Tighten Your Backside So you think you need a machine to work your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back, huh? Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't think so. He relied on stiff-legged dead lifts, which produce killer glutes if done properly. Dead lifts were cool in the seventies and eighties, but modern machines made them seem a little too low-tech to be effective. But this classic exercise of the bodybuilding era is worth a second look. Want to give this dead lift a try?