The question of how many glute exercises to perform in a single workout does not have a simple, universal answer. The optimal number is highly individual and depends entirely on your training goals and your body’s ability to recover. The three gluteal muscles—the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus—are responsible for powerful movements like hip extension, hip abduction, and pelvic stabilization. Targeting these muscles effectively requires managing total workload, or volume, across the week, rather than focusing solely on a single session. The specific number of exercises you choose for one day is a function of how often you train and the type of exercises you select.
Establishing Optimal Glute Training Volume
The most effective way to measure your training load is by tracking your total weekly training volume, defined as the number of hard sets performed for a muscle group each week. This weekly set count is a better indicator of the stimulus placed on the muscle and the recovery required. For glute hypertrophy, or muscle growth, researchers use Minimum Effective Volume (MEV) and Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV) to guide programming.
MEV represents the lowest number of weekly sets needed to stimulate measurable muscle growth, generally starting around 6 to 8 sets per week. MRV is the upper limit of volume you can handle and still recover from before performance suffers, often ranging from 18 to 25 or more weekly sets. The goal is to find your personal sweet spot, often called Maximum Adaptive Volume, which typically falls within the 10 to 20 working sets per week range. This total weekly number dictates how many exercises you can distribute into each session.
Glute Exercise Selection: Compound vs. Isolation Movements
The type of exercise directly influences how many you can include in a single workout because of the differing fatigue they create. Exercises are generally categorized into compound or isolation movements. Compound movements, such as heavy squats, deadlifts, and hip thrusts, involve multiple joints and engage several muscle groups simultaneously. They are highly effective for strength and total muscle development.
These multi-joint lifts place a high demand on the central nervous system (CNS) and create significant systemic fatigue. Due to this higher fatigue cost, a workout built around two heavy compound glute movements may already provide a substantial growth stimulus. This limits the number of additional exercises you can perform effectively.
Isolation movements, like cable kickbacks or machine hip abductions, involve movement at only a single joint and target the glutes more directly. These single-joint exercises generate less systemic fatigue, allowing you to accumulate extra sets and volume without overtaxing your recovery systems. A workout could comfortably include three or four isolation exercises to achieve the same total volume as one or two very heavy compound exercises. Using a combination of both types is generally optimal, with compound lifts establishing the foundation and isolation work providing targeted stimulation.
Structuring the Workout: Adjusting Volume for Training Frequency
The final number of exercises you should do per workout is a direct function of your total weekly set volume and how frequently you choose to train. Dividing your total weekly sets into smaller, more frequent sessions generally allows for better work quality because you are less fatigued in any single workout. For a beginner training the glutes twice per week, a lower volume approach is appropriate, perhaps aiming for 10 weekly sets.
This volume can be split into two sessions of five sets each, which might translate to one compound exercise (like a hip thrust) for three sets and one isolation exercise (like a cable kickback) for two sets. For a more advanced lifter aiming for 18 weekly sets and training three times a week, the volume is split into three sessions of six sets each. This higher frequency requires fewer exercises per session to hit the weekly target, leading to more focused work.
Example Training Splits
A three-day split might involve a heavy compound lift followed by one light accessory movement on each day. For example, a deadlift variation plus a hip abduction machine on Monday, a squat variation plus a glute bridge on Wednesday, and a hip thrust plus a reverse hyperextension on Friday. Most effective glute sessions will include between one and three distinct exercises. Performing more than three risks reducing the quality and effort applied to the later movements.