Resistance bands are great for upping your usual workout routine. If you’re using your body weight as the source of resistance for your workouts, a resistance band will help add a challenge.
How Resistance Bands Build Strength
In order to build strength, you have to challenge your muscles with high levels of resistance or weights. When we do strengthen exercises, we create small tears in the fibers of the muscles and when the fibers are repaired, they increase the mass and size of the muscles.
To build strength through exercise, the exercises need to be consistent, challenging, and long-term. Resistance bands can come in handy because they can add an additional challenge to your already existing workout. For example, if you do body resistance exercises like push up, squats, lunges, etc., resistance bands can increase the challenge.
When you add resistance bands to your workout, it’s the equivalent of weight training. And it’s safer than actual weight lifting since you’re not adding the extra stress to the joint as weights would. This means a lower chance of injury. A win-win!
Arm Exercises with a Resistance Band
Push-Ups
You can use a resistance band to improve your push-up form and slowly increase your strength. This is helpful for beginners or those working on improving their arm strength.
For beginners or those improving their arm strength and who can’t perform a full push-up yet, you can use the resistance band across your arms so it will catch you and pushes your chest up. Watch our Instagram video to see us improve our push-ups!
As you get stronger, you’ll increase your resistance band weight until you can do it on your own. Our mini band set is the perfect way to improve your push-ups. It comes with 5 colors and 5 weights so you can increase your weight as you improve your push-up. We have it in two colors: Blue Ombré and Pink Ombré.
Pull Ups
Pull-ups target your lats and biceps and are a great foundational strength training exercise to build muscle. But let’s face it, pull-ups are hard when you’re first starting out. That’s where resistance bands can come in handy.
To use your resistance band, you’ll hang it through the bar so you can place your knee or feet on the resistance band. From there, you’ll do your pull-up as normal and the resistance band will help you bounce back up to the bar. As you get better, you can increase the weight of the resistance band so it becomes harder to do the pull-up. Then one day you’ll graduate to not using a resistance band at all!
Leg Exercises with a Resistance Band
Fire Hydrant
We all know what it looks like when a male dog lifts his leg to pee on something. That’s this leg exercise. This leg exercise targets the glutes, specifically the medius and minimus by resisting the band.
For this exercise, you’ll come to your hands and knees so hips are over the knees and shoulders over the wrists. You’ll place the resistance band above the knee and target the glutes by lifting your knee out to the side without shifting the hips.
Squats
Get stronger legs by adding a resistance band to your squats. For this one, you’ll place your resistance band above the knees. And that’s it! You’ll do your squat as you normally would with a lifted chest and driving the knees our to avoid them.
Check out our Instagram for more glute workout ideas!
Leg Lifts
Leg lifts are a type of hip abduction, meaning you’re moving the leg away from the midline of the body. It challenges your balance and the small muscles in your glutes. When you add a resistance band to this leg exercise, you’re also actively squeezing your thighs.
For leg lifts with resistance bands, you’ll place the band around your ankles and lift the leg away from the body. To really feel the muscles working, you can put your hands on your hips to feel the activation.
While you have the resistance band around your ankle, you can do the same exercise by kicking your foot behind you, instead of out to the side. If you need a substitute for squats, these kickbacks will target the same muscles in a squat.
Bridge
Bridge pose might be one you find in yoga, but with a resistance band, it’s a workout! Bridge works out your glutes and legs without a resistance band. With a resistance band, your balance and glutes will work extra hard to keep your legs lifted.
When you’re on the ground with the knees bent and stacked over the ankles, you’ll place the resistance band above the knees. From here you can pulse by lifting the hips to the ceiling and back to the started lifting position. The other option for movement is to kick a leg out with alternating leg raises. This will really test your balance as one leg will be responsible for holding your balance.
Using resistance bands in your workout will not only help you build strength, but it also safely offers a way to build strength. Besides strength, resistance bands can improve your athletic performance and core stabilization. So not only will you have strong legs and arms, your core will be too! Buy your resistance bands here.
Moveo resistance bands are built to last and are highly rated by our customers. Add resistance bands to your workout routine! But our resistance bands aren’t like the others with boring solid colors, ours are unique and fun! Stand out in the gym with these colorful resistance bands.
