 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk all about the benefits of using resistance bands in your workouts or training entirely with resistance bands. When I first started in the fitness industry back in the 90s, I thought resistance bands weren't that effective. It wasn't something that I even considered. Well, once I started reading studies coming out of the former Soviet Union and powerlifting athletes and Olympic lifters, started incorporating my training in my clients and in myself, I was totally sold. These days, bands make their way into almost every one of my workouts and it's true for my co-hosts as well. Bands are now a serious training tool and you can do a full workout, train your entire body with just resistance bands. That's what we do in this episode. We go over our 10 favorite resistance band exercises, each one of them covering a different part of your body. In fact, at the end of the episode, if you take notes, you've got all the exercises, you can literally just do three sets of every exercise to fatigue and have a phenomenal workout. Now, if you want more planning and you want a full-on workout with video demos where we're teaching you how to exercise that has different phases that requires just bands as well, you can check out our Maps Anywhere program. It's actually one of our more popular workout programs. You can find that at mapswhite.com. So mapswhite.com, you can check out the Maps Anywhere program that utilizes bands, no weights, no machines for amazing results. I love fitness history, fitness equipment history when it comes in style, when it's out of style. I love it. Things tend to circle around. The good things tend to circle back around. Well, not all things circle around. Good stuff lasts. Shake weights not making its way back. Exactly. But the good things stick. They may come in and out of favor, but they tend to stick. Absolutely. The bad stuff does circle. For example, like stim equipment. Oh, yeah. That'll never go away. I remember in the 90s seeing articles. It was in the 70s they were selling that. Then in the 90s, and I saw it again, do crunches at home while you're not doing anything. And just the guy's abs are flexing or whatever. But one piece of equipment is very interesting that the history around it, or in terms of, at least when I started, I'm talking about resistance bands. And they really didn't become, in my experience, a big piece of exercise equipment. There was a piece of home exercise equipment called the solo flex. You guys remember that? Yeah. You guys remember the solo flex? Yeah. It had these thick rubber bands that would go around the, what are you, access or whatever would you call that? Yeah. Yeah. And I remember watching these commercials on TV and it was like, solo flex and it was a dude like working out on it. By bow flex, right? Yeah. No, bow flex. No, it was different. Oh, did bow flex? I thought bow flex was the maker of that. I know. That's what I thought. I don't know maybe, but there were separate pieces of equipment. But before that it was a solo flex and it was a resistance band equipment. And this was in the 90s, I remember saying this. And that was the first time I'd ever seen resistance band training. And at that point, if you worked out and you were serious. Yeah. Resistance bands were a joke. That's what you thought. Like, oh, that's dumb. Just lift weights, resistance bands or rubber bands. Like what are you going to do with that? That's so stupid. It doesn't do anything. Yeah. You only really saw them in like physical therapy clinics or, you know, you saw people like old elderly people kind of like working with, with bands and things. And so that was the association for me at least. Yes. What happened for me? This was my personal story. There it is. There's a solo flex. That thing's been around for a long time. Look at that. Yeah. It's right next to the bull fight. Bull fight. So they're different. They're different. So as a, I remember this quite clearly, right? So I'm managing gyms at the time I'm, I'm working for 24 fitness and they had grand opened. They had done a soft grand opening of a club here in San Jose and didn't do so well or whatever at the time I was running another club in San Jose. And I had to re re grand open that one. This is the one on Hillsdale. And they said, Hey, Sal, why don't you come over here? Let's do a re grand opening. Let's see what we can do. You know, they liked the way I performed or whatever. So I went there and they did it re grand opening, but the free weight or the machine area, both of them were not fully ready yet. All we had was cardio and we had some free weights, but not a lot. And then the machine area wasn't open, but they still wanted to do this kind of re grand opening. And so I get in there and I'm like, oh man, okay. Well, what are we going to do? How are we going to get people in here working out? And one of my trainers was like, dude, resistance bands, like me and my team will train all of our clients with resistance bands. And I remember at this point thinking like, oh, that's kind of a solution, but it's not really a good substitute or whatever. But let's see what happens. Let's do it. And I'll never forget how surprised I was. Trainers were doing all kinds of different exercises with the resistance bands. I was keeping a close eye on how this was working for clients. The clients were getting great results. And many of them, I would go and talk to them afterwards, hey, how do you like your workouts? Don't worry, our machine area will be open or whatever. And they'd say things like, I actually like this workout better. My body feels better. It's different. I'm getting great results. And all the trainers would tell me how phenomenal training their clients, because we were forced with just resistance bands. After that, I saw a lot of my trainers using resistance bands in their normal workouts in combination with other pieces of equipment. And it was right around that point, I started reading literature with strength athletes, power lifters and Olympic