The KAS glute bridge is the top part of a barbell hip thrust, done slowly. You set up against a bench as for a hip thrust, start with the hips locked out, lower only until your shins are about to tip back toward you, and squeeze back up.
It is named after Kassem Hanson, founder of N1 Education; the notes to his 2023 interview on The Coach Mark Carroll Podcast call him its creator. Brolic lists it as KAS Glute Bridge (Barbell).
Muscles worked
Hip extension is the movement, and the gluteus maximus is the main muscle producing it. Brolic tags the glutes as primary, with the hamstrings and lower back as secondary.
That matches the parent lift: a 2019 systematic review of barbell hip thrust studies ranked muscle activity as gluteus maximus, erector spinae (lower back), hamstrings, then quadriceps, and notes that the demand on the glutes is higher at the end of the movement, the part the KAS version keeps.
No study has measured the KAS glute bridge itself. That the short range keeps the quadriceps out of the rep is coaches’ reasoning, not a measurement.
Set up the bench, bar and feet
- Bench. Sit on the floor and lean back so the bench edge crosses your back at about the bottom of the shoulder blades. Bret Contreras’s hip thrust instructions put it there; KAS write-ups say the mid-back. You pivot on that edge, so pick one spot and keep it.
- Bar. Roll a loaded barbell into the crease of the hips, low rather than up by the waist, with a pad or folded towel under it. The barbell calculator finds the plates for a target load.
- Feet. Flat, about hip-width apart, and placed so your shins are vertical at lockout. Colossus Fitness blames feet set too close when the quads take over; in one small EMG study of hip thrust foot positions, feet set further away shifted activity from the quadriceps toward the hamstrings.
Perform the bridge
Start at the top. Drive the hips up until they are fully extended, with shoulders, hips and knees in a line. Keep the ribs down and the chin tucked.
Lower a short way, slowly. Hinge at the hips and stop when your shins are about to tip back toward you. In a hip thrust the knees travel back as the hips drop; here the shins stay vertical. That stopping point defines the exercise.
Sources give the distance differently: one to two inches (Hone Health), two to three (Hevy), a third of the way to the floor (Onnit), “about halfway down or even less” (Matthews). The shin cue is what they share.
Squeeze back to lockout and pause. No bounce and no thrust. Hevy’s guide suggests holding the top for at least a second.
Start lighter than your hip thrust. Trainers who compare the two say you will handle less here, because the rep has no momentum and stays in the end range. Nobody has measured the gap. Begin with a load you can pause on every rep, and add weight only while the shins stay still.
KAS glute bridge vs hip thrust
| Hip thrust | KAS glute bridge | |
|---|---|---|
| Rep starts | At the bottom | At lockout |
| Lowering | Hips drop toward the floor; knees travel back | A short way; shins stay vertical |
| Pace | Often driven up explosively | Slow both ways, pause at the top |
None of this shows which builds more muscle. No trial has compared the KAS glute bridge with the hip thrust, or tested it at all. The nearest training study used the full-range hip thrust: over nine weeks in untrained college-aged adults, it grew the glutes about as much as the back squat did.
Logging
Brolic logs KAS Glute Bridge (Barbell) in reps. Record the total weight of the loaded bar and keep the history separate from your hip thrust: 80 kg for 12 short, paused reps and 80 kg for 12 full reps are different records. If a set drifts into full-range reps, note where.
Write down the bench height and the pause, since both change the rep. The free workout log has room for them, and the weekly set tally shows what your glutes already get.
Common questions
Is it just a half-rep hip thrust? Close. Onnit’s Sean Hyson calls it a hip thrust with a shortened range of motion. It earns its own record because every rep starts from lockout, stops by shin position and uses no momentum.
Can I use a Smith machine, a hip thrust machine or a dumbbell? Both tutorials here say you can, by the same rules. Brolic’s entry is the barbell version, so note other equipment: the loads are not comparable.
My lower back takes over. Matthews cues ribs down and the tailbone tucked at the top, so the hips finish the rep rather than an arched spine. Reduce the load and the range. If it hurts, stop rather than pushing through.
Sources and method
- The Coach Mark Carroll Podcast, Kassem Hanson part 2 (2023) — show notes naming Hanson as the exercise’s creator.
- Sean Hyson, CSCS, Onnit Academy (2025) — the name, the start from lockout, the knee-drift stopping point.
- Kelly Matthews, Colossus Fitness and Anita Herbert — barbell setup, bar and foot position, lowering cue, pace and load.
- Sydney Bueckert, CSCS, Hone Health (2024) and Hevy — bench position, lowering distance, pause, load.
- Bret Contreras: how to hip thrust — bench position and vertical shins.
- Neto et al. (2019) — review of hip thrust muscle activity and foot position.
- Plotkin et al. (2023) — the nine-week hip thrust and squat trial.
- Brolic catalog version 2026-09-22.1 — name, muscles and logging mode.
N1’s own glute bridge instruction sits in its paid member library, so these demonstrations are second-hand; the podcast source is its show notes, not the audio. Setup, range and load guidance are starting points for learning the movement, not values established by a trial.
