reckonerSmith machine hip thrust
The hip thrust with the bar on rails. Your upper back rests on a bench, the bar sits across your hips, and you drive your hips up until your body is straight from knees to shoulders. The rails take balancing the bar out, so you can set up fast and press hard.
Chin tucked, drive the hips up.
- Pattern
- Hinge
- Trains
- Glutes
- Kit
- Smith machine, bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Hip
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the bench inside the frame
Put a flat bench crosswise inside the Smith machine, behind the bar, so your shoulder blades rest on its edge with the bar over your hips. The bar runs on fixed rails, so the bench has to sit where those rails bring the bar down across your hips. Pad the bar.
Feet flat, shins vertical at the top
Plant your feet about hip width so that at the top your shins are close to vertical. Move them until they are, because that foot position is what keeps the push in the glutes.
Chin tucked, drive the hips up
Tuck your chin, unhook the bar, and push through your heels until your hips are level with your knees and shoulders. A tucked chin keeps your ribs down so the hips finish the rep. Squeeze your glutes hard at the top.
Lower under control
Lower your hips until the bar nearly reaches the stops, then drive again. Rehook the bar after the last rep.
What goes wrong
Arching the lower back at the top
Arching gets the bar higher, so it feels like a bigger lockout. The hips are already straight. Stop when they are, with your chin tucked.
Feet too far out or too close
Wherever the feet land first feels fine, so they rarely get moved. Too far and the hamstrings take over, too close and the quads do. Shins near vertical at the top is the spot.
Rushing the bottom
A quick drop and bounce makes the reps flow. It shortens every rep. Lower with control and press from the bottom.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 60 kg, 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 8 at 60 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 60 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 60 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 60 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 60 kg | 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 12 at 60 kg | Load up 60 kg → 62.5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 62.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to eight. You are now working 8 to 12. 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
Are hip thrusts better than squats for the glutes?
In a nine week trial they grew the glutes about the same, while squats grew the thighs more1. Thrusts are a good glute lift, not a replacement for squatting.
Smith machine or barbell hip thrust?
The Smith machine is easier to set up and the bar cannot roll. A barbell needs balancing and a little more setup. Reckoner keeps them as separate lifts in the hip thrust group.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. Placed automatically it would take plans from the other hip thrusts, so the engine never chooses it. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap for a hip thrust. Hip is recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Plotkin and colleagues, Frontiers in Physiology, 2023. Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift untrained college aged adults randomized to nine weeks of set volume equated hip thrust or back squat training, with similar gluteal growth and greater quadriceps and adductor growth in the squat group