lifters. Like the West Side Barbell community. Yes. What happened in 1990 or whatever, the Soviet Union kind of collapsed. And a lot of their, I mean, they had dominated strength sports in the Olympics for a long time. Those Eastern Bloc countries were just so good at Olympic lifting. And they had kept a lot of their training methodologies secret. It was very competitive, right? You had the Soviet Union, you had America. And they were constantly vying for who was superior and whatever they were competing against each other with. And a lot of these training modalities and ways that they got their athletes to be amazing, we thought it was all about the drugs, was secret. Well, when the Iron Curtain came down, some of their coaches came to the U.S., started teaching our athletes. And one of the things that they started to teach the athletes was how to use resistance bands. Powerlifting with the West Side Barbell Club started using bands. This is when I started to really take bands seriously. And I saw the greatest strength gains I'd ever seen from implementing them in my training. Yeah. I have a little bit of a story. Like so when I was in college, we, I mean, I've been introduced to various strength programs through coaches. So, you know, through the, the sort of mandated exercise, you know, workouts that they put up on the board. And so it evolved like the, the further I got in, in each program from high school to then, you know, one college then transferring to another college was very different. And so this was actually a very, you know, well put together program that we all sort of individualized based off of our own positions, which was new to me. But one thing that was interesting was as I was working out down the hall from our, our, our weight room was basically the athletic training room. So this is where everybody rehabbed and did their thing. And so I used to go in there and just talk with the guys that were rehabbing and would grab the bands just out of boredom, you know, talking to them. And so I kind of made a routine out of it with my arms training, especially my shoulders were giving me issues. So I didn't want to like put too much impact on my shoulders for a while. And so I was just doing band training alone. And it was, it was very interesting to me how quickly my, my shoulders regained strength and I actually like built a substantial amount of muscle development in my arms, doing bicep curls, doing triceps. I was like, wow, there's something to these bands as well as interesting. Oh, totally. I wish I remember what certification it was that I was going through when it really came together for me. When I realized that it was different than free weights, the way it was matching the strength, your natural strength. And that's when the light bulb really went off for me. Right. So we, and I don't think we, we will ever go back on, you know, free weights are king, right? I think free weights are ultimately one of the best tools that you can do to build and sculpt a physique, whether it be for building muscle or burning body fat or rehab, whatever. I think that free weights are king. But one of the things that's unique and great about bands that are, that is different than weights that you can't do with weights is, is match your, your natural strength curve. So in other words, all like dumbbell, barbell exercises, when you get to the end of the movement, right, it gets much easier with, with the weight. It's always that when you are in the stretch position, when the, when the resistance of the barbell or a dumbbell are most challenging and difficult. Right. So like the bottom of a squat, harder than the top of a squat, even though it's the same weight. Right. Exactly. But with bands, it's the complete opposite. And then understanding the importance of novelty. Right. So if I can train myself in a novel way that's different, unique, that stimulates the muscle in a different way, that's always beneficial. And that was when it really came together. Because originally, I too, like lumped them in the rehab or like my older community, like that's, that's the only people I'd use it with. I didn't really start using it with my advanced lifters until I understood this aspect of it. And you went, oh shit, if you, all you train with is barbells and dumbbells all the time, and you've never done band training, how beneficial that is for even the advanced lifter. Well, and too, I mean, the options were slim, like when those first started out, they had those tube versions of rubber bands that would snap on you and like, would leave you with just marks all over your body. Like that happened to me a few times. Or they just didn't have enough resistance, right? Yeah, they wasn't enough. Yeah. I mean, you can't, I mean, you do a 15 or 20 pound, you know, tube, a resistant band. It's like, okay, for squats, most people can squat that kind of resistance. Oh, they got some now that are hundreds of pounds. Like by themselves, you could be a strong ass dude and by themselves. They've improved substantially over the years. Yeah, like the ones that we have that we carry, the rubber bandits, the quality on those, they didn't have those back then. Back then we were using tubes and we would have to like compensate by adding 15 tubes to give you the resistance that you need. Now you have companies like rubber bandits. Now they just layer it like, like really thick. So it provides a lot of structure. It doesn't snap. Like a little bit might fray at the very worst, but it doesn't snap. But yeah, for me, you know, when I started using bands, because there's a few things that bands are actually superior to free weights over. One of them is the angle of resistance I can change independent of gravity, right? With free weights, you have to position and move your body and get kind of, you have to get a little creative because gravity only points in one direction. With bands, let's say I'm doing a deadlift. And, you know, I'm lifting the weight off the floor with free weights. I'm fighting gravity. Gravity is pointing straight down. But let's say I want to work on my lockout. I want to work on the fact that I can push my hips forward and pull back a little bit. There's no way to really do that with free weights. I mean, I could do lockouts with heavier weight and that kind of stuff. But I want to create resistance that's pulling me forward. So I have to pull back a little bit to strengthen that lockout. I can do that with bands. I can attach bands to my barbell and put them in an angle so that when I stand up, not only do I stand up with the weight, but I have to emphasize on the pulling back part of the deadlift which can totally strengthen my lockout. I was stuck at a 525-pound deadlift for the longest time. It wasn't until I started using bands that I got my deadlift to crack 600 pounds. Same thing with my squat. Same thing with my bench press. And it was bands that really took trigger sessions that you can find in MAPS Anabolic to the next level. And I had done trigger sessions with body weight and free weights, and you can do trigger sessions with almost any resistance. But bands were just superior. They provided the right kind of intensity resistance. They gave me a better pump. They caused less damage. And of course, they're super versatile. That's the other thing about bands that are amazing is that with a few pieces of equipment that literally take up the space of a lunchbox, you can work out and train your whole body. There's no other really piece of equipment. Maybe suspension trainers can kind of do this. But there's really nothing else that can do that and match the versatility of resistance bands because I can attach them. I can do exercises where resistance is pointing down, towards me, away from me. Oh, and here's one more thing. Explosive movements. Bands are so good. They're superior for explosive movements. It really works with the explosive movements. Virgo Max, you guys heard of that piece of equipment. So, yeah, athletes have found ways to use that type of variable resistance that the bands provide, but explosively. And so it allows you that enough travel to get into the position, but then really emphasizes the part where you're most powerful and most explosive. So there's a lot of very valuable techniques, athletic-wise, that you can use with the bands as well in that direction. Well, they're definitely blowing up right now, right? I mean, we are at a time when... I mean, it's still tough to get free weights right now. I mean, they sold out everywhere. And they're expensive. Everybody has to get creative right now. Yeah, we're getting ready to order a set, another whole setup, a PRX setup like we have in the Tahoe house. We want to set up here in the studio because we had the original setup we have. And I forget how expensive dumbbells and plates are. That's the most expensive part... Of setting up at home gym is actually just the weight and getting it shipped to your house. So with what's going on right now with COVID and everybody being home and then everybody buying out all the plates and dumbbells, you've seen this rise in band exercises again, which is kind of cool. I mean, for the wrong reasons, right? It's only because it's convenient for people. The reality of it is it's getting this conversation going, talking about all the benefits of it. Right. Bands can also be used to assist you in exercises. This is one attribute of bands that you don't find with other pieces of equipment. For example, let's say you want to practice pull-ups. Pull-ups are difficult for you and you can't even do one, but you want to get good at them. Fantastic use. Only with bands can you do this, where you take a band, you put it over the bar and you loop it down and you step into the band so that it lifts some of your body weight. Now you can practice actually doing pull-ups rather than doing a lat pull-down or some other variation of a pull-up. You're actually doing pull-ups with help from the band. And you can change out the bands based off of the amount of help it gives you. I actually think I've used a band for that more than... If I could pick the single thing that I've used a band more is for assisting pull-ups. This is how I got my son. Fantastic. To get better at pull-ups. Pull-ups are hard. Male, female doesn't matter. Pull-ups are challenging for most people, especially to do multiple reps. And so a lot of people just avoid them because it's like, I don't want to do an exercise. I can only do one or two. So they completely avoid it. But just by adding a little bit of assistance with the bands, I mean they now can get five or ten and so they feel like they get an actual workout. It's a little more tricky with dips, but it's also, if you have this set up with a bar for this, very helpful as well. Yeah, I had... When I used to have my personal training studio, we had a cable machine similar to a free motion where the free motion has two arms, except this one. I can't remember the name of it. It was Da Vinci, I think was the company. And it had pulleys all the way up and down on the sides and it came out. And you could go in the middle and do exercise with both sides. And it was very... Lots and lots of variety. At the time, I was training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, looking to compete. And also at that time, I had a couple of clients that also were competing in those kinds of tournaments. And so I wanted to incorporate explosive movements into our lifts because, I mean, if you get really good at a movement, you've got good control. At that point, if you want to get faster at that particular type of movement, then you can train explosively. So we were obviously advanced. And so I wanted to make explosive. Here's the problem with explosive movements with cables. The weight stack flops all over the place. You can't... The cable's gonna... You're gonna get slack in the cable. It's gonna come crashing down. Cable comes off the pulley. Yeah, it's real clunky. So what I used to do is I would take the weight stack, attach bands to the weight stack and anchor them down. Now I could swing and twist and move quickly, and the weight stack wouldn't flop all over the place. And then the type of resistance that bands provides where with an explosive movement... Think about it this way, right? Adam talked about this earlier. With a band, the further you stretch it out, the more difficult it gets or the more resistance it provides, right? When you're doing an explosive movement, you're most explosive or most fast as you're generating speed. So what I mean by that is imagine you're jumping. You're fastest after you start the jump, not when you start the jump, right? After you start the jump, you're generating speed, and then you're at your fastest, and then you finally jump. Well, with the resistance band, the resistance is lowest at the bottom, highest at the top, matches perfectly with what you're trying to train when you're doing an explosive movement. So bands are just... They provide some unique value that other forms of exercise equipment don't. I mean, if you had told me this when I first started as a trainer with a Laft, now I place bands near the top of exercise equipment, and 100% not only can you do a full workout with resistance bands, you could do a full and super effective... I mean, our MAPS Anywhere program utilizes bands, and that program by itself is one of our more effective workout programs, just in general strength, muscle gain, fat loss, and metabolism boosting. So if you don't... So what I want to do is I want it to... Let's go through what we think are like our top 10 band exercises and put together kind of a generic routine for somebody who maybe doesn't have our MAPS Anywhere program or doesn't have one of our programs, but has a set of bands or has access to get a set of bands for very reasonably priced. So you can get a set of bands for under $100 and let's build a routine based off of exercises that we find are most valuable and then also targets the entire band. Right, and if you get bands, make sure they're good quality and they have attachments that allow you to put them in doorways and stuff like that so you can change angles when you're using the bands. I guess let's start with the lower body. We'll start with the legs for exercises. I really, really like bands on body weight hip thrusts. Two ways I like to use them, either as a way to strengthen abduction. So abduction means your knees come apart. I love it for that. So what you do is you put the bands around your legs so that you have to push your knees apart to maintain good positioning and then do your hip thrusts there. And what it does is it activates the muscles on the sides of your butt, the side glutes or the side butt while you're activating the glutes. And this makes the hip thrust, in my experience, correctional and more effective, especially when you're working the glutes and the hamstrings. We have to talk about why that's so important though, right? Because we always talk about squat as king and it's such a great exercise. One of the most common issues that you see when somebody squats is the knees tend to cave in. And a lot of that is because that glute knee, that side butt that Sal's referring to is just turned off for most people. Most people do not incorporate or engage it. It's very underdeveloped and then they go to do a squat and so the knee collapses in. So I love this exercise. It's already a great exercise for the glutes anyways, but then it's your force to engage that glute knee and train that, which is going to have a tremendous carryover when you go over to do body weight or barbell squats or band squats. And so I love this exercise, no matter what your goals are, I think everybody should incorporate. Well, and it's easier to implement. I think the other version is a little bit more tricky where I've seen people use it across their lap like basically replacing a barbell hip thrust but I mean, that's going to take a good setup for that where you kind of anchor it down with dumbbells or you have like there's actually machines they've built to do this, but I mean, to be able to push and get that kind of resistance is definitely beneficial as well. Yeah, no, and if you're going to do this type of hip thrust, the idea is to squeeze and connect when you're doing this. Right. So this isn't a heavy, you know, exercise. What you're trying to do is you're trying to push your knees apart just to activate the sides of the glutes. Then you come up and you squeeze the glutes as hard as you can, focus on the squeeze, then come down with control and then repeat. And the reason why I'm doing that first is because we're priming and turning on the glutes and the side glutes before we get to the next exercise with the bands which would be band squats. Now band squats, you get some pretty strong bands and you go slow and controlled. You can make these feel very, very difficult. Literally, you put the band around your feet and over your shoulders and just have some control and squat down slow, come up slow, squeeze the whole time. Watch what happens. I also like doing it in this order, right? Yes. So you start off by priming that glute mead and so you're already getting some glute activation before you go into the squat, which is, again, another common problem, right? There's all the other, the caving of the knees is one thing and then also people just feeling it in their glutes when they do squats. So so many people feel it in their quads. By us doing first the hip thrust before we go into this banded squat exercise, I've primed the glutes really well so that now when I go into the squat exercise I really feel it in my butt. I like the order that you've laid this out too. Yeah, we know what I like about banded squats too is it's a safer way to challenge your squat depth. So part of it's because the resistance is light at the bottom and harder at the top and so what you do is when you do these if you have issues with squat depth or issues with control or mobility this is a great exercise to work on that. So what I like to do with this is when I have the bands and I'll usually either hold them up with my hands near my shoulders or some people can even hook them over the shoulders. By the way, don't lift your feet up when you do this because you'll get a band right to the crotch. So make sure you take the bands down before you step off but once you're in position go down slow, stay tight the whole time. In other words, don't relax at the bottom. Stay tight, keep the chest up high and when you get to the bottom start testing the depth. Go a little bit lower than you normally do but try to stay connected. You're less likely to hurt yourself with this type of a squat challenging your depth than you would with say a barbell or dumbbell. I like to also add a little bit of power and explosivity with that move just in terms of being able to get the depth but now like the resistance isn't quite as demanding at the bottom with the rubber bands so now I can really drive up with acceleration and speed and so that's kind of a safer way to work too on activating that fast twitch muscle fiber. And I'll add to that. I would love to do like a isometric hold at the bottom and then go to an exposure. There you go. So you really want to progress this exercise without a lot of resistance. You can get a great workout by simply taking the, it doesn't even have to be a very hard band like people think oh I could squat 200 pounds this little wimpy band. Take that band just around like sowsing either holding it or over your shoulders. Go down into your deep squat. Hold that for an isometric hold for like five seconds and then do what Justin's saying come out of it explosively and I don't care how light of a band you have you'll get a phenomenal workout for that. It's way better than jump squats. Yeah, no the idea is to make it feel harder. That's the idea when you're doing this exercise. The next one is a band stiff legged deadlift Now there are some band exercises and there's a few of them in here that we're going to go through that actually sometimes prefer to the free weight or machine version of these. This is one of them. I love band stiff legged deadlifts. I like using a very heavy band for this reason being at the very top when you do a stiff legged deadlift with free weights it's easy. The top of a stiff legged deadlift is easy. The bottom is hard. With bands it's the reverse. When you come up it's hard to resist. So really squeeze your glutes and really activate your hamstrings and you can go pretty hard on these. Again, this is an exercise I still do. If I'm going to do a stiff legged deadlift there's a 50% chance I'm going to do it with a heavy band. Well at night too I think people haven't really found a lot of value at a deadlifting with the rubber band because you can adjust your resistance by grabbing the band a bit lower so you're not necessarily limited by you having handles at the top of it and there's too much length involved. So shorten the length, grab it a bit lower and drive up and it creates a whole new demand. Again, this is very similar to what I would do with this as the squat. I would get them in that stretched position to where their hips are hinged back and they're bent over and I would hold an isometric hold. I'd do a hold in that position so you have a little bit of attention from the band. You're in that stretched position. I'm teaching my client at that point. Can you feel it in your hamstrings? Can you feel in your glutes? Hold that for a few seconds. Now think about those muscles. Squeeze the butt and throw the hips forward and that will take that exercise again without having a ton of resistance and make it a phenomenal move. Now here's something else you could do with this because it's a band. You can attach the other end to change the angle of pull. So we're talking about the band being around your feet. You can put the band in front of you. So if you have an attachment like the rubber band, it's for example has this door attachment. I can put it in the door, put it low or put it at the bottom and now when I'm doing the stiff-legged deadlift the resistance is pulling away from me. So now when I come up at the top I have to maintain that squeeze at the very top. Here's another thing you can do if you want to get real creative. Let's say you have two bands. If you have two bands you can put one band around your waist, attach it behind you, one band around your feet. Now at the bottom it's hard and at the top you have to push it forward. Amphasizing, yeah, that hip thrust. This is what I mean by getting creative with bands. You can change the angles of pull and make the exercise feel different just by doing that. And if you're a lifter who's used to deadlifting 400 plus pounds, throw that on one leg and do exactly what you just said. One-legged. Yeah. You want to challenge the shit out of that exercise and you think that because you can deadlift a ton of weight with a barbell try doing that with a single leg deadlift. That's how I like to do it. I like to go one-legged and attach it kind of away from me. That's how I do that particular variation. Now the next exercise this would be for the chest, shoulders, triceps. Also, a lot of core is the banded push-ups. Now push-ups are an excellent, almost full-body exercise. A lot of people don't realize this but push-ups incorporate a lot of... I mean you're doing a plank. It's not just a chest exercise. No, you're doing a plank with this as well as you're doing kind of a bench press with your body. But if you put the bands around your shoulders and then around your hands now you have additional resistance for your upper body. It pulls your body down so now you're making your push-ups a low-rep exercise if you want. The squeeze at the top is excellent again because the band, the further it stretches out the harder it gets. This version of push-ups is my favorite version of push-ups. By the way, if push-ups are already hard for you to do off of your feet, try this because there's some value in just using the bands. It's not just making it more difficult. Again, it has to do... Some of it has to do with the strength curve. Try this, do them off your knees and then use the bands. So if you're like, you know what? Off of my feet is hard enough. I'll just stick to that. Go on your knees, put the bands around your shoulders around your hands. It's a different exercise when you use bands. It's a totally, totally different... Yeah, no, I really enjoy it. It provides a whole new type of resistance that you got to fight on the way up. And also really emphasizes that locked out sort of locking plank position. So it really highlights more intensity around the core being able to stabilize and keep your hips and everything intact. You can also do these elevated. So let's say you have a low bench or table. You can put the band around you, do push-ups off the table with a heavy band. Get the benefits of both the push-up and the strength curve that the band provides for an awesome exercise. Again, you can get real creative with a lot of these exercise by changing the angles. Next exercise, this is one of the ones I prefer to use bands with usually over cables. This is the one I used to do with clients all the time. This is a straight-arm pull-down with bands. I love bands on this because the bands, they're harder at the squeeze part of the rep, which is the most important part of a straight-arm pull-down. When you're doing a straight-arm pull-down, you're squeezing the lats and you're also simultaneously trying to bring the shoulders back. We don't want to keep the shoulders full. We want to squeeze the lats and bring the shoulders back because bands are more challenging as you stretch them out. It's that bottom position, that squeeze part, where the bands are going to be the most difficult, and that's exactly the part of that lift that you want to focus on the most. Start light with this one. This one is very deceiving on how challenging it can be because to hold your body in the proper posture to really work this properly and with the bands adding resistance as you come in can get challenging. If you may feel like, oh, I can do a lot more because as you start to pull down, it feels like it's hardly any resistance whatsoever. But because the lockout portion of this exercise is so important and how you do it is so important, I would prefer somebody do an isometric hold at the bottom with a lighter band than to go heavier just because they think they can. The natural tendency for your body is going to be to make it easier. So you're going to have to fight compensations that just inevitably your body is going to want to kind of hurl forward and you're going to want to adjust to make it a bit easier. You're going to bend your elbows slightly. Things are just going to happen so that most of this exercise is to fight all those urges and so going lighter does, you know, it make a lot more sense. No, if you do this right, this is a great posture exercise. If you do this wrong, it's a terrible posture exercise. That's one of those things. So at the bottom of the wrap when you pull the bands down to your waist, what you don't want to do is you don't want the shoulders to be forward. You want the shoulders pulled back the chest out, brace your core and then squeeze at the bottom. Now it's going to encourage good posture rather than encouraging bad posture. The next exercise, speaking of posture, one of my favorite posture exercise and this is a staple. I still do this like almost every day. I do this exercise in, I'd say half of my shoulder workouts, I do band pull apart. This is the second most utilized exercise. So the first one for me would be to assist clients with the pull ups. I would say I've used that more as a trainer than any other movement. Number two would be the band pull apart. I used to recommend this just for a little shoulder health. Well, yeah, not even just in a routine. In fact, it was, if I had, because almost every client, okay, it's rare. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times I didn't have somebody. I didn't need to address, you know, forward shoulder and forward head, right? Just, it's so common. It's so common in all of us. So something that I started to practice towards the back half of my career as a trainer is I would get just the really, the easiest band that they, that most band kits have. And I would give it to a client and say, listen, I want every hour while you're sitting at your desk on the computer to just get up and do three sets of 15 band pull apart. Then go ahead and go back to your work and do it to help counter what they are doing all day long. Because all day long, most of us are sitting or we're on computers and we have this forward posture. This is a great way to counter that. Yeah, how do we address, you know, like inevitable pains and things that are going to occur in your shoulders is to be able to make sure that everything's tracking properly. This is one of those things that, you know, back to Sal's analogy of like a sliding glass door. Your patterns every day are kind of taking you out of the track just very slightly. So it's crucial to kind of implement these types of movements and really think about incorporating that in your everyday activity so that way you can now kind of pull things back so we don't, it doesn't slip away from you to the point where it becomes a problem you're going to have an injury as a result. Yeah, side effect of band pull apart is great looking shoulders. It does work the rear delts. This is an area that people tend to neglect. Actually quite well. It helps you connect to them in that back tall squeeze position. So I remember when I started doing these regularly and I started doing them regularly for shoulder health. This was something I did just to improve my shoulder mobility. I noticed that my shoulders just looked rounder from doing this exercise. That takes us to the next one. Band upright rows. I really like band upright rows because the resistance is easy at the bottom. It's where people tend to script the most is at the bottom and it does encourage proper form. So with an upright rows can be a difficult exercise for some people. With an upright row you're pulling with your elbows and not with your hands and I know that sounds weird because you're holding on to the band or the barbell or whatever with your hands but in order to do it properly you have to pull with your elbows and because of the way bands work it tends to encourage that. So whenever I'm teaching an upright row to a client I go to bands before I go to... No, this is what a great point. So upright rows is like one of those exercises that depending on the trainer you're talking to would argue if it's a good exercise or bad. Oh yeah, there's controversy. And I can play either side, right? So if I'm a trainer who is against upright rows part of the reason why they are is because it promotes the forward shoulder. It promotes being rounded forward and then if people have weights that are pulling them in front of them and they do upright rows they just exaggerate a problem that they already have. But to Sal's point this is why bands are so awesome because when you pull up and back with the bands it forces you to work against that, right? If you're just pulling with gravity with a barbell or dumbbells it's a lot easier for you to kind of cheat the rep keep everything in front of you when you're pulling up and back and leading with the elbows with a band you're actually promoting better posture that way so it is a much better upright row in my opinion for most. It is, focus on the squeeze at the top come up nice and high keep the elbows high little higher than the hands and here's one where you can have fun with the attachment, right? So one of them the band is around your feet another one the band is slightly in front of you. Which I like that. That's the way I like to do it and it encourages exactly what we're talking about with that nice tall posture because you can't if it's attached in front of you it's going to naturally make you want to pull back so it's the row part of the upright row is getting emphasized which makes it a correctional exercise not just a shoulder developing exercise the next one I love also it's a band hammer curl this is one again another one I like to do with bands sometimes more than dumbbells because when you're gripping with a especially if you're not using the handle if you're grabbing just the band it forces you to squeeze the band clench the band yes that's my favorite yes it forces you to squeeze the band and hold it with a nice grip and what's great about a hammer curl is yes it does work the bicep and yes it works the brachialis which is a muscle underneath the bicep but it's also strengthening the wrists and forearms it's actually a phenomenal it's like a grip exercise it's awesome it is a phenomenal wrist and grip strengthening exercise and there's an epidemic of weak wrists and weak grips and people who work out in gyms and we try to compensate a lot of flappy wrists out there we try to compensate by using clubs and wrist wraps and all sort of stuff but when I do these band hammer curls with my clients they notice less wrist pain and then they're more stable when they're doing their other exercises and part of it is you're gripping the band itself so when you're doing the curl it's not like the dumbbells resting on top of your hand you have to keep a tight grip in order to do a hammer curl properly which makes the hammer curl more effective and this is why I know there's going to be somebody especially if it's a trainer why didn't you just do regular supinated bicep curls here that's better for your biceps and that's the case that's the argument is that that most people will benefit from this more than that most people know how to do a bicep curl most people do bicep curls but not a lot of people address wrist and hand strength which is something that we see a problem with most people it's the reason why that took the place of a traditional supinated bicep curl with the band yeah but don't feel bad you can definitely do a supinated curl with the band in fact if you do a supinated curl where the band is coming out of the pinky side of your hand and then you curl and supinate you actually provide resistance to the supinating part of the curl which is very unique there's really nothing else that does that where because your bicep doesn't just curl your arm it also twists your hand if it's coming out your pinky that's where the band's going and I twist I'm also not only doing resistance on the web I'm also resisting the supinating part so I'm glad you said that Adam supinated curls are also a bit special with bands a little bit unique next exercise this one's great overhead tricep extension overhead tricep extension here's the thing with it love that exercise whether you do it with dumbbells barbells cables or bands but bands again because they provide the most resistance as they're most stretched out it gives you a unique squeeze at the top normally you don't get that squeeze with the tricep extension unless you have to emphasize it yourself but with the band it's so hard at the very top that you're forced to emphasize that squeeze part I've also found that it helps promote better range of motion in my clients so I used to love they're more likely to go all the way down yes like how often did you and this is common especially with meet head guys when they do overhead tricep shoulder mobility they do overhead tricep extension and they get this heavy dumbbell and it's like this little tiny little pumping short and range of motion where they don't even break 90 degrees where that's part of the benefits of the overhead tricep extension is the stretched position that you put the tricep in that's what makes it unique and so great and a position that not a lot of people train I like the band for that reason because it helps promote that extra stretch for clients too now do you guys do this with both feet or do you do like a split stance in terms of like how you're going to set them up with stepping on top of the band so both work great here's the only thing I'll say about split stance do not take your foot off the band until you bring the band down yeah yeah well not on both cases yeah so you're going to notice too that the band might slip back and like if your heel raises it all that's like a propensity that you have it's going to come up and it's going to be disastrous so you just really have to make sure that your posture in an upright standing position is accounted for and also you're going to put yourself in a vulnerable position in your lower back I actually like this so you know at least with our bands right so rubber band it comes with this anchor point that you can anchor anywhere in a door at the bottom the side the top much better option I actually like this is for you at home people I like to anchor it at the bottom and then situate like your dinner table chair pull a chair sit down anchor at the bottom and get in a chair so you're supported and then grab it behind you and then do the overhead extension same here yeah same but isn't it funny how some exercises they look similar but some exercises just naturally have you emphasize certain portions of the rep or your form like we've talked about on the show how an incline barbell press naturally gets clients the one to pin their shoulders back and down which is harder to do on a flat bench when you do a flat bench you have to like really emphasize on incline it's just because of the incline and naturally puts you in that position the overhead tricep extension you're a hundred percent right Adam I almost never had to tell a client to go lower for whatever and I think it's because the resistance band is pulling easier at the way about people feel more comfortable going all the way down and they get a full range of motion the last thing with an overhead tricep extension because of the way the tricep attaches at the scapula one of the heads the long head of the tricep the big meaty part of the tricep is most activated with overhead exercises and it's most activated when it's stretched in overhead exercises so this type of an overhead tricep extension with the band it really does the best part of the overhead tricep extension which is emphasizing the stretch of the long head but then again because it's a band you're going to squeeze naturally at the top people are less likely to do short reps with bands it's pretty interesting now this last exercise is not just a great band exercise it's one of my top five favorite core exercises one of my stables and it's one of my top ways of doing a core exercise I prefer doing wood chops with bands over cables any day of the week and it's because they're smooth they're harder at the full twist and they allow me to do them a little bit more explosively which I feel is so much more functional way less clunky than even a cable which is something else I use a lot for these rotational type core exercises but yeah it's fantastic for that because you're just holding it in place too isometrically like you're going to notice like it's pulling you so you have to stabilize your body it just forces that anti-rotation which a lot of people don't even consider as a factor but that's something that you need to start with a solid base that you can anchor down can you anchor down your body properly this is going to really expose that and then go through a range of motion in the twist well I would make the case that this may be the most important exercise of all the ones we cover yeah I would agree there's a lot of different things that you can do we went through most of all the muscle groups that you to train the entire body here with bands but when I think about the things that most of my clients neglected and the things that they needed the most rotational and anti-rotational strength is probably the most neglected movement pattern in most routines even with good advanced trainers riding good programs we just fail to focus on this and so it's an area that even if I wasn't following a full band routine you would find me adding this in there so this is probably the third most used exercise that I've used as a personal trainer on a regular basis so even if I'm using barbells dumbbells you would find me adding a full band for this one and I've used this probably third most of all the movement here's how I like to do it I like to do the twisting the chop part a little explosive I stop when I get to the part where I'm at the end and then I control the way back and then I do it again nice slow control here's the other thing you want to do brace your core pull it in a little bit and squeeze your abs while you're doing this you're working the entire core in a very very functional way this exercise really developed through doing this exercise athletes this is a must and here's the thing again with the band you can do these with a downward angle you can do them with an upward angle or you could do them the traditional just completely to the side yeah and I mean you can also lock your hips in place so you're just working on that like that rotational aspect to it just completely in the trunk or you can add rotation in the hips with the movement which also applies a little bit more specifically to movements out on the field look if you want to get a good quality resistance bands you can check ours out so long as they're in stock they tend to sell out very quickly but we sell the rubber band it's brand of bands they're very high quality they don't snap they come with lots of varying degrees of resistance and attachment so you can do all the exercise that we talked about you can check them all out at maps bands.com that's M-A-P-S B-A-N D is a dog B-A-S.com you can also find all of us on Instagram you can find Doug at Mind Pump Doug Justin at Mind Pump Justin me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam the handsome guy at Mind Pump Adam what do you mean you don't think we're going to tell you if you're fat you know we're going to tell you if you look fat that's the problem I don't want that I want like someone like an honest opinion you want to comfort somebody who I could fire that's who I want you look gorgeous Adam actually you look perfect what about now what about now so why'd you ask that