Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2270: The Best Band Exercises for Maximum Muscle Gain

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about band exercises,

resistance band exercises, our favorite ones, the ones that build the most muscle, strength and fat loss. By the way, because of this episode, we put our program Maps Bands. This is a hardcore band based workout. So no equipment required, just bands. We made it 50% off because of this episode.

So if you're interested in that, go to mapsfaburay.com, use the code BANDS50 for that discount. Now this episode was brought to you by one of our sponsors, SEED. SEED is the world's best probiotic. Hands down, there's nothing like it. If you're interested in checking them out,

go to seed.com forward slash mine pump, use the code 25minepump for 25% off. All right, here comes the show. One of the most underutilized, underestimated, yet effective pieces of exercise equipment for building muscle and burning body fat resistance bands. They've been around for a long time, but they are extremely valuable. In today's episode, we're going to talk all about resistance bands and give you some of our favorite exercises.

Bands will make her dance. So I was like waiting for so many. Be just into it. You know, moving slow today. I, you know, what's cool about bands is I, we saw, because we've been doing this for a while, we've seen the progression of bands through the fitness industry from like, this is kind of a joke to, Oh, this is a major and a very effective strength training tool. You know, but I remember the early days, bands, you know, nobody considered them to be a serious strength training tool. You know, but I remember in the early days,

bands, you know, nobody considered them to be a serious strength training tool. Yeah, and they were also like made with low quality bands. Like, so you had those tube ones, and they were breaking and fraying. And so they've come a long way in terms of how to reinforce them and make them extra challenging and actually heavy so you could get a good

workout with them. Would you guys attribute that to Westside Barbell? Yep. Yeah. 100%. So they really popularized it in the strength. The strength. Strength community took off. Before that it was very much so circuit group class type of low resistance, the tubes that you know. Well, when we were. Didn't give you hardly any resistance. Were you guys remember the Solar Flex? You guys remember that when we were kids?

Yeah. That at home piece of jib and it had like, kind of like these small bands on it. Yeah. So it's kind of like a joke, but then the, you know, the, I mean, the Soviets use bands with their strength training,

their Olympic lifters. Which is where West Side barbell got it, right? They learned it. Yeah, they learned it from them. They brought it, and then you can't laugh and make fun of West Side. I mean, they broke records, put out some of the strongest power lifters of all time.

Yeah. Then people started to pay attention to resistance bands. What's so special about them? Why are they so effective? So, you know, what's interesting about different resistance type tools, you know, obviously you can do different exercises with different tools and so forth. But really the thing to pay attention to with a resistance training tool is how the resistance is felt by the body.

In other words, where does the weight or the resistance feel heaviest or lightest throughout the range of motion? So like free weights are a good example of free weight. You're fighting gravity directly. So with some exercises of 50 pound dumbbells, 50 pounds with other exercises throughout different portions of the rep, it's actually lighter because you're not fighting gravity directly. Machines or cables tend to have the weight always be the same throughout. Resistance bands are interesting because the resistance is lightest

at the beginning of the rep, heaviest at the end of the rep. So it produces a type of resistance that you don't normally see with other, you know, resistance training tools. And if you know the, the benefits and the detriments to this, cause there's pluses of minuses to what I'm saying here, then you can use this to program workouts to make them super effective. That's what West side did. Yeah. Two things.

I mean, it increases the resistance as to the strongest portion of the exercise. So where you're strongest is where you receive the most resistance, which is the smart part to bands, but also to, as you're going through the negative portion, the eccentric, you really can't do that fast without like messing it up. And so it actually forces you to slow down and also receive a lot of that like eccentric contraction. I think you have to explain that or simplify that like is for the audience that may not understand what you mean by that. It matches the strength curve

most naturally, right, or the best. Like so imagine somebody who's squatting when you are coming up out of the hole as you get towards the top of the squat, it's really easy. Which is why you see people do like quarter squats, right? They can stack two, three more plates on if they only go down a few inches and come back up because they're strong in that shortened range of motion. And so what this does is by putting bands to that as you come out of the hole

and you get closer to the top, it actually starts to resist and make it more challenging than it would be without it. Yeah, exactly. That's what they found out. Uh, that's what Westside, uh, did. That's what power lifters do now. And now even bodybuilders utilizing bands because to use your example of the squat, you know, if your max squat is 200 pounds, really what it is is your max, that's your

max that you could do maybe at the bottom of the squat. Yeah, out of the hole. Because that's the hardest part, right? As you come up that 200 pounds feels like it's at the bottom and it's the hardest. Because that's the hardest part, right? As you come up that 200 pounds feels like it's at the bottom and it's the hardest. Well, what if we could make the weight heavier as you got stronger so that the entire rep was challenged? Well, that's what bands allow you to do, right? At the bottom, easy, at the top, very hard.

So it produces this very interesting adaptive type of resistance. We also know that there's a lot, that the damage that, that resistance training provides the muscles tends to be the greatest at the stretch portion of a rep. Now there's a positive that you get a lot of muscle growth from that. And so they've done studies that show that loading a stretch portion of a rep produces more muscle growth than let's say loading the top portion, but

that's not the full picture. Number one, the whole thing builds muscle. So you don't want to discount the whole rep and just try and focus on the stretch. But number two, if something causes less damage, that means you could do more of it. Here's one of the interesting thing about band type workouts. You could train a lot with bands and you can handle a lot of volume with bands. You can handle way more with bands and you can with free weights or machines. The positive of that is you get to practice movements more often.

You get to train the CNS more often and there's value to that. Like if you could, if you could produce the same muscle building effects by working out once every four weeks versus working out, you know, four days a week, most people would say, well, that's superior. Not necessarily because the frequent four days a week workout allows you to train your central nervous system and train the movement and maximize the movement. And that also has lots of benefit. Um, and look, athletes know this, Olympic lifters train a lot.

They train very frequently as suboptimal intensities because they understand that this allows them to be stronger because it perfect a movement. And then for people want to build muscle, there's a carryover. So bands just don't damage your body. Like if I use weights and add bands to it versus adding more weights, it doesn't hammer my body as much. It's just a lot easier on the body. Yeah.

It's interesting because like you said, the Olympic lifters, they'll, they'll do like sub loading. And so they're still like lifting with barbells and they're going through the movement and the practice of these like. Movements but with bands you can you can get like a really intense type of a work out recover pretty pretty substantially the next day so it's like it's you can still go through. A lot of these exercise get better and get more proficient in them as But again, the damage part is really interesting is that you don't really receive as much damage as you do with weights. There's another huge benefit too is the convenience.

Uh, and this is typically how I utilize bands is there's times that we just came off of a really, really rainy weekend. Just it was like raining cats and dogs. It was so bad. I didn't want to go outside at all. Even walking your car, you get drenched, right? And so like driving to the gym, I was like, I don't feel like doing that.

So Katrina and I did like a living room workout. And so there's some value, or if you're in a hotel room and you're traveling, like, so my favorite way to use tools like this is to interrupt my usual training. Because I don't use it a lot, I know that I'm going gonna stimulate growth and change. So I'm gonna get the great,

all the benefits that you guys are alluding to from it, especially considering that my body is not used to it. And I'm allowing it to just get interrupted when it just is convenient for us. So I love, this is like one of those hacks that we talk about that's like, I don't wanna get stuck into only training with bands all the time just cause it's convenient,

it's easy, it's nice, we're with that. And also because the body will adapt to that like anything else, I love to do it to interrupt. Yeah, here's something else that's interesting about bands. Tempo training or trying different tempos with bands is pretty awesome. Like for explosive movements, bands are superior to most resistance training, you know, modalities or tools.

Because if I'm trying to do something explosive with a freeway, which typically that's like where you'll find people use freeweights, right? You got to have a lot of technique. You're throwing a weight and you have to know how to slow it down. It's clunky. It's clunky. You can, I don't care what exercise you do. You attach a band, you could go fast.

And as long as you don't let it whip back very quickly, it's safe and explosive. In fact, bands are the number one way that athletes that are not in strength sports will train for explosive power. You'll see this with martial artists. I see this with judo players all the time. We'll use bands to practice throws. You'll see this with boxers.

You'll see this with athletes that throw. You'll see this with sprinters. Like bands allow you to be fast and safe. And because the resistance gets harder as you come out, it matches. It allows you to build speed and then be at top speed. Cause when you start an explosive movement, you're slowest to the beginning, fastest at the end. Well, the band is easiest at the beginning, hardest at the end. And then slow tempo bands are amazing for slow tempo because the band is producing more and

more tension as you stretch out. It is causing you to really try to control the rep. So when you look at the ends of the spectrum of tempo, really slow or really fast, uh, bands are actually the best form of exercise for those steps. I've seen a lot of really cool ways to use it. I hadn't even thought of before, excuse me, um, with like Max Schmarzo and some of those guys will do band assisted plyometrics in ways that like it actually relieves a lot of pressure and impact

on the joints, but they could still go through a lot of the mechanics and the movement of these explosive plyometric moves, and also to just band assistance in general too. This is another way to kind of hack, being able to progress further with something like a pull-up or dip or something that, you know, body weight exercise, that's pretty challenging for you. Otherwise, you can at least go through the end range and the mechanics of it with getting assistant where you need it, but still providing enough resistance.

So it's challenging. You know, we didn't put it on the, I know we're going to go through some exercises today, some of our favorites for each body part with, with bands, body weight and stuff like that. And this isn't on there because you would be using a tool, you'd be using a trap bar. But I bet you that Max and Corey and JFP would all say that the trap bar, banded trap bar has to be one of their favorite exercises for athletes. I know the sleds up there,

DeFranco would also probably agree with this, right? DeFranco's up there with, like I know that the sled is like one of their favorite tools they use, but I think I see them use a banded trap bar more than almost any other exercise for like explosive jumps and stuff. Probably one of the safer, better tools. It's the best for explosive for power. It's the learning curve is the smallest. I mean, you know, to learn explosive movements with weights, there's a lot of

technique involved, a lot of potential for injury and risk. The weight is heavy at the bottom, just like at the top. So you got to generate the speed with where's with the band, you get fast pretty quickly. In fact, a good example, you, you said pullups as an example, someone may think, okay, pullups with a band, it's to help me do the pull-up better. And if I say, well, do explosive pull-ups with the bands, they may think, well, the band will hold me down. So I have to explode up. No, no, no. Use the band to pull you up. So now you're light and you can move quickly.

If you want to be able to do a fast explosive pull-up, maybe like you're trying to get yourself to do a muscle up, for example, so you need to be able to generate that speed. In order to train power, you have to train speed. Bands can really augment that. They can help that quite a bit. So when it comes to explosive movements, bands are, that's my favorite way to use them,

is when I'm trying to go explosive, is I use bands quite a bit. The other thing is that they're really good for hypertrophy reasons, specifically for this. Body parts that are hard for you to connect to, or hard for you to feel, you know, lagging body parts, bands are amazing because they're the hardest at the squeeze portion of a rep. And that's where you're most likely to be able to connect to a muscle. Like if you have trouble connecting to your glutes, it's going to be hardest to connect in the stretch position at the top, where you squeeze is where you might actually form a connection.

Well, you add a band to a hip thrust where you weighed it down and you come up at the top and you have to hold up. It's going to encourage that hard squeeze. Now you can feel the muscle and then you can move to other exercises that hit the glue. This is true for any body part that you have trouble connecting with bands are really, really good way to help you connect and get that mind muscle connection and then get the better gains from.

I love those too. If you, if you're at that top squeeze portion and you're in an isometric position, cause now too, you have that resistance also pulling you down, you know, besides, you know, just the loaded weight, it's like, it's, it's, it's an it's an added totally different feel than just like a load on top of you. Well, let's go through some of our favorite movements for each body part, starting with your lower body first.

Yeah, one, I like this one, Justin showed me this one, which is a band reverse lunge. So this is a back step lunge, but you have the band attached to your waist and it's anchored behind you. So when you step back, the weight, the band's pulling you back. When you step forward, you're getting that resistance from the band. And what you do at the top is you stand up and you balance on the leg that was in front, causing an isometric glute and hamstring squeeze. Really good for stability in the hips, because there's

no resistance normally pulling you back when you do back step lunge. When you come up, you're just kind of balancing with this. You have to come up and squeeze the glute to prevent yourself from being pulled back. You've started to really feel this in that posture. It emphasizes that stabilization. Yes. Because I mean, it's any little kind of variable to that. Like it's going to throw you off and having that added bit of force pulling you backwards. You really have to be deliberate

and generate enough force to drive forward and then also stabilize and control while you're getting pulled. So I just, I like it because it just helps, you know, you really focus in on that specific exercise. It also emphasizes the hinging portion of that exercise, right? Sometimes you can get so caught up in the quad driving

in like a lunge exercise and forgetting about that it's a hip hinge exercise also. And that's a great, and I feel like clients don't get enough of that. And so it promotes that getting connected to the glutes driving in a lunge. A lot of times when you would train a client, they'd feel it all in their quads.

