I was doing a popular exercise for a bigger butt when I fractured my hip — don’t make my mistake

A personal trainer has warned of the dangers of “ego lifting” after she claims smashing a personal best in the gym left her hospitalized — when she snapped her right hip bone.

Kristina Schmidt, 24, started incorporating barbell hip thrusts into her gym routine in an attempt to grow her glutes after seeing her favorite fitness influencers raving about the exercise.

But after quickly working her way up to a personal best of 310 lbs. in March 2023, she developed agonizing pain in her right hip that “felt like someone was tearing her leg off.”

At one point the pain became so bad that Kristina was left “crying with every single step” and was eventually unable to walk.

Kristina visited her doctor and had an MRI scan before being referred to hospital.

Footage shows her performing the high-impact thrusts that, over time, caused a stress fracture that’s believed to have been caused by lifting too heavy a weight with incorrect form.

After being struck down with blood poisoning when her fractured hip became infected, Kristina underwent surgery to clean the wound and needed a three-month course of antibiotics.

Now, Kristina wants to warn prevent others going through the same ordeal.

“I wanted to look cool in front of my powerlifting gym friends,” Kristina, from Malibu, California said.

“The most I could lift was 310 pounds for eight repetitions and I would usually do two sets of that, but that was with horrible form and not properly engaging my glutes.

“If I’d been able to lift it up properly then it would have been impressive but I was just swinging it up.

“In January I was only lifting 245-265 lbs. and then by March it was already up to 310 lbs., which in hindsight was probably way too fast. It was too much.”

In March Kristina, who was studying Japanese language, politics and economics at Hokkaido University in Hokkaido, Japan, went on a day out with pals and started struggling to walk due to the pain in her hip.

“I remember going on a car trip with my friends and I couldn’t walk,” she said.

“I was crying with every single step, my hip felt like someone was trying to tear my leg off. It was a horrible pain, I couldn’t stop crying and my friend had to carry me into the house.

“Doctors said I had a stress fracture with small cracks in multiple places around the neck of my femur and hip joint. They said this was likely caused by repeatedly overloading my hip over time with too many heavy weights and incorrect form.

“The space between my hip bone and femur shrank so much that my bones were grinding on each other.

“I then got a bacterial infection that settled in my hip — the weakest and most compromised part of my body at the time — caused the synovial fluid in my hip joint to turn orange, and resulted in septic arthritis and borderline blood poisoning.

“I needed surgery to clean out the joint and after that  I was on crutches and still couldn’t walk for weeks.

“I was put on antibiotics for months, which destroyed my gut microbiome, weakened my immune system, and triggered a domino effect of other health issues.”

Kristina started working out at the gym in 2021 and implemented the booty-building move into her routine around 18 months later after being inspired by social media influencers.

Since her accident Kristina, who used to work as an English teacher, started her personal training and nutrition qualifications and is due to be fully qualified in May 2025.

“I just saw people doing the hip thrust online. I never saw people talking about what to do if you’re more quad dominant, like I am,” she said.

“It was more of a one-size-fits-all approach, like, ‘If you want big glutes then you should do this.’ But not everybody has the same muscular genetics.

“I think the muscular imbalance was a big thing that caused me to ruin my form on the hip thrust because when the weights got too heavy for what I could handle with good form, the more developed muscles — in my case, the quads and hamstrings — would take over to complete the lift. 

“But that imbalance and overcompensation by the quads and hamstrings ended up putting immense pressure on my hip area, causing the stress fractures over time.”

Instead of focusing on proper form and technique, Kristina was stacking on weights quickly in an attempt to impress her gym friends.

She quickly added 30kg onto her weights, working her way up from a 245 lbs. to 310 lbs. hip thrust in just a matter of months.

“Ego lifting has always been a meme online,” she said. “You see pec muscles disconnecting when someone benches too heavy, or someone’s back breaking when they’re deadlifting — these are all instant injuries.

“Nobody talks about the slow burn of injuries like a stress fracture — which, unlike an actual fracture, can often go unnoticed — and how it leads to a domino effect of other health issues.”

After injuring herself Kristina admits that she was “scared” to return to hip thrusting, but has since slashed the weight she lifts in half.

“The accident definitely inspired me to become a personal trainer,” she said. “I focus more on doing slower reps for greater time under tension and sometimes even adding half reps and holding the hip thrust at the top and going until failure.

“I now do my hip thrusts almost exclusively on the smith machine because I don’t have to worry about balance and can focus on (perfecting) form and time under tension.

“I really focus on control. I’m now hip thrusting 152 lbs, quite literally taking the 310 lbs. and cutting it in half.

“There are some days where my form might be a little off and I can tell that it’s off because my quads or my hamstrings will start taking over.

“That’s how I know that it’s not right and I know that I need to lower the weight or adjust the distance that the bench is from the bar (on the smith machine) and try again. I really try and check in with myself after every set.”

Now, Kristina wants to warn others about the dangers of lifting too heavily to impress others and getting her information on how to lift solely from social media.

“I do regret having social media as one of my main sources of information back then,” she said.

“With some of these influencers, you don’t even know if their glutes are real or not and were actually built in the gym or not, or whether they’re certified as instructors and actually understand the mechanics behind what it takes to grow muscle correctly and safely.

“You have to be quite careful about what you see online now. Just because it works for one person, doesn’t mean it works for everyone.

“Having guidance from someone who is certified and who knows what they’re doing is really important.

“The hip thrust itself is not a bad exercise and I don’t want to scaremonger, or to discourage people from trying it, by all means try it but the whole point is to do so responsibly.”

After sharing a video with the details of her injury on Instagram the clip went viral, racking up more than 19,170,000 views, likes and comments.

“Just to be safe: this happened because u used too much weight not because the exercise is bad, right? Lmao,” one user wrote.

“Everyday on this app I unlock a new fear,” another commented, while a third added: “The first rule before going to gym is…leave your ego at home.”

“I had a similar thing, my quads were way stronger than my hamstrings and glutes, and one day I stood up at a park and tore and sprained all my ligaments and tendons in my hip flexor… work out ur bum guys,” said yet another.