One Legged Cable Kickback

Muscles worked

The prime mover is the gluteus maximus, which is the strongest hip extensor you have and drives the pelvis forward at the top of the movement.

Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.

Every exercise for:GlutesHamstrings

How this movement works

One joint moves, and it moves the load away from the body. With nothing recruited to assist, the target muscle reaches its own limit rather than the limit of the weakest link in a chain — which makes this useful for adding volume after the heavy compound work, not for opening a session.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A cable holds tension for the whole range, including the point where a free weight would go slack. Moving the pulley changes the angle the resistance arrives from without changing the movement.

Every exercise using:Cable

These train the glutes too, using equipment this one does not:

• Physioball Hip Bridgeexercise ball
• Piriformis-SMRfoam roll
• Seated Glutebody only
• Barbell Glute Bridgebarbell
• Flutter Kicksbench + body only

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 24 glutes exercises in this database, 6 are listed at intermediate level.