What is a glute shelf?
A glute shelf is gym slang for well-developed upper glutes: a rounded, lifted shape where the top of your glutes sits out above your lower back and hamstrings, like a shelf. It comes from building the gluteus maximus overall, plus extra work for the side and upper glutes.
It's also why our app is called Shelf.
Which muscles are your upper glutes?
- The upper part of the gluteus maximus: the biggest glute muscle. Its upper fibres help move your leg out and back.
- Gluteus medius: the fan-shaped muscle at the side of your hip, above and to the side of the maximus. It moves your leg out to the side.
- Gluteus minimus: underneath the medius, doing a similar job.
So upper-glute training is mostly two things: heavy hip extension for the maximus, and abduction (moving the leg out to the side) for the medius and upper fibres.
The 7 best upper glute exercises
| Exercise | Why it works | Home version |
|---|---|---|
| Hip thrust | Your main builder for the whole gluteus maximus, upper part included | Dumbbell hip thrust with shoulders on a sofa |
| Hip abduction machine | Directly trains the side and upper glutes; lean forward slightly to shift it higher | Seated banded abduction |
| Banded hip thrust | Pushing your knees out against the band adds abduction to the thrust | Same, with a mini band above your knees |
| Cable kickback (slightly out to the side) | Kicking back and slightly out trains the upper glute fibres | Banded kickback |
| Side plank with leg raise | One of the highest side-glute activations in research | Bodyweight |
| Side-lying hip abduction | A simple, focused side-glute move | Ankle weight or band |
| Banded lateral walk | Keeps tension on the side glutes; a good warm-up or finisher | Mini band above your knees |
In a muscle-activation study, side plank with a leg raise produced the highest gluteus medius activity of all the exercises tested (Boren et al., 2011).
A sample upper glute workout
| Exercise | Sets × reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| Hip thrust (with a band above your knees) | 4 × 8–12 | 2 minutes |
| Romanian deadlift | 3 × 8–10 | 2 minutes |
| Hip abduction machine, leaning forward | 3 × 12–20 | 1 minute |
| Cable kickback, slightly out to the side | 3 × 12–15 each side | 1 minute |
| Side plank with leg raise | 2 × 10–15 each side | 45 seconds |
Do this once or twice a week alongside your other training, and add a little weight or a rep or two when every set feels easy.
How to grow your upper glutes
Use heavy hip thrusts for overall size, and add abduction work 2 or 3 times a week. Can you target them? Partly. Abduction exercises clearly work the gluteus medius and upper fibres more than squats do. But growth across the whole gluteus maximus tends to come together. In a 2023 study, hip thrusts and squats grew the upper, middle and lower glutes by similar amounts (Plotkin et al., 2023). The best approach is heavy hip thrusts for overall size, plus regular abduction for the sides and top.
An honest word about shape
Training changes your glutes a lot, but some of your shape comes from your bone structure and where your body stores fat. Hip dips, for example, are mostly down to the shape of your pelvis and hip bones. Building your side glutes can make them less noticeable, but no exercise removes them. They're completely normal.