know, high level competitors. So it's always fresh. It's always new. It's always cutting edge. It's not like I'm just bored and recycling old

stuff. It's not that easy. It's always new exercise variations, new spinoffs. Like this month, because of all the long lane stuff, I have them doing a do your full range hip thrust, do eight reps, then do four reps of two-thirds partials, then four reps of one-thirds partial, end it with an iso hold at the bottom, and then drop the weight, you know, stuff like that. So people can get experience doing all types of variations that they wouldn't necessarily come up with. All types of variations. That's another thing. I feel like even if you're a trainer, like when do you learn how to do a bent over row or a one arm row? I feel like even trainers should join booty lab.

Because I explain all the exercises and we demonstrate them. And it's like, you know, we have this exercise library. I feel like I would have loved to have that when I first started out. But that's my main moneymaker. And then I got BC Strength. That's my equipment. It's funny because, as you know, the online stuff is so much just all pure profit. Then when you sell real equipment, there's shipping disasters and people giving the wrong address and then blaming you for it.

There's the cost of goods. I mean, in your other business, what is that? What is the cost of goods? So that's the labor of love. I love when I go to it what i love when people tag me they're like i love my bc strength products i love trying to come up with good products that i would like to have seen you know to make training convenient so those are my two main things just the the tangible form of the product there's something a little bit more satisfying at least for for you, right? Something that you can hold in your hands or maybe it's too big, but you can touch it and you can say, yeah, I did that. That's cool. Well, anyways, that's great, Brett. Thanks again for doing this. And I look forward to the next one in the future. Hopefully we can figure out something else to talk about. I know you're a busy guy. Well, thank you so much for having me. And anytime you want me on,

just let me know. But it was a pleasure and I appreciate you. Thank you. Likewise. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if

you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.