Kate Upton is obligated to keep as fit as possible seeing as she one of the world’s premier models who is known for been featured in Sports Illustrated among many high-profile publications.
Upton regularly posts fitness-related content on her social media and most recently, shared a PR for the barbell hip thrust. This exercise is one of the best you can do for building strong, muscular glutes and hamstrings. In fact, it has shown to offer advantages over the squat in this regard.
Related: The 12 Best Glute Exercises For Mass
Upton achieved a 205lb x 12-rep personal record and her form was pretty dead on which was also impressive. Her trainer Ben Bruno posted the clip of her repping out of which she pauses at the top, making the reps much more grueling. However, it also helps to develop that pure strength while eliminating the temptation to cheat and use momentum.
He wrote in the caption…
“Okkkkk @kateupton, new personal record for hip thrusts—205 pounds for 12 reps. She pauses each rep for a second at the top too, which makes it much harder, but also makes it more effective. Seriously impressive work. Kate has been working her ass off during this quarantine, and she’s getting really strong. I love it. To the people who still say that lifting weights will make women bulky, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Her hip thrust form is spot-on, so I just want to highlight a few coaching points if you want to do this exercise on your own.“
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Here are some form tips from Bruno which he also provided in the post…
“– Pause each rep for a second at the top. This ensures that you’re controlling the weight and not going too heavy, and you’ll also feel it more in your butt.”
“– Engage your core as if your doing a mini crunch. This helps to ensure that you don’t overarch your back and helps encourage a slight posterior pelvic tilt, which puts maximal stress on the glutes and also protects the lower back. Along these lines, it helps to look straight ahead rather than up at the ceiling.”
“– Use a full range of motion. Between each rep you should come all the way down so you’re almost sitting on the floor. No half-repping.”
“– Placing a mini-band around the knees is optional, but for people who have a tendency to go into valgus (knees caving in), it’s a good reminder to keep the knees pressed out. And anecdotally, a lot of people feel it more in their glutes doing it this way. Your call, but definitely try it.”
We definitely recommend this exercise for building a superior butt and hamstrings. Because the bar essentially sits in your hip crease, the hip extensions are maximally engaged and the load is placed directly on these leg muscles.
If you start to do these, start out slow and perfect your form, even using the tips provided above. If you have to, start with your bodyweight first and then gradually add resistance until your lifting heavy poundages.
Here’s a recent clip where performs some landmine deadlifts (110 lbs) of which her form was also pretty good here too.
And another where she performs a 28-rep set of kettlebell deadlifts with a 28kg/61lb dumbbell for her 28th birthday back on June 10th. She managed to breeze through it.
There’ll probably be a lot more PRs to come for Kate Upton as she looked pretty good in her 205lb x 12 set.