Glute bridge

What it is

Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor, heels roughly a hand's length from your backside. Arms rest at your sides.

Push through your heels and lift your hips until your body forms a straight line from knees to shoulders. Pause at the top. Lower under control.

The top position is the whole exercise. Getting there quickly and dropping back down misses it.

What it demands

Very little. It requires no balance, no spinal control under load, and no standing tolerance, which is exactly why it is useful — it isolates hip extension from everything that usually accompanies it.

Enough ankle position to keep the heels down and the feet from sliding.

The main demand is being able to tell the difference between extending your hips and arching your lower back, which is harder than it sounds and is what movement three is about.

What usually goes wrong

Arching the lower back instead of extending the hips. By far the most common error. The hips appear to rise higher, and what has actually happened is the lumbar spine has extended. The test: at the top, your ribs should stay down and the line from knee to shoulder should be straight, not curved. If you feel it in your lower back rather than your backside, this is why.

Feet too far away. Heels a long way from the body turns it into a hamstring exercise and frequently produces cramp.

Feet too close. Heels tucked right under makes it a quadriceps exercise.

Pushing through the toes. Drive through the heels. Lifting the toes slightly makes this obvious.

Where it sits

This is the accessible end of the hinge pattern. It trains hip extension — the job of gluteus maximus and the hamstrings — with none of the balance or spinal-control demands of a standing hip hinge, and it can be done by almost anyone who can lie on the floor.

The single-leg glute bridge is the next step and roughly doubles the load without needing any equipment.