Glute strength gets talked about a lot throughout prenatal fitness, as it should. The bigger question is how it’s actually programmed: which movement patterns are included, and whether volume is spread out sensibly across the week rather than loaded into one or two sessions. Get that structure right, and your glutes are working through pregnancy the way they need to, supporting a changing centre of gravity and the demands of daily movement as your body shifts.

The glutes are three muscles, not one

The glutes are made up of three muscles, each with a distinct role.

Glute max is the largest of the three and the primary hip extensor, responsible for driving movements like standing up, climbing stairs, and pushing through the floor in a squat or hinge. It also assists with external rotation of the hip and contributes to overall pelvic stability.

Glute medius sits above the hip joint and is the primary stabiliser when you’re on one leg, whether that’s walking, running, or holding a single-leg position. If it isn’t contracting properly, the pelvis drops on the opposite side and the trunk compensates by leaning. Weakness here is common during pregnancy and into postpartum, which makes it one of the more important muscles to train intentionally rather than leave to chance.

Glute minimus sits beneath the medius and shares much of its function, contributing to hip abduction and pelvic stability, and depending on hip position, assisting with internal rotation.

Between them, these three muscles are responsible for:

• Hip extension (the main action)
• Stabilising the hip joint
• Hip abduction
• External rotation of the hip
• Supporting posture and pelvic position

Together, they handle hip extension, hip abduction, rotation, and pelvic stability, which is why training them as a single unit misses the point. A program built only around hip extension will underwork medius and minimus, and that gap tends to show up as pelvic instability or a sense that single-leg movements feel harder than they should.

If you’re noticing a plateau in your training, or you’ve struggled to grow your glutes in both strength and size, it usually comes down to one of a few things: exercise selection, technique, overemphasising sensation over effort, programming that skips a key movement pattern, or intensity that isn’t quite high enough to drive change.

Exercise selection matters

A well-rounded program covers all the primary motions of the glutes, hip extension, hip abduction, and external rotation.

Hip extension

The primary job of glute max.

Barbell Hip Thrust — loads glute max in its shortened position, building the raw hip extension strength that carries into standing, climbing stairs, and pushing through a lift.

45 Degree Hip Extension (Weighted) — trains hip extension through a longer range of motion, useful for building strength and control as the hip moves further into flexion.

Hip hinge with eccentric control

Hinging loads the glutes and hamstrings together, and controlling the lowering phase, not just the lift, is where a lot of the strength and control benefit actually comes from.

RDL — Dumbbell — trains glute max and hamstrings in a lengthened position, with the eccentric lowering phase building the control needed to manage load safely as it changes through pregnancy.

Snatch Grip Deadlift — Barbell — the wider grip increases range of motion at the hip, extending time under tension in the stretched position where a lot of the hinge’s benefit comes from.

Single leg work

Pregnancy shifts how load moves through the pelvis, and most daily movement (walking, stairs, getting up off the floor) happens on one leg at a time. Single leg work trains the stability that double-leg patterns can’t replicate.

RFE Split Squat with Rotation — adds a rotational component that challenges hip stability through a plane most programs skip entirely.

Single Leg Squat to Box — Goblet — puts glute medius under direct demand to keep the pelvis level with each rep, the same job it’s doing during everyday walking and stairs.

Curtsy Lunge (Deficit) — combines single leg loading with a crossing pattern, challenging hip stability and control from a different angle than a standard lunge or split squat.

Hip abduction

Direct medius and minimus work. This is what keeps the pelvis level and controlled during single-leg movement and walking, and it’s often the piece missing from programs that focus mainly on hip extension.

Side Lying Hip Lift — isolates medius and minimus directly, building the pelvic control that hip extension work alone doesn’t train.

Beyond covering these patterns, the specific variation you choose within each one matters too. A heels-elevated goblet squat places more emphasis on the quads, while a low bar back squat shifts more load onto the glutes, purely because of the angle of the torso, the knee, and where the weight sits relative to the hip. If the goal is glute development and the quads are fatiguing before the glutes do on every set, that limits how much stimulus the glutes are actually getting, even though they’re technically being used throughout the movement.

Volume matters more than any single exercise

There’s no single glute exercise that covers everything. A well-rounded approach trains the glutes at a long muscle length (squats, deadlifts, hinge variations), at a short muscle length (hip thrusts, bridges), and includes a hip abduction component. Spreading this across two to three sessions a week, rather than trying to fit it all into one, allows for enough total volume without excessive fatigue in any single workout, and gives the muscle time to recover and adapt between sessions.

For standard muscle growth rates, aim for 15 to 20 total working sets (that’s sets, not exercises) across two to three training days a week. To maximise growth, that can go up to 20 to 30. Training more frequently means you can spread that volume out rather than cramming it into one session where fatigue limits how much load you can actually lift.

Overemphasising sensation

Part of good programming is getting the most out of the least effort. It’s common to do the opposite: stacking exercises for the same muscle group back to back purely to chase the burn. That might feel like a hard session, but it isn’t what drives muscle growth.

Most exercises can be performed in the 6 to 20 rep range. Heavier compound movements like squats and RDLs sit toward the lower end; isolation work like kickbacks and hip abduction variations can move toward the higher end. What matters most is pushing close to failure on most exercises and building strength steadily over months, not chasing a burn in any single session.

Don’t skip the accessory work

Alongside the bigger compound patterns, accessory glute work matters, lighter, more targeted movements that isolate medius and minimus specifically. These don’t need to be heavy to be effective. They’re there to fill the gaps that bigger lifts leave, and they’re often what makes single-leg and hinge patterns feel more controlled over time.

Video: Cable Kickback — isolates glute max through hip extension without other muscle groups taking over, useful for building the mind-muscle connection compound lifts don’t always allow.

Building it into a full program

Glute strength doesn’t exist in isolation. It works together with your core and pelvic floor to manage load and pressure through pregnancy and into postpartum recovery. If you want a program that puts all of this together for you, week to week, with the volume and movement variety built in, that’s exactly what Strong in Pregnancy is designed to do.

Check out Strong in Pregnancy