Banded Glute Bridge

The banded glute bridge is a floor exercise in which a resistance band sits around the thighs just above the knees while you drive your hips up from a lying position. The band is what turns an easy movement into a useful one: the glutes have to extend the hip and, at the same time, push outward against the band to stop the knees collapsing inward. That second job targets the gluteus medius, a muscle that ordinary bridges barely touch and that most knee-pain problems eventually come back to. It needs no bench, no bar and very little space, which makes it a natural warm-up before squatting or a finisher at the end of a lower-body session. The fault to watch for is arching the lower back to reach a higher position, which shifts the work off the glutes entirely.