Do Resistance Bands Build Muscle? Yes, But How Well?
Resistance bands are cheap, portable, and convenient. They challenge our muscles. What more do we need? There’s a whole grain of truth there. Resistance bands can stimulate muscle growth. Plenty of people get great results from training with them. You don’t need anything more.
But what if you’re trying to build muscle as quickly, efficiently, or painlessly as possible? Are resistance bands the best tool for that? That’s a different question. In that case, we need to compare resistance bands against the alternatives: bodyweight exercises, dumbbells, barbells, and exercise machines.
So, how do resistance bands compare to callisthenics and free weights? Let’s delve into it.
Introduction
Most beginners aren’t too thrilled about the idea of joining a gym. They’d much rather build muscle at home. Resistance bands are one of the most popular ways to do that. But why? Of all the ways to train at home, why resistance bands? Are they especially good for building muscle?
Some claim resistance bands are better for building muscle than free weights because of “variable resistance.” Elastic bands get progressively harder as your stretch them, creating a unique resistance curve. It’s what sets resistance bands apart from the cable machines you’d find at a gym. That raises a question. If variable resistance is good for building muscle, why do commercial gyms invest in equipment that provides the opposite resistance curve?
And why are free weights so popular? They’re bulkier and more expensive than resistance bands. If they’re worse for building muscle, why bother with them at all?
You Can Build Muscle With Anything
Before we dive into whether resistance bands are ideal for building muscle, it’s worth pointing out that we can build muscle in imperfect situations. You don’t need to build muscle in the “ideal” or “optimal” way.
If you can do these three things, you can build muscle:
- Eat enough calories to gain weight: the ideal rate of weight gain depends on how skinny you are, how new to lifting you are, how lean you are, and how aggressively you want to bulk. But the important thing is that you gain at least some weight on the scale each week.
- Eat enough protein to build muscle: about one gram of protein per pound bodyweight per day is a good rule of thumb. Fat and carbs are important and nutritious, too, but you probably already eat enough of them.
- Challenge your muscles. This signals your body to invest in muscle growth.
If you can do those three things, you can build muscle. You could build muscle stranded on a desert island with nothing but your body weight and a weight-gainer supplement. I’m also confident that you could clean your house with a toothbrush and some vinegar. There’s a difference between something being possible and something being easy.
Not everything needs to be optimal. I know people who have decently muscular physiques from swimming laps in a pool. Some people gain an abundance of muscle as a byproduct of becoming overweight. Other people have already built muscle and are just trying to maintain their size, strength, and health in an enjoyable way.
But I’m coming at this from the perspective of the skinny guy who was desperate to bulk up. When deciding what equipment to buy, I didn’t want to see a photo of a muscular fitness model holding resistance bands saying, “Anything is possible with hard work, sweat, and a credit card!” No, I wanted to know what the pros and cons were. I wanted to know how resistance bands compared to barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells.
Are Resistance Bands Good for Building Muscle?
Whether we’re using resistance bands or free weights, the same general principles of muscle growth still apply. We need adequate rest between sets so that we’re limited by the strength of our muscles rather than by our cardiovascular fitness. If our workout is a long circuit designed to leave us winded, that’s not hypertrophy training, that’s cardio. That disqualifies a lot of bodyweight workouts, resistance-band workouts, and even free-weight workouts, but it doesn’t mean the tools are inappropriate, just the training style.
Whether we’re using free weights or resistance bands, we still want to focus on the big compound lifts, add in some isolation lifts, lift with a large range of motion, bring our sets close to muscular failure, and do enough of those challenging sets each week. So let’s review these principles and how they apply to resistance bands.
The Problem of Variable Resistance
As a rough rule of thumb, lifting with a deep range of motion is good for building muscle. It forces our muscles to do more work, we stimulate a wider variety of muscle fibres, and we often engage more overall muscle mass. But there’s some nuance to it, too. Two specific parts of the range of motion are disproportionately important:
- The sticking point: our muscles only grow when we challenge them, and some parts of the range of motion are more challenging than others. The sticking point is the most challenging part of the range of motion. That’s where we tend to fail, and it’s also where we tend to stimulate the most muscle growth. For example, the sticking point of a squat is when our thighs are horizontal with the ground. If we squat to that point, we get most of the benefit of squatting, so it’s considered a “complete” squat. If we squat higher than that, it’s considered a “partial squat,” and we miss out on some muscle growth.
- The stretch at the bottom: the most important benefit of increasing our range of motion beyond the sticking point is that it allows us to get a loaded stretch on our muscles at the bottom of the lift. For example, if we squat even deeper, we’ll get an even better stretch on our quads, and we’ll stimulate even more muscle growth. This is probably why deep front squats and goblet squats stimulate just as much muscle growth as back squats, even though back squats are much heavier. This is also why seated hamstring curls, which put our hamstrings under a deeper stretch, build muscle faster than lying hamstring curls (study).
But how much does it matter? Are we talking about a 5% difference in muscle growth? 30%? 50%? This is where things get interesting. Let’s look at a meta-analysis of the relevant studies. Challenging our muscles in a stretched position stimulates 260% as much muscle growth as challenging them in a contracted position:
These findings have been confirmed by several recent muscle-building studies, too (Pedrosa, Maeo, Yanagisawa), with more coming out every month. All of them show that challenging our muscles at longer muscle lengths leads to greater muscle activation and 2–3x more muscle growth. This explains why deep squats, bench presses, Romanian deadlifts, and push-ups stimulate such tremendous amounts of muscle growth. They all challenge our muscles in a stretched position.
The next question is, why does challenging our muscles in a stretched position stimulate so much muscle growth? The main way we produce force with our muscles is by contracting them (active tension). But our muscles are like resistance bands. When we stretch them, they pull themselves back toward their resting length, creating passive tension.
When we contract our muscles as hard as possible while stretching them, we combine both active and passive tension. This puts more overall tension on our muscles. Tension is the main driver of muscle growth, so having more of it means more muscle growth.
Now, you might be thinking, what does this have to do with resistance bands? After all, nothing is stopping us from using a full range of motion with resistance bands, right? And if we use resistance bands properly, we can ensure tension on our muscles at the bottom of the range of motion.
The problem is resistance bands gradually apply more force the further we stretch them, making the bottom of the range of motion much easier than the top. We aren’t giving our muscles enough of a challenge at the bottom of the movement, so we aren’t getting the full benefit of training at longer muscle lengths.
Free Weight Strength Curves
“Variable resistance” is the term used to describe the resistance curve of resistance bands. To understand how that affects muscle growth, we can compare that resistance curve against the natural strength curves of our muscles to see how well they match up. If resistance bands are tough where we’re strong and loose where we’re weak, that’s a good match. But if they’re tough where we’re weak and loose where we’re strong, that’s a poor match.
If we look at the dumbbell curl, we see that we can work our biceps through a fairly complete range of motion. We don’t get a full stretch at the bottom, but our biceps are at least brought to their full resting length (or slightly beyond). But as discussed above, we also need to see if our muscles are being challenged throughout that range of motion.
The beginning of the lift is fairly easy, it gets harder in the middle (when our forearms are horizontal), and then the lift gets easier again. In that middle position, the weight is about 40% heavier, so most people will fail there. That’s the sticking point. However, we also need to factor in our internal leverage:
Those little blue lines represent the moment arms created by our muscle insertions and joint angles. That shows that our biceps have poor leverage at the start, we get stronger in the middle, and then our leverage gets worse again at the top.
I’m using loose numbers here, but in this example, our leverage is about 30% better at the sticking point. Most (but not all) of the resistance curve is cancelled out by our internal leverage. The dumbbell is light at the beginning and end of the lift because that’s where we’re weaker. The dumbbell is heaviest in the middle because that’s where we’re strongest.
Most free weight lifts are like bicep curls, with their resistance curves at least partially flattened by our natural strength curves. We’re strongest at the toughest part of the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift, too. This allows us to lift fairly heavy weights, and it means our muscles are challenged through most of the range of motion (including at the bottom, which is key).
Our bodies are built to lift free weights. Of course they are. We’ve been lifting things against gravity for millions of years.
Resistance Band Strength Curves
Okay, so what happens when we look at resistance bands? In this case, assuming we hook the bands under our feet, the line of pull is great. That slightly backward angle means that we can actually get a bit more of a stretch on our biceps in the bottom position and that the sticking point will shift a little bit lower. That’s good.
So at first glance, resistance-band curls appear to be better than dumbbell curls. But resistance bands are not the same as cables. Resistance bands have variable resistance. As we stretch resistance bands further, the load gets progressively heavier. The beginning is fairly easy. The band only truly challenges our muscles at the end. We’ve turned a full biceps curl into a partial biceps curl. And, worse, it’s the most important part of the range of motion that’s rendered most useless.
Now, there are a thousand caveats here. We could pre-load the resistance band with enough tension to fail at the beginning of the range of motion. We could attach the resistance band at different angles. We could even do several sets with varying degrees of tension so that we fail at varying parts of the range of motion. Or we could take the set long past failure, to the point where we can’t stretch the band a single inch. But none of that is ideal. Resistance bands still make it harder to build muscle.
But just to make sure, I also asked the hypertrophy researcher, Eric Helms, Ph.D. He said, “Not a lot of research on the topic, but I would agree with your general recommendations of free weights and machines for hypertrophy, with bands and bodyweight working in a pinch.”
Accommodating Resistance
Accommodating resistance is when we add resistance bands or chains to free-weight lifts, such as the barbell back squat, bench press, and deadlift. Sometimes it’s used as an example of how resistance bands can be good for gaining muscle size and strength, but it’s actually quite different. To understand why that is, we need to understand what it’s for and what it does.
Accommodating resistance originated in geared powerlifting, where lifters would compete in squat suits, bench press shirts, and knee wraps designed to give them extra strength at the bottom of their lifts.
For example, let’s consider adding resistance bands to a barbell squat. Powerlifters do everything they can to improve their squatting leverage: standing with a wider stance, sitting further back, and holding the barbell lower on their backs. This creates a squat with a shortened range of motion, and it makes the bottom of the lift very hard. The bottom being hard isn’t a problem for building muscle, but to win at their sport, they need to lift the most weight possible.
One way to make the bottom of a squat easier is to wear a squat suit that stretches out at the bottom, giving the hips a boost. Another trick is using knee wraps, which stretch out at the bottom, helping them spring back up. This helps to flatten the strength curve. The beginning of the lift is still the sticking point, but it’s a bit easier, so they’re able to lift a bit more weight.
But powerlifters wanted to lift a lot more weight, and as squat suits and knee wraps got thicker, the strength curve began to reverse. The beginning started to become the easier part of the lift, and the lockout started to get harder. That changes the type of strength a powerlifter needs.
Now, how can a geared powerlifter train their lockout strength? One option is to train in squat suits, bench shirts, and knee wraps. But those clothes are a pain to put on, and the training is rough to recover from. Fortunately, their weird strength curve can be mimicked by attaching bands (or chains) to a barbell. If the bands make the lift heaviest at the top, the powerlifter can focus on training their lockout strength.
Nowadays, raw powerlifting is more popular than geared powerlifting. It’s rare to see a powerlifter who wears knee wraps and a triple-ply squat suit. Unless someone plans on wearing gear, that style of accommodating resistance isn’t needed.
But then, a new idea started cropping up. Couldn’t we build more muscle if we made the entire range of motion equally challenging? That doesn’t seem to be the case. Recent research has shown that the deepest part of the range of motion is by far the most important. Making the other parts more challenging doesn’t seem to help.
Resistance Bands Without the Barbell
What if we remove the free weights entirely and squat with ONLY resistance bands? In that case, we’re making the resistance curve radically worse for stimulating muscle growth. Not that the lift becomes useless; it’s just that doing a regular squat with free weights would be much better.
Moreover, if we’re training to gain muscle size and general strength, shouldn’t be lifting like powerlifters. Instead of doing our squats with a wide stance and a shortened range of motion, probably better to do a deeper squat with the weight held in front of us. It reduces the amount of weight we can lift, yes, but it works our muscles through a longer range of motion, and it does a better job of bulking up our upper backs.
The sticking point of a squat is always when the thighs are horizontal. The front squat goes much deeper than that. This changes the strength curve. If we explode out of the hole, we can gather some momentum to help us drive through the sticking point. Plus, the tension on our upper backs comes from holding the weight in front of us, which is constant throughout the entire range of motion. The lockout is still the easiest part, so accommodating resistance might still help, but the strength curve is already a bit flatter.
This same general trend is true of the other big compound hypertrophy lifts. Powerlifters bench press with big arches, reducing the stretch on our chests at the bottom of the lift. That’s bad for building muscle, so when lifting for hypertrophy, we use a smaller arch and focus on getting a bigger stretch. This gives us a bench press with a flatter strength curve and thus diminishes the value of accommodating resistance. Not that it’s necessarily useless, mind you, just not all that important.
The Big Compound Lifts
Most of our muscle growth comes from doing the big compound lifts. Let’s review some examples of how using resistance bands change the dynamics of the big compound lifts.
Consider a front-loaded squat done with a barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells, where we squat down as deep as our hips and knees allow, getting a nice stretch on our quads. These have proven, time and time again, to be better for building our quads than partial squats, even though partial squats are twice as heavy. Why is that? It’s because with a partial squat, we’re cutting out the most important parts of the range of motion: the sticking point and the stretch.
Now consider what happens when we do bodyweight squats with resistance bands. In the bottom position, the resistance band is loose, so it’s very easy. Not good. As we get closer to the top of the range of motion, the resistance band is stretched, so the lift gets harder. This means we’re only truly challenging our quads at the top of the range of motion. That’s not great for building muscle. Better than nothing, for sure, but it might not be better than body weight. We may build more muscle by doing bodyweight single-leg squats, where the bottom is the heaviest part of the lift:
The same is true with push-ups. Yes, we can load it heavier with resistance bands, but they make the top of the lift disproportionately harder. This means we’re no longer challenging our chests in a stretched position. Rather, we’re challenging our triceps at the lockout. A better way to replace the bench press is with the deficit push-up, where we raise our hands up so that we get an even bigger stretch on our chests and make the bottom of the lift harder:
We start to run into problems when we get to back training. Most back lifts already have fairly poor strength curves. They’re easy at the bottom, hard at the top. That’s why it’s so hard to touch the barbell to our chest when rowing, and so hard to touch our chests to the bar when doing chin-ups. If we add resistance bands to these pulling movements, they become atrocious. Resistance-band rows are incredibly easy at the start and extremely difficult at the end. Getting a cheap chin-up bar that you can bolt onto a wall or hook onto a doorframe doesn’t completely solve the strength curve, but it’s much better.
Different Lines of Pull
One feature of resistance bands is that depending on where we anchor them, we can create different lines of pull. That’s the same advantage of using a cable machine, and it can definitely be handy. However, that’s usually accompanied by the statement that because free weights resist gravity, they only allow us to train with a single line of pull. That’s not true, and it’s easy to see why.
If we think of a dumbbell or barbell overhead press, it’s true that, yes, we’re just pressing the weight straight up. It’s a vertical press. So the advantage that bands offer is that we can anchor them to a wall or door frame and create a horizontal press, right? That’s true.
But we can change the line of pull by changing the angle of our torsos. That gives us a bench press, a floor press, or a push-up. These free-weight variations have better strength curves for gaining muscle size and strength.
If we think about back movements, it’s the same thing. Chin-ups are a vertical pull, yes, but that does not limit us. If we bend at the waist, we can do horizontal rows with a barbell or dumbbell. And again, the free-weight variation has a strength curve that’s better for building muscle.
This isn’t to say that resistance bands don’t offer any advantages. Being able to anchor the resistance bands in different positions can indeed allow us to get creative with our lifts. I think that’s one of the cooler things about them.
However, most of those movements have a dumbbell variation. Dumbbell pullovers can replace straight-arm lat pulldowns. Triceps pushdowns can be replaced with overhead triceps extensions. And in most of these cases, the free-weight versions do a better job of challenging our muscles in a stretched position, so they do a better job of stimulating muscle growth.
Mobility & General Strength
When I started seeing these recommendations for resistance bands popping up everywhere, I asked Marco his thoughts on using resistance bands to develop general strength and athleticism. (Marco has coached college, professional, and Olympic athletes. He’s studied under the top strength coaches in the world.
Marco told me, yes, we can build muscle with resistance bands, but it would be hard. We’d lose out on some general strength benefits. If someone had no equipment, he recommends bodyweight training instead. If they want something similar to resistance bands, they could get something without variable resistance, such as a TRX system or gymnastic rings.
There are a few reasons why free weights are so ubiquitous for helping guys get stronger and more athletic. One reason is that we stretch our muscles under load and then lift a weight through a large range of motion. This not only makes our muscles physically longer (which happens as we gain muscle) and able to stretch further (flexibility), but it also gives us strength through that complete range of motion (mobility). This makes strength and hypertrophy training great for improving our general strength and athleticism.
The problem with resistance bands is that we aren’t loading ourselves heavily in those stretched positions. That’s not only worse for stimulating muscle growth, it’s also worse for developing general strength and improving our mobility. After all, if the lift is easy at the bottom of the range of motion, then we aren’t developing as much mobility or strength there.
Mind you, any exercise can benefit us if we do it properly. Doing light exercise through a large range of motion still has many benefits. It’s just that if we have the choice, free weights are popular for strength and athletics training for a reason.
Improving Posture
Another great thing about lifting weights is, provided that we’re smart about it, it can be great for improving our posture. As with the above section, I don’t want to oversell the benefits of lifting weights or overstate the harms of having poor posture—plenty of people have poor posture and never appear to suffer from it.
Even so, I like how over the course of gaining fifty pounds of muscle, my back gradually straightened out, my gut stopped sticking out, and my head stopped jutting forward. Why did I get those postural improvements? Because when we deadlift, front squat, and even do biceps curls, our postural muscles need to hold us in the proper position, which strengthens our abs, obliques, spinal erectors and the myriad other muscles that hold us upright.
This may not be the case for everyone, but it seems we have poor posture because our postural muscles are too weak. When we strengthen those postural muscles, the problem fades.
A barbell is nice, but we don’t need one. If we have a reasonably heavy dumbbell or two, we can do all of those same movements, just in higher rep ranges or while training one limb at a time. For example, we can swap out heavy conventional deadlifts for split-stance Romanian deadlifts while holding a dumbbell in each hand:
Even though the dumbbell Romanian deadlift is quite a bit lighter than a barbell deadlift, our spinal erectors and other core muscles must work for twice as long, giving them a fairly good stimulus.
The next question, then, is whether resistance bands will give those same postural benefits. They might, but perhaps not to the same extent. With resistance bands, the lift is only heavy at the very top, often when the load on our spinal erectors is the lowest (as with the deadlift). Plus, most of the range of motion is easy on our postural muscles, meaning there’s less overall work done with every rep.
The Advantages of Resistance Bands
Accessibility & Affordability
There are a few obvious benefits to resistance bands. They’re cheaper and more portable than free weights, and they allow us to do a ton of different exercises from the comfort of our living rooms. This makes them a nice addition to a bodyweight workout routine. This doesn’t necessarily make them better than free weights, but it does make them better than nothing. And again, perfection isn’t needed to build muscle. If we challenge our muscles, they will grow.
Pump Training
Another thing that resistance bands are famous for is that they make it easy to do metabolite training. Metabolite training is when you lift in higher rep ranges (12–40 reps per set) while keeping constant tension on your muscles (often doing partial reps), using short rest times between sets. This floods our muscles with metabolite-filled blood, gives us a muscle “pump,” and increases our production of local growth factors and hormones (such as growth hormone).
Dr. Brad Schoenfeld proposed that metabolite “pump” training stimulates muscle growth via metabolic stress (study). The potency of that pathway has been questioned lately, but there’s no doubt that it can provoke muscle growth.
The Hormone Hypothesis
When discussing metabolite training, we should also talk about the hormone hypothesis. This is the idea that if we train in a way that increases our production of certain hormones, such as growth hormone, we can build muscle more quickly. Recent research shows that this probably isn’t the case. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between growth hormone and muscle growth, even when researchers give study participants extremely high doses.
Furthermore, doing heavier sets of 6–12 reps, easing tension between reps, and taking longer rest periods between sets seems to work just as well for building muscle—sometimes better (study).
Can Resistance Bands Stimulate MORE Muscle Growth?
Moving onto the more scrupulous claims, there’s one resistance band company claiming resistance bands stimulate THREE TIMES as much muscle growth as free weights. The first problem with that claim is that they reference a study on accommodating resistance, which is not the same thing as resistance-band training (as covered above). The bigger problem is that the study states: “while lean body mass was not significantly different between groups, both groups did significantly increase their lean body mass over the course of the study.”
The study proves the opposite point. It found that free weights stimulate muscle growth whether we add resistance bands.
Research Comparing Free Weights vs Resistance Bands
We have a few reasons to think resistance bands might not be ideal for building muscle. However, it’s hard to say any of this with certainty. Resistance bands don’t seem to have ever been considered very seriously for building muscle (outside of physiotherapy).
Most resistance-band research doesn’t relate to muscle growth. There’s research looking at accommodating resistance, where free weights are combined with resistance bands, but that’s entirely different—the vast majority of the load comes from the free weights. And there’s also EMG research looking into muscle activation with resistance bands versus free weights, but that’s useless here because EMG favours exercises that are harder at shorter muscle lengths, which isn’t ideal for building muscle. Finally, there are studies comparing resistance bands with isometric dumbbell lifts, but that’s not how people lift weights (because it’s not as good for building muscle).
Training with resistance bands feels harder. What’s interesting is that in a lot of these studies looking into resistance bands, the participants said that they needed to put in a lot more effort to stimulate their muscles with resistance bands. Maybe that’s because they’re less stable, or maybe it’s because of the unnatural strength curve, but the research does show that building muscle with resistance bands feels harder (study, study).
We also have some research showing that resistance bands aren’t as good at stimulating our prime movers. For example, in a bench press, resistance bands aren’t as good at stimulating our chests. We’ve already talked about why that might be. Our chests grow best when loaded in a stretched position, and resistance bands don’t do that. It’s our shoulders and triceps that wind up bearing more of the load.
Another thing that keeps coming up in the research is that resistance bands are inherently less stable. As a general rule of thumb, stable training is better for building muscle because it allows us to focus more on moving the weight and less on stabilizing it. Mind you, dumbbells demand more of our stabilizer muscles, too, and are just as good at stimulating muscle growth as barbells (article), so I’m not sure if this would actually have an impact on hypertrophy. Mind you, resistance bands are much less stable than dumbbells.
We know that free weights are great for building muscle, and we can say that with certainty—they’re the industry standard. There are also good reasons to think that resistance bands wouldn’t be as effective, but it’s hard to say how much or whether it matters.
The Best Resistance Bands for Building Muscle
Resistance bands may not be totally ideal for building muscle, but they’re quite convenient. Maybe you want to buy some anyway. There are a few different types of resistance bands, all somewhat similar. After all, they all have variable resistance, where the resistance increases the further you stretch them. Still, some bands are notably better than others.
The cheapest resistance bands tend to be tubes with handles at the ends. However, those resistance bands are known to snap, sending the handles flying and taking out eyes and TV screens. Most of us have a spare eye, but we don’t all have spare TV screens. Better to get the more durable looped bands.
The thicker looped bands can be used for accommodating resistance, assisted chin-ups, banded deadlifts, and other heavier movements. The lighter ones can be used for biceps curls, triceps extensions, lateral raises, and banded push-ups. Of these, I think Rogue’s Monster Bands are the best quality. These are the ones I got.
As a bonus, Rogue Fitness has other valuable home workout tools. They’ve got a parallette set for doing deficit push-ups, handstand push-ups, and dips, as well as a variety of pull-up bars and gymnastics rings that you can do chin-ups with. Their products aren’t cheap, but they’re great.
*These are affiliate links. But even before becoming an affiliate, I bought my entire barbell home gym from them. Rogue’s stuff is great.
With that said, you don’t need to get this specific brand of resistance band; just try to get this specific type of band. Look for the sturdy looped bands, as shown in the photo above. These are the same bands you’ll see from popular companies like UnderSun Fitness.
2023 Update: Biceps Growth
A new study by Pedrosa and colleagues found greater biceps growth when challenging the biceps at the bottom of the range of motion than at the top (study). This lines up with the evidence we covered earlier in the article. Again, this hints that resistance bands may not be ideal for stimulating muscle growth.
Conclusion
You can build muscle with resistance bands. If that’s all you have access to, you may as well take advantage of them. However, it’s quicker and easier to build muscle with free weights.
Alright, that’s it for now. If you want more muscle-building information, we have a free bulking newsletter for skinny guys. If you want a full foundational bulking program, including a 5-month full-body workout routine, diet guide, recipe book, and online coaching, check out our Bony to Beastly Bulking Program. Or, if you want a customizable intermediate bulking program, check out our Outlift Program.
Shane Duquette is the founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, each with millions of readers. He's a Certified Conditioning Coach (CCC), has gained 70 pounds, and has over a decade of experience helping more than 15,000 people build muscle. He also has a degree in fine arts, but those are inversely correlated with muscle growth.
Marco Walker-Ng is the founder and strength coach of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell. He's a certified trainer (PTS) and nutrition coach (PN) with a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences (BHSc) from the University of Ottawa. He has over 15 years of experience helping people gain muscle and strength, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
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Perfect timing with this article guys. I was asking myself the same questions lately. Thank you for the references too!
Our pleasure, man! I hope you’re doing well, all things considered 🙂
I do not agree. I am a 48 year old ex powerlