With the pandemic and rising popularity of non-gym workouts, it’s important to know all the ways you can incorporate at-home tools into your training to get a great workout anytime, anywhere, and at any fitness level.
As a fitness trainer, I understand exactly how effective exercise bands can be. I’ve witnessed fitness athletes build muscle and maintain chiseled physique for years using little more than bands, and I am pleased to tell you exactly how to incorporate them into your next workout.
There are two reasons why you might want to use bands in your workout. The first is to add more resistance, but the other is to assist with an exercise and actually take some resistance off.
Using bands to assist
One of the most common ways exercise bands are used is to assist with a difficult bodyweight exercise, such as triceps dips.
You can use a band to assist with a dip by anchoring the band to the parallel bars and placing your knees or feet on the centre of the band to do the exercise.
If you don’t need assistance but want to use bands to build more strength, you can do as many repetitions as possible using body weight, and then once you max out, use the band to get a few more reps, just as you would on an assist machine.
What makes bands uniquely effective for assistance exercises is variable resistance. The farther you stretch a band, the more it resists.
Using bands to resist
Now we apply that same concept in the opposite way. Take push-ups, for example. For seasoned lifters, it’s tough to make a bread-and-butter exercise like the push-up feel more strenuous without adding a ton of reps or adding gym implements like a weight vest or a plate.
Using the same principle of variable resistance, you can not only make the push-up harder, but also apply the most resistance exactly where you need it.
Loop a band behind your shoulder blades and anchor each end with your hands before beginning your push-up.
Remember, the more you stretch a band, the harder it resists, so as you push through the push-up, you’re creating more resistance. This is the basic principle of strength training: to work against increased resistance.
You’re strongest at the top range of motion. So now the strength curve more closely matches the resistance created by the band.
You can also use bands to add resistance to your strongest lifts, such as squats and presses, to build even more size and strength.
