Research

Mixed

Hip thrust training transfers to deadlift strength gains similarly to back squat training.

If you are trying to get stronger at the deadlift, doing hip thrusts will help just as much as doing squats. You don't need to do deadlifts exclusively to improve your deadlift.

GoodSupportsMEDIUM confidence
3RM deadlift [0 ± 2 kg] and wall push strength [−7 ± 13 N] similarly improved.
Daniel L. Plotkin et al. · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2023

Why this rating

RCT with strength testing, though the effect size for deadlift transfer was small/non-significant difference between groups.

Source

Hip thrust and back squat training elicit similar gluteus muscle hypertrophy and transfer similarly to the deadlift

Daniel L. Plotkin et al. · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2023

DOI 10.1101/2023.06.21.545949

preprint · n=34Cited 5×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →