What’s Better for Your Butt: Squats or Deadlifts?

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what’s-better-for-your-butt:-squats-or-deadlifts? — What’s Better for Your Butt: Squats or Deadlifts?

A strong set of glutes is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Not only can a rock solid butt literally propel you through life, it can also lower your risk of niggling pain and injury. That’s because sturdier glutes help bolster your knees and lower back—and are linked with better posture and gait patterns to boot. So yeah, butt strength matters. A lot.

For anyone wanting to cash in on these benefits, two classic exercises likely come to mind: squats and deadlifts. Do a few reps of each and you’ll feel it in your butt. But if you want to maximize your gym time, which one is better for building buns of steel?

We tapped the pros for a deep dive on squats versus deadlifts, including the benefits of each, how they engage your glutes, which variations are best for your butt, and a third ass-igniting exercise worth considering. Ahead, the important info you—and your bum—need to know.

Why are squats and deadlifts so popular in the first place?

Both exercises are ubiquitous in any gym or home workout plan for a reason: They’re effective at strengthening a bunch of different muscles. Squats and deadlifts are both compound exercises—they work multiple muscle groups across multiple joints—and they’re also super functional, meaning they translate to tasks you encounter in daily life.

They smoke the front (your quads) and backsides (your hamstrings) of your legs, while also engaging your glutes and core. Their functionality is pretty great: Tasks like sitting down and standing up from the toilet, getting out of a car, and going up and down stairs all incorporate the squat motion

Deadlifts focus mostly on your backside muscles, including your glutes, hamstrings, and back, though they do hit your quads too (but not as much as squats do). They help you learn how to properly stabilize your torso and spine while exerting maximum effort, according to the National Strength and Conditioning Association. This can prepare your body to safely move things without straining your spine, whether that be a bag of yard clippings, a squirming child, or a box of books. And it can also come in handy when playing sports—like volleyball, tennis, and basketball—since it hones your ability to generate power from your core and hips.

So how exactly do squats and deadlifts work your glutes?

Let’s start with the squat. In this move, your glutes—along with other lower-body muscles like your quads, calves, and hamstrings—help control your body as you lower down, Femi Betiku, PT, DPT, CSCS, a physical therapist and Pilates instructor in Westchester, New York, tells SELF. Basically, these muscles keep your ankle, knee, and hip joints in ideal alignment and prevent any one area from taking on too much stress.

During this lowering—known as the eccentric phase—your glutes, along with your hamstrings, get stretched as your hips push back (a motion known as hip flexion). But it’s in the second half of the squat—the concentric phase—when you return to standing and push your hips forward (a motion known as hip extension) that the glutes really shine. With this motion, your butt muscles shorten and become the dominant force propelling your upward. As Dr. Betiku puts it: “They’re like the fire that shoots a rocket ship up to space.”

The deadlift works the glutes in a pretty similar way: Your butt, along with other lower-body muscles, helps support your body as you hinge forward, putting your hips into flexion, and reach for your barbell on the floor. Then, when you reverse course and bring those hips into extension, the glutes—along with the lower back, hamstrings, and calves—fire to help you stand up tall. Like with squats, your butt muscles light up the most during that concentric phase.

These moves have a lot of overlap, but there are some key differences that ultimately impact how much they fire up your glutes. The big one: You bend your knees more in a squat, which automatically engages your quads. In the deadlift, your knees stay slightly bent and more of the motion comes from your hips, which keeps your quads mostly out of the equation. Instead, the work is focused on your glutes, hamstrings, calves and spinal erectors (a group of back muscles), Stephen Ranellone, CSCS, an exercise physiologist at Hospital for Special Surgery, tells SELF. Because of the emphasis on motion through the hips, your glutes (and hamstrings) get a deeper stretch in deadlifts compared to squats. And this stretch helps them to produce more force when you stand back up. Ranellone uses the analogy of a rubber band: “The deeper that you stretch a rubber band, the more force you produce” when you let it go, he explains.

Squats versus deadlifts: Which is the winner?

So here’s the thing: An absolute hands-down winner is tough to crown, since the research isn’t totally conclusive across the board—different studies find varying results based on how they’re designed and what, exactly, they’re analyzing. But if you had to pick one, this 2020 review in the Journal of Sports Science Medicine, which looked at 16 studies, awards the honors to the deadlift, since its variations elicited slightly more engagement of the gluteus maximus (your biggest butt muscle) than squat iterations. Ranellone agrees that deadlifts are technically the better pick if your goal is to ignite your butt as much as possible.

That said, the competition was a close one, and according to the review, variations of both exercises spurred “very high” glute max engagement. That’s why it’s fair to say the deadlift and the squat are excellent for building a stronger butt. Indeed, a separate 2020 study, published in the Journal of Human Kinetics, concluded that both exercises “can result in similar improvement in lower body maximal strength.”

But there are some nuances to consider.

There’s a catch with deadlifts: They place a lot of load on the lower back, which means this move can put you at risk for pain in this area and be tough for people who have a prior history of issues there, Dr. Betiku says. That’s why if you have pre-existing back issues and find deadlifts bother it, squats might be the safer bet for you. Plus, they’ll still hit your glutes so you don’t have to worry you’re neglecting them! And if you’re new to lifting and aren’t yet comfortable with the deadlift motion, try mastering the unweighted hip hinge first—this can be a gentle, low-risk way to practice the movement pattern you’ll eventually need to crush deads.

Beyond that, which deadlift and squat variation you choose can impact how much your glutes fire up.

For example, conventional deadlifts (those where you start by picking up a weight from the floor) engage your glutes slightly more than Romanian deadlifts (also known as stiff-legged deadlifts, where you start standing up with weights in your hands and only lower down as far as your hamstring flexibility allows), Ranellone explains. That’s because conventional deadlifts work through a larger range of motion. Plus, your glutes have to generate more force to overcome the initial challenge of picking something off the ground, Ranellone adds.

Indeed, the 2020 Journal of Sports Science Medicine review found the traditional deadlift and hex bar deadlift—which also has you pulling from the floor—to be the most effective deadlift variations for glute engagement. These beat out other iterations, including the Romanian and sumo deadlifts (the latter requires less range of motion than conventional).

When it comes to squatting, medium to wide stance squats are better than narrow stance ones for firing up your glute max. That’s because placing your feet further apart puts more of the onus on your glutes and other lower-body muscles to complete the motion, Dr. Betiku explains, whereas a narrow squat drums up more quad engagement. Moreover, the lower you sink into a squat, the more glute engagement you’ll get too, since your butt has to work for longer (a concept known as more “time under tension”) to propel you back up to standing, Dr. Betiku says. “Basically, it’s a matter of distance,” he adds.

FWIW, the same 2020 review found the belt squat, split squat, and modified single-leg squat to be the best variations for glute engagement, outranking the back squat, overhead squat, and overhead squat.

But wait: There’s a third exercise that’s even better for your butt.

Yes, deadlifts and squats are great for building a stronger booty. But if you want to really max out your glute max, consider the hip thrust. (Not familiar? It involves placing your upper back on a bench with your torso angled downward, setting a dumbbell or barbell on your hips, and pushing your hips up.) Though traditionally less popular than squats and deadlifts—but growing rapidly in popularity thanks to GymTok—this move is actually superior for igniting your behind. “If you want tushies as big and as powerful as possible, the hip thrust is the way to go,” Dr. Betiku says.

Research confirms this: A 2021 study in the Journal of Sports and Conditioning Research found the hip thrust fired up the glute max more than the back squat and split squat. And a 2018 study, also in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, found the hip thrust engaged the glute max more than the barbell and hex bar deadlifts.

The reason? The hip thrust, Ranellone explains, is “pure hip extension.” Hip extension is driven by the glutes, so it makes sense this move is stellar for firing up this mighty muscle group. Plus, so long as you’re not limited by joint aches or injuries, you can really load up the weight. “It requires a very particular setup, which is kind of like the hardest part, but it’s very easy to get strong with it very, very quickly,” Ranellone says.

Another plus for the hip thrust is its horizontal loading pattern; tension on the glutes increases as you approach lockout. It’s the opposite with vertically loaded exercises (like deadlifts and squats), where tension on the glutes decreases as you near the peak of the move, as SELF previously reported.

Keep in mind: The thrust isn’t as functional as the squat or traditional deadlift, since there aren’t many scenarios in daily life where you do this exact motion. But because it is so effective at targeting the glutes and hammies, “it’s very much worth your time,” Ranellone says. Plus, it can be a good choice for people with lower back pain, he adds. If you do it with good form and don’t pile on too much weight, usually it can often feel “really good on people’s backs,” he explains.

The bottom line (pun intended)

Squats and deadlifts engage a lot of the same muscles, but that doesn’t mean it’s a one-or-the-other choice. A well-rounded (sorry) workout program will include both exercises. “I would never tell someone to stop squatting or stop deadlifting,” Ranellone says. That’s because they each provide unique functional benefits you can’t get from the other.

Dr. Betiku, for his part, suggests that avid exercisers who’ve mastered proper form should regularly incorporate the squat, deadlift, and hip thrust. “Doing all three is the most optimal thing you can do to build up your glute strength, power, and health,” he explains. But if you’re brand new to the gym, he suggests starting with the squat before working your way up to the deadlift and hip thrust. That’s because the former is more beginner-friendly and carries less risk of injury and strain.

However you slice it, know that by regularly incorporating butt-strengthening exercises, you’re doing your glutes—and by extension, yourself—a whole lot of good.