They don't feel anything in their glutes. Having that band distraction pulling behind you kind of forces you because at the top to your point earlier about like the isometric portion, you squeeze the glutes when you come forward, like love that move. Yeah. And now talk about a easy way to turn that into an athletic variation, right? Use a lighter band, you step back and pop up real quick, hold and then step back and pop up. Accelerate, yeah. And it's going to give you that power. You're going to build that forward accelerating power with, uh, with the bands resisting back.

Otherwise, I mean, I can't think of a way to do that with other resistance, maybe a cable, but you know, the thing about explosive movements with cables is you get the weight coming up, the, you create slack on the, on the cable and then it's come slamming back down. It doesn't feel too good. Well, that's the old school way of doing it until they created all these cool tools. Now, now they have these like, uh, you know, the, the cables that you, to you where you run out and you do it, this is how we, yeah, they got all these

cool tools now that you can buy. But before all those existed, this is how we would do that for athletes is to create that explosive movement. Sissy squats are another one that you can use bands and you can put the bands around. You could use two of them, put one behind each knee and attach it to a something anchored in front of you. And that same thing allows you at the top to squeeze the quad. So a sissy squat is a quad exercise, very effective quad. And it loads without bands.

It loads most at the bottom at the top. There really isn't much resistance. You're not getting a lot of squeeze. The difference between a sissy squat and a leg extension in this sense is a leg extension. You could squeeze at the top, uh, not the resistance to the bottoms easy with the Sissy, with the Sissy squats, the opposite. Sorry.

So leg extension at the top, Sissy squat at the bottom. When you put the band around your knees, when you come up, you have to really squeeze the quads to keep yourself up, up straight. Oh, that's, I actually like to use the bands hanging, both of them hanging from a squat rack to assist you in a Sissy squat. Oh, yeah. Because Sissy squats tend to be challenging for the average person, right? So like, I mean, Sissy squats with no weight, like 10 reps is challenging for me to do that with good form and technique.

And so one of the ways to regress that movement for most people is to actually use the bands that you hold on to and do the movement. Then it assists you and helps you come out of that deep position. So that's how I typically like to use it for the Sissy squad. Cause I don't feel like the Sissy squad needs any more challenge in that movement cause it's already very challenging for most people. Oh, cool. So we got two varieties then, uh, banded pushups, classic exercise,

band around your back under your armpits, uh, you put your hands on top of it and simply do a hard pushup. I personally like to do these low rep. I don't know about you guys, but I like to have a really heavy band. Heavy band is, is the move and to really struggle your way to get that full extension. Yes. Uh, if you can, if you can match that for just a few reps to where it's like, it's incredibly difficult, you know, around rep number five, it's that's perfect. I feel like that, that resembles a weighted barbell bench press better than anything else.

Sure. So I feel like that's more closely, when I do like a split stance cable press or fly, I feel like it's more like cable fly or, you know, with the bands. Oh, right. Right. That feels more like a cable fly machine where doing it this way with the, you know, like in a pushup position, with a tough band behind you feels the most like I'm driving. Like if I'm trying to emulate what I'm doing with a barbell.

And again, for, uh, for athletics, you know, like if, let's say you're aligned, you need to push someone away or whatever, like you can put a lighter band on your and really focus on the explosion at the top and create power. Again, all these can be changed into the power of variety, which you can't do with other forms of resistance training. Next up, pull ups. Now here's, this is where most people probably will use bands in the gym is to either help a pull up or make it harder.

Now I want to go back to what I said earlier, attaching a band to the bar, bring it down so you put your foot on top of it or your knees on top of it to help you do a pull up. One way to do that is, uh, or to use it is I can't do pull ups with my body weight very well. This allows me to do more reps. That way I could build up more strength, eventually do pull ups without the band. That's one way. The other way is, Hey, I could do 10 pull ups, no problem, but I want to try and do explosive pull ups.

Well, now you use the same band to assist you and you pull up very quickly, come down real slow and then do three or four ret plyometric style almost where you're doing your, your, your, do you guys typically like to do the band around your knee or do you put it down across the thing where you step on it with your feet? Is, or do you guys have a way that you guys like to use the explosive? I like to put it down around the, the, the safeties where I'm standing on it. Yeah.

Yeah. I prefer having my leg kind of like out instead of like, have my knees over it. So that way I just feel like to now I'm in in extension and I'm trying to keep myself from swinging so I can I can actually like activate my legs and keep me a little more under control. Yeah. If I have what you're talking about where the safeties are down below and I could do that, I like to do that. Not all the, not all the racks will have that where somebody can do that or not. But I like, I've seen somebody do the bottom of the rack and put their feet underneath it to pull, to try and like make it more difficult, which is interesting. But it's not that.

What I've done is just to get my, just strength up pull-up, is I'll use it to create resistance. I'll put it around my waist and then wrap it around a heavy dumbbell that I won't be able to lift. So the band is not gonna pull the dumbbell up. And then I'll do three hard reps with a focus on the top. So I'll pull myself up, obviously at the top it's real heavy, and I'll hold as hard as I can, and then come down real slow.

That has built, you know, I got to the point where I was doing pull-ups with over a hundred pounds of weight strapped from my waist and that played a big role in my ability to be able to do that incredible strength. I like that. One arm band rotational press. This one's really good.

This is Justin favorite. I love these and again, I'm guilty for a lot of the rotational spiraling kind of pressing movements just because I love these. And again, I'm guilty for a lot of the rotational, spiraling kind of pressing movements, just because I've favored, I just feel like it emulates our physiology more and actually like what, it's more favorable to the joint for me

in terms of like having negative impact or having any kind of impingement issues or anything, just to learn how to like, you know, go with your natural rotation because my arm already wants to do that. So having a band loaded and going through that same range of motion, it just feels so nice and fluid and natural and I'm getting nice good resistance with it. Now, are you going to do that from a standing position or like a split knee position and drive up and then what are you, what are you, you could do both. I do standing just a split knee position and drive up. And then what do you, what do you, uh, you can do both. I do standing just cause I get more resistance.

Okay. And then you wait, it's on your foot is standing on it, standing on it. And then I'll load it. So it's on behind my arm like this, just like if I'm loading a kettlebell. So I have it on the outside here and it'll press and extend. Okay. And basically. Yeah. You know what I like about that is the top portion, the stability at the top. So if you're doing this exercise, don't just go up and come down.

By the way, don't do that with any band exercise. It's gonna make you wanna do that because the resistance is heaviest at the end of the rep. You're gonna wanna go up and come right back down. What you need to do is go up and hold and really extend that top position, hold that position for a good three, four seconds, then lower with control and repeat.

That's going to maximize the effects you'll get out of that particular band exercise. Next is a good old band pull apart. This is a very old school classic. In fact, they used to have what it called chest expanders. You guys remember those? With the springs on them? Goonies. Remember that? Springs. You know, what's funny is this is a, I've probably, those with the springs on them. Yeah. That were people. Goonies. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. The springs. Yeah.

You know what's funny is this is a, I've probably. This is a program where they have. Staple. Yeah. As you say, this is a movement that I think I've given to more clients than any, any other movement that we'll talk about today just because. Posture. Yes.

Because I think we, we do so much in front of us and where everybody has this issue with this, you know, rounding forward, upper cross syndrome type of posture that I don't think you could ever do enough of this movement. And it's such a simple, easy way to target the rear delts and to target yourself into that better position. And so this is a movement that I would actually tell clients like a, give them the orange band and say, keep this at your desk. Do this every hour, all day long. But even if you weren't just doing this, it's just a great exercise.

So interesting how energizing it is. And I think it is because of the, they call it like the power pose. But it's just like that open chest that there's something about it. When you're in optimal alignment, how your body just kind of reinforces that. And it's like, wow, this is just, you get this like surge of energy. And so to do that in between just sitting at your desk or like being in that protracted position for so long, I feel like it just immediately lifts your mood. Yeah.

By the way, a very easy, general, simple way to prime yourself before bench press. You do some pull-aparts with the band, get underneath the bench press, and you've activated those upper back muscles and done some stability with the shoulders. A lot of people who have issues with bench press, like simple two or three sets of band pull-up parts, maybe not as a workout and more as a primer, you'll feel good right away when you get in the bench press, just from doing those. But yeah, it's a very versatile exercise.

And again, like all band exercises, it's the end range of motion. That's most important. So when you come out, you want to hold that. Here's a key with this, by the way, don't shrug your shoulders. So when people get fatigued, they start to shrug their shoulders as they do this. That's, yeah, that's a recipe for, for like nice neck impingement. Keep the shoulders down head tall while you're doing that movement.

That makes it most effective. Then you have your band curls. All right, band curls is a million or one different variations. I love doing a band curl where you grip the band with your hand and you do a hammer curl style position. I like this because everybody's hands are weak.

Most people do not have hands that match the strength of their back. This particular exercise here with that grip at the top, even if you do your traditional workout with your dumbbells and barbells, finish off your workout with a hammer curl, you have to grab the band with your hand and come up and squeeze.

Watch how you feel, especially the upper top of the forearm here, the brachioridialis muscle. I actually prefer those with the full infinity loop because you don't have handles. So you have to do exactly what you said and you have to really like clasp in and do that, uh, nice, nice. Like grip in order to, to pull that off.

So it just makes it a lot more challenging. So when I do curls with bands, I actually like to pull from a different angle just because that's what's nice about the bands is you can do this. You can do any angle. Yeah, because bicep curls are so basic and we typically see people doing standing curls or sitting down on a bench and you almost always curl from the position. Whether you do straight bar, camber curl, we almost do all our curls from this like traditional elbows by the side position.

I love to take the band and distract it somewhere else from a different angle to where it's up high from my door hinge and I'm pulling down this way or it's like at something straight across when pulling my face or even up high and I'm pulling down behind my head. I just I love the resistance of it getting more difficult with the squeeze of the bicep. I love that you can take that band and basically attach it to anywhere and so if I'm doing bicep. I love that you can take that band and basically attach it to anywhere. And so if I'm doing bicep curls with it, I traditionally don't do it the traditional way,

which would be stand on the band and do kind of the basic kind of curl motion. I like to take it for eight purpose curls. Well, since you went off to some varieties, I'll give you two that I love. One you mentioned where you have the band up top and you curl behind the head. That puts your bicep in a shortened, shortened position.

And you never do that? Never. There's never, there's like, there's literally, I've seen like one machine that they've made like that. Yeah. Very few gyms have it. No, because the bicep, one of the, one of the bicep, the heads of the bicep attaches

over the shoulder, when you lift your up arm up above your head, the biceps in a shortened position. And so then you curl from there and you get this really gnarly squeeze. If you've never done it before, try it and you'll see what I'm talking about. Now on the opposite end, you want to talk about the stretch position, attach a band behind you, walk away from it, allow your bicep to stretch and then curl from there. That, that one's gnarly.

That, that makes things hurt. And that's why that's why. So the bands are so unique and cool for that. I like, if I'm doing curls, I like to do it in these different, different angles that you would, you can't get that with a dumbbell, right? Well, it's difficult to deal with. In fact, you know, just not to take a little, little sidetrack here, but to augment dumbbells, bands are amazing.

Give you an example, I could dumbbell fly, you know, at the bottom, it's heaviest at the top of slide. Well, if I have bands attached out on the ends here, now it's heavy at the bottom with the weights, but as they come up now, the bands are producing most of the slide. Well, if I have bands attached out on the ends here, now it's heavy at the bottom with the weights, but as they come up, now the bands are producing most of the resistance and now it's heavy at the squeeze as well. So the thing about bands is they're, I can't think of more versatile simple, they're super simple, extremely versatile. All right, for triceps, you know, overhead tricep extensions with bands, I love these because the stability required at the top is gnarly. And you will see what I'm talking about because when you come

up the top, you're gonna want to let go right away and bring the band back down, but hold it at the top and you'll get that crazy scream. You just gotta be cautious of like lifting your heel up and having the band snap you in the butt in the chute. But yeah, other than that, it's, it's again, it's man, you really feel that stretch and when you get up to full extension, it challenges it like, I love this for bands also, because there's just, again, I think I can think of one machine that I've seen in gyms that really, uh, you know, simulate that same, same strength curve.

And with obviously with dumbbells, you don't get that the top when you're in full extension, you're like at rest where is if you have the bands, it's really tough at the top. You'll feel a massive pull from that. Well, the thing with the dumbbell over here tries to extension perfectly fine. The problem is a lot of people have issues pulling the elbows back far enough to get that good sweep. If I use a band, so here's an alternate way to do it. I could step on it. That's one way to do it and everybody does that. Or I could attach it slightly away from me,

stand away from it. Now it's pulling my arms back while I'm doing the tricep extension. That increases the stretch of the tricep. And it's a very different feel than a overhead tricep extension with a dumbbell. Totally different. All right, next is a core exercise.

I love bands for core exercises for two reasons. One, the stabilization, which we're going to talk about a good stabilization exercise. Two, you know, a lot of people train when I say plyometrics, people think jumping or maybe some upper body throwing type stuff. Plyometrics for the core is incredible, especially if you're any type of sport that requires explosive rotation, which is most sports. Yeah sports require that exploding with weights in rotation, very difficult to do cables. Again,

you got the weight stack flopping all over the place bands allows you to do this quite a bit. So you have your traditional band side shop, great hypertrophy type exercise. You want to build some stability. You do what's called a payoff press where as you extend the lever, right? Arms at your sides come out, squeeze, you have to hold and keep your core really tense. This is good to protect your back. And the other one is to do the side chop explosively. And there's no better exercise for explosive rotation, in my opinion.

It's so good that even if I have access to a full gym, I'm still choosing to do this. I mean, that's how valuable that movement is, is you could give me all the tools in a massive gym. I still would prefer to go over and grab a band. Maybe only this closest second thing to that would be if I have access to like a free motion machine that creates a similar type of resistance. But bands are the quick, easy, cheap way to do that.

And I think it's one of the best things you can do training for. It's just so much smoother for rotation. It's hard to do exercises for rotation that go well. And so to, I mean, when you're looking at like any kind of side chop, you can make it more anti-rotation focused so I can lock my hips in place and I could really like twist my torso across my hips and get challenged that way, or I can make it more athletic and I could pivot with the chop. And so these are two very valid

alternatives for getting that kind of rotation with resistance challenge. I'm glad you brought that up, Justin, because there's, there is like two major variations. I mean, there's more variations than that, but there's the two main ones that you'll probably see on social media or on YouTube, where you're, I think the average person would go, oh, well who's doing it right, who's doing it wrong? And there's, they're both right, and neither one of them are wrong.

It just depends on your desired outcome. And I think explaining what you're talking about, so there, you'll see someone do a wood chop and they'll actually rotate their hips and they'll pivot on their toe when they do that. That's less of like a, that's just a strength rotational type of movement where if you keep your feet straight ahead and you do that, that's anti rotational, right? So they're both valuable tools and doing both of them are ideal to incorporate them. It's not one is wrong or right, but you'll see that on social media. Sometimes

where somebody is trying to put down, oh, this is, that's not how you do it, that's the wrong way. It's like, both have value. Totally. And you know who uses bands explosively for rotational law? Grapplers. A lot. You'll find wrestlers and judo and Greco fighters using bands, all that. In fact, they've been using bats for decades to practice throws and to get explosive into their movements. I love explosive rotational movements, even for hypertrophy, because I've noticed that anti rotation. So anti rotation essentially is like, you know, adding resistance and not rotating, right?

Stabilization explosive adds a speed element. That is very protective is what it is. So when I go to my traditional, um, if I can move things fast, then I can move things slow, much safer is basically what it boils down to. So, and it's a skill. It is a skill that you can practice and get better at. So look, if you want a full workout planned for you with bands only, no other equipment, just bands and body weight.

We have a program called maps bands. This is not an easy beginner type workout program. This is an advanced band based workout designed to build muscle, burn body fat, make you look amazing. Again, it's not for beginners. This is a hardcore workout with bands. We're gonna do it half off because of this episode. So you can get it for 50% off its normal price. If you're interested, go to mapsfebruary.com

then use the code BANDS50 for the 50% off discount. Also, uh, you can find us on Instagram. Justin is at mine pump. Justin, I'm at mine pump to Stefano and Adam is that mine pump at him. Thank you for listening to mine pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert, exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources

at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5 star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump.