The Best Exercise You're Not Doing

Here's the setup: place a thick towel or Airex pad on a loaded barbell at the center, and deadlift the bar so that the pad is pinned at your pelvis. Sit down on a bench perpendicularly, and carefully scoot forward until your upper back is on the bench. Relax your glutes and let the barbell down toward the floor. To come up, push through your heels and squeeze your glutes to drive the barbell up towards the ceiling. This is known as the glute bridge, and no one does it.

There isn't a pretty way to sell the barbell glute bridge.  It looks like this:

My expression does not add much hardcore legitimacy to the matter.

It looks like you're humping the barbell. And to be honest, that's a fair and accurate representation of the exercise.

But here's the thing: I can't think of a better motion to activate the glutes, and as an added bonus it almost completely spares the lower back. As important it is to develop the hinge, it's an easy motion to screw up without outside guidance. But with the hip bridge, it's as simple as picking your hips off the ground by pushing through your heels; there aren't many other teaching cues, at least none that I've had to use. And when you add weight, you're well on your way to a strong and gloriously sculpted butt.

So why doesn't anyone do it?

Because it looks like you're humping a barbell.

Trainers already subject their clients to unique forms of embarrassment on a regular basis, but making one of my guys or girls do a  weighted glute bridge because it's a little more effective than other, far less gawk-worthy exercises just seems....wrong, somehow. Like I'm punishing them for a severe infraction to my being.

Still, I obviously do these myself. Being a trainer myself, anything I do just looks like the next great thing in fitness (at least in my head) and I absolutely love them. I figure as long as I don't make eye contact with anyone, they're worth the trouble and tighter jeans. Wait...ew, phrasing.