Bl,
i haven't read much of Contreras stuff so i don't know all the exercises he likes.
Just look at the link you posted. So many different ways to attack the glutes alone, so little time. But then we probably need a 100 exercises to properly hit the lats too, right? And the pecs, and so on.
It's easy to get caught up in the onslaught of contradictory information and endless variations on basic training principles and exercises. It fills you up with Catholic-like guilt, all the things you're not doing or should be doing.
i do know he likes those hip thrusts and yes, they are very awkward. I saw McGill the other week and he said hip thrusts get max glute activation at 250#s. i know that got to Brett's heart cuz he loves those. even though they say squats and dead lifts don't get max glute activation i too will continue to do them. i like them.
I get Bret's newsletter. He's a very thoroughgoing researcher, rare in the ST world. I think he is sincere, but perhaps a bit blinded by his convictions and commercial interest. It's also a little hard to believe that he knows more than Coleman, Bolt, Bolton and everyone else who's ever trained, which is basically what he claims.
I also wonder if EMG tests tell the complete story about a particular exercise's usefulness. Seems a bit reductive (is surface EMG activity really equivalent to motor unit recruitment? etc.). I don't have any qualifications, but seems like the health/fitness/nutrition world is full of half-baked ideas based on single variables. That's why there's no limit to the amount of new findings that can be found. Just figure out that something does something, and then extrapolate for a complete theory while ignoring all possible interactions with other things that do things. That's why I go with the pros and their knowledge won through trail and error, and they've always done squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, pullups/pulldowns, and rows, whether they're athletes or bodybuilders. It's a lot easier to observe results than explain them.