Squats strengthen your hips considerably, working the gluteus maximus, the deep hip rotators, and even muscles you might not expect, like the adductor magnus. They are not the single best exercise for every hip muscle, but they load the hip joint through a large range of motion and drive measurable growth in the muscles that extend, stabilize, and rotate the hip. How much hip strengthening you get depends on details that are easy to adjust: how deep you go, how wide you stand, and where the bar sits on your back.
Which Hip Muscles Squats Actually Work
When most people think about squats and hips, their mind goes straight to the glutes. That’s fair. A systematic review of gluteus maximus activation across common strength exercises found that squats reliably activate the glute max, though step-ups, deadlifts, hip thrusts, and lunges all produced higher peak activation levels on average.1PubMed Central. Gluteus Maximus Activation during Common Strength and Hypertrophy Exercises: A Systematic Review So squats are not the single best glute exercise by EMG readings, but they’re solidly in the conversation.
What surprises most people is the role of the adductor magnus. This large inner-thigh muscle is typically filed away as a “groin muscle,” but recent research makes a strong case that its primary function is actually hip extension, not adduction. One study found that the adductor magnus’s torque-generating capacity for hip extension was over twice as large as its capacity for adduction, and that its extension torque correlated with the maximum hip extension force people could produce.2PubMed. Redefining muscular action: human “adductor” magnus is designed to act primarily for hip “extension” rather than adduction in living young individuals During squats specifically, the adductor magnus produces greater extension torque than the hamstrings, regardless of how your hip is positioned in the frontal and horizontal planes.3Rigakuryoho Kagaku. Role of the Adductor Magnus Viewed from Its Hip Extension Torque Characteristics in Different Hip Joint Postures In practical terms, squats hammer a muscle most people don’t even realize they’re training for hip strength.
The deep hip rotators also participate. Muscles like the obturator internus, piriformis, and quadratus femoris sit deep underneath the glutes and help stabilize the femoral head in the hip socket during loaded movement. Intramuscular EMG studies confirm these muscles are active during squatting tasks, and their activation levels change the direction of loading at the hip joint itself.4PubMed. Activation of the deep hip muscles can change the direction of loading at the hip You can’t isolate these muscles with a specific exercise the way you’d isolate your biceps, but squats give them meaningful work.
Squat Depth Makes a Real Difference
Half squats and full squats are not the same exercise for your hips. A training study that compared ten weeks of full-depth squats with half-depth squats found that both increased gluteus maximus and adductor muscle volume, but the full-depth group saw substantially more growth. Gluteus maximus volume increased by about 6.7% with full squats versus about 2.2% with half squats, and adductor volume increased by about 6.2% versus 2.7%.5PubMed. Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes The difference was statistically significant for both muscle groups.
This makes mechanical sense. The deeper you squat, the more hip flexion you pass through, and the harder the hip extensors have to work to reverse your descent. If hip strengthening is your goal, cutting squats short leaves a lot on the table. You don’t need to bottom out in a full Olympic-style squat if your mobility won’t allow it, but getting your hip crease at least to knee level matters for hip muscle development.
Stance Width and Its Surprising Effects
Widening your squat stance shifts demands toward the hip in a few ways. A biomechanical analysis found that both knee and hip extensor moments were greater during wide-stance squats compared to narrow-stance squats, with hip extensor moments ranging from roughly 275 to 628 N·m across conditions.6Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. A three-dimensional biomechanical analysis of the squat during varying stance widths A study in female lacrosse players confirmed that wide stances with external foot rotation produced significantly higher gluteus maximus activation during the descent phase compared to narrow or shoulder-width stances.7Biomedical Engineering Advances. Influence of stance width and foot rotation on muscle activity and ground reaction forces during squats in female lacrosse players
What’s interesting is that going wider also ramps up the rotational demands at the hip. A recent biomechanics study found that hip lateral rotator torque increased significantly with each step up in stance width, while the hip adductor moment stayed the same regardless of width.8PubMed. Greater squat stance width alters three-dimensional hip moment demands So a wider squat doesn’t just add hip extension work; it also trains the lateral rotators harder. If you have weak external rotators, which is common in people with knee valgus or hip instability, wider squats may offer a useful training stimulus that narrow squats simply don’t.
Where You Put the Bar Changes the Load Distribution
In a high-bar back squat, the barbell sits on your upper traps and you stay relatively upright. In a low-bar squat, the bar drops down to your rear deltoids, and you naturally lean forward more. That forward lean changes which muscles do the heavy lifting. One study found that gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, and lower erector spinae activation were all significantly higher in the low-bar squat compared to the high-bar position.9PubMed Central. Muscle activation varies between high-bar and low-bar back squat Meanwhile, the high-bar squat produced more rectus femoris and vastus medialis activity.
A second study looking at the sticking region found higher quadriceps and erector spinae activity in the high-bar condition, but no significant difference in gluteus maximus and medius activation between bar positions when looking at the interaction between placement and region of the lift.10Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. The Effects of Barbell Placement on Kinematics and Muscle Activation Around the Sticking Region in Squats The picture is a bit mixed, but the trend is that low-bar squats push more work onto the posterior chain, including the hip extensors. If you’re squatting specifically for hip strength, low-bar is probably the better default, though neither version leaves the hips idle.
Knee position tells a related story. A study that compared unrestricted squats (knees allowed to travel forward freely) with restricted squats (knees held behind the toes) found that restricting knee travel dramatically increased hip torque, from about 28 N·m to about 303 N·m. But the researchers cautioned that the increased hip and lower-back loading could be excessive for some people.11PubMed. Effect of knee position on hip and knee torques during the barbell squat The takeaway isn’t “never let your knees go forward,” but rather that the more upright you keep your shins, the more hip-dominant the squat becomes, and there’s a sweet spot between loading the hips usefully and overloading the lower back.
How Squats Compare to Hip-Specific Exercises
Hip thrusts have become the go-to “glute exercise” in popular fitness culture, so it’s worth asking whether squats can keep up. The answer depends on whether you’re looking at muscle activation or actual muscle growth. In terms of activation, the hip thrust shows higher gluteus maximus EMG than the squat at near-maximal loads.12The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. Comparison Between Back Squat, Romanian Deadlift, and Barbell Hip Thrust for Leg and Hip Muscle Activities During Hip Extension That has fueled the perception that hip thrusts are a superior glute builder.
But when researchers measured actual gluteal muscle growth after weeks of training, the difference between squats and hip thrusts was negligible. An MRI-based study found that the difference in gluteal cross-sectional area changes between the two exercises was tiny and dwarfed by individual variation.13PubMed Central. Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift Higher EMG during a set doesn’t always translate to more muscle built over a training program, and these data suggest that both exercises grow the glutes about equally.
Where squats have a clear edge is in training the hip and knee extensors simultaneously. The squat activated both the hip extensors and knee extensors together, while the hip thrust and Romanian deadlift primarily isolated hip extensors.12The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. Comparison Between Back Squat, Romanian Deadlift, and Barbell Hip Thrust for Leg and Hip Muscle Activities During Hip Extension That makes the squat a more time-efficient choice if you want to train the whole lower body rather than isolating. On the other hand, if you want maximum single-exercise glute EMG, single-leg exercises like the modified single-leg squat and single-leg deadlift have produced higher gluteus maximus activation than the bilateral back squat.14Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Gluteus Maximus and Hamstring Activation During Selected Weight-Bearing Resistance Exercises
The Gluteus Medius Gap
One honest weakness of the standard bilateral back squat is that it does relatively little for the gluteus medius, the muscle on the side of your hip that keeps your pelvis level when you stand on one leg. This muscle matters enormously for walking, running, and preventing knee collapse. Single-leg squats are far more effective here. One study found that the single-leg squat produced gluteus medius activation of about 82% of maximum voluntary contraction, compared to about 55% for the rear-foot-elevated split squat and 46% for the step squat.15The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. Muscle Activation in Unilateral Barbell Exercises: Implications for Strength Training and Rehabilitation
If hip stability is a priority for you, whether because of a history of hip or knee injuries, because you play a sport with lots of cutting and lateral movement, or because a physical therapist has flagged weak hip abductors, bilateral squats alone won’t get the job done. Adding single-leg squat variations or lateral band work will fill the gap. This doesn’t mean bilateral squats are useless for hip stability; they still train the deep rotators and the glute max. But the medius needs targeted unilateral loading to develop fully.
Squats and Hip Joint Health
For people with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS), where extra bone at the hip creates pinching during deep flexion, squats can be both helpful and problematic. A finite-element analysis found that modest increases in gluteus maximus and medius activation during squatting, just 6–7% of maximum, reduced hip internal rotation by about 5 degrees and cut acetabular contact pressure by roughly 32%.16PubMed. Gluteal activation during squatting reduces acetabular contact pressure in persons with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome The implication is that cueing your glutes to fire during a squat, rather than letting the hip collapse inward, can meaningfully protect the joint surface.
People with FAIS tend to produce lower hip joint contact forces during single-leg squat tasks than healthy controls, likely as a pain-avoidance strategy in which they reduce overall muscle force to avoid symptoms.17PubMed. Hip joint contact forces are lower in people with femoroacetabular impingement syndrome during squat tasks That protective strategy can backfire over time by leaving the hip muscles deconditioned. After surgical correction for cam-type impingement, hip contact forces during squatting tend to normalize back to control-group levels, reflecting restored muscle function.18Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. Hip Muscle Forces and Contact Loading During Squatting After Cam-Type FAI Surgery The deep hip muscles also show altered firing patterns in people with FAIS; intramuscular EMG has revealed that the obturator internus activates differently during squatting in affected individuals compared to controls.19PubMed. Deep hip muscle activation during squatting in femoroacetabular impingement syndrome
None of this means people with hip impingement should dive into heavy barbell squats without guidance. But it does mean that controlled squatting with deliberate glute engagement is a tool that can improve, not just threaten, hip joint health, particularly when depth and loading are chosen to match the individual’s tolerance.
Squats in Hip Rehabilitation
After total hip replacement, the squat serves as both a rehabilitation exercise and a monitoring tool. Patients in early recovery tend to unload the operated leg during squatting and show more instability compared to healthy adults. A study of post-replacement patients found that loading symmetry and side-to-side stability improved to healthy levels with rehabilitation, though front-to-back stability remained impaired for longer.20PubMed. Can measures of limb loading and dynamic stability during the squat maneuver provide an index of early functional recovery after unilateral total hip arthroplasty? Clinicians use squat-based assessments precisely because the movement demands so much from the hip: extension strength, abductor control, and joint confidence all show up in how symmetrically someone can squat.
Tight hip flexors, which are common after prolonged sitting or following hip surgery, may interfere with how well the glutes fire during squats. The theory of reciprocal inhibition suggests that chronically shortened hip flexors can dampen the activation of their antagonists, the hip extensors.21PubMed Central. Effect of Restricted Hip Flexor Muscle Length on Hip Extensor Muscle Activity and Lower Extremity Biomechanics in College-Aged Female Soccer Players If you feel like your glutes aren’t “turning on” during squats, addressing hip flexor length and activation patterns before loading heavy may help you get more out of the exercise for hip strengthening.
Athletic Performance Transfer
Strengthening the hips through squats doesn’t just build muscle; it carries over to athletic tasks. A meta-analysis found a very strong correlation between improvements in squat strength and improvements in sprint performance, with the relationship strong enough that the authors described the transfer as meaningful for training prescription.22PubMed. Increases in lower-body strength transfer positively to sprint performance: a systematic review with meta-analysis Since sprinting is fundamentally a hip-extension task, this makes sense: a stronger hip extensor complex pushes the body forward more forcefully.
A recent meta-analysis comparing squat training and hip thrust training in sub-elite athletes found that squat training significantly improved vertical jump height, and to a greater degree than hip thrusts. Neither exercise produced statistically significant improvements in horizontal jump distance, short sprint time, or change-of-direction performance in the overall analysis, though squat training did improve vertical jump in a subgroup that completed 12 to 16 training sessions.23PubMed. Comparing the impact of hip thrust versus squat training on lower limb performance in sub-elite athletes: a systematic review and meta-analysis The squat’s advantage for jumping likely comes from the fact that it trains the hip and knee extensors together through a movement pattern that resembles the jump itself. Hip thrusts train the glutes hard but in a posture that doesn’t transfer as directly to vertical power production.
Squats for Older Adults
Age-related muscle loss hits the hip extensors hard, and maintaining hip strength is one of the best ways to preserve independence and reduce fall risk. Squat variations matter here. A comparison of chair squats with standard squats in older adults found that chair squats generated greater hip flexion angles, peak hip moments, power, and work, placing more demand on the hip extensors. Standard squats, by contrast, loaded the knee extensors and ankle plantar flexors more.24PubMed Central. Squatting Exercises in Older Adults: Kinematic and Kinetic Comparisons For an older adult whose primary goal is hip strengthening, sit-to-stand or chair-squat variations may be a better starting point than a traditional barbell squat.
This also has practical implications for program design in senior fitness or physical therapy settings. If a clinician prescribes “squats” for hip strengthening, the version of the squat they choose changes whether the hips or knees do most of the work. A box squat or sit-to-stand emphasizing a hip-hinge pattern will preferentially strengthen the hip extensors, while a more upright quad-dominant squat may miss that target.
Sex Differences in How the Hip Works During Squats
Men and women don’t squat identically, and the differences are concentrated at the hip. During single-leg squats, women demonstrate significantly more hip adduction, hip flexion, and hip external rotation than men, and they show greater overall muscle activation across the muscles tested, with particularly high rectus femoris activation.25PubMed. Differences in kinematics and electromyographic activity between men and women during the single-legged squat The greater hip adduction in women during single-leg squats, sometimes visible as knee collapse, is one reason why hip abductor strengthening is emphasized in ACL injury prevention programs for female athletes.
These differences don’t mean squats are less effective for one sex. They mean that cueing and programming might need to differ. A woman who shows excessive hip adduction during a single-leg squat may benefit from pairing squats with targeted gluteus medius work, while a man with the same movement pattern may have a different underlying cause, like ankle stiffness limiting knee travel. The squat itself is revealing: watching how the hips behave under load tells you which muscles need more attention.