reckonerGlute bridge hold
The top of a glute bridge, held. There are no reps to count, so what is being trained is a position rather than a range, and that is worth understanding before you build much around it.
Hold the top, glutes tight, ribs down.
- Pattern
- Hip isolation
- Trains
- Glutes
- Kit
- Bodyweight, floor
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 holds of 30 to 60 seconds
- Progression step
- 10 seconds on the hold
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set up exactly as you would for a bridge
On your back, knees bent, feet flat and about hip width, ribs pulled down. Nothing about the setup changes because you are going to stay at the top.
Drive up and stop where your hips stop
Push through the heels until your body is a straight line from knee to shoulder. Hold the top with the glutes tight and the ribs down, which is the cue on your wrist.
Breathe
Hold the position, not your breath. If you are holding your breath to hold the shape, the shape is being held by your brace rather than your hips.
Come down when the position goes
End the hold when your hips start to drop or your back starts to arch. Time spent out of position is not time in this exercise.
What goes wrong
Holding an arch instead of a hip position
A hold gives you a long time to slide into an arched back without noticing, because nothing is moving to tell you. Check the ribs partway through. If they have come up, so has the lower back.
Riding it out on the hamstrings
As the glutes tire the hamstrings will happily hold the position for you, and they will cramp before they let you know. If they are what you can feel, either move the feet or end the hold. A hold you finish in the wrong muscle is a hold you did not do.
Expecting it to make you stronger through the whole range
Thirteen people trained a single isometric knee extension angle for four weeks. Torque rose 12 per cent at the angle they had trained and 5 per cent at the angle furthest from it1. That was a different joint and a different exercise, and the pattern is what carries over: a hold trains hardest the position it is held in. Use it for the position and use the bridge and the hip thrust for the range.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 30 s | Longer hold 30 → 40 sYou held every set at RPE 7, so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 2 | 3 x 40 s | Longer hold 40 → 50 sYou held every set at RPE 7, so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 3 | 3 x 50 s | Longer hold 50 → 60 sYou held every set at RPE 7, so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 4 | 3 x 60 s | Holding steady 60 sYou held every set at RPE 7, and 60 seconds is the top of what this hold was prescribed for. There is nothing to put in your hands to make it harder, so this one has run out of room. It stays where it is. If you want to keep pushing here, swap it for a harder movement when the block ends. |
| 5 | 3 x 60 s | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 60 s | Holding steady 60 sYou held every set at RPE 7, and 60 seconds is the top of what this hold was prescribed for. There is nothing to put in your hands to make it harder, so this one has run out of room. It stays where it is. If you want to keep pushing here, swap it for a harder movement when the block ends. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How long should I hold it for?
Reckoner prescribes the time and moves it on, so the number is on the screen in front of you. What it is asking for is a hold you finish in position, which is a different thing from a hold you finish at any cost. Come down when the hips do.
Is a hold worth doing at all?
For the position, yes. For strength across a whole range, expect less than the time on the clock suggests1. It earns its place when the loaded versions are not available, and as a way of finding out whether you can reach the top of a bridge and stay there at all.
Can a block be built around this lift?
No. It is accessory work and Reckoner will not anchor a block on it. It carries no restrictions in the library, so it stays available when the loaded hip extensions do not.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Lanza, Balshaw and Folland, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2019. Is the joint-angle specificity of isometric resistance training real? And if so, does it have a neural basis? thirteen participants training isometric knee extension at one joint angle for four weeks, torque rising 12 per cent at the trained angle and 5 per cent at the angle furthest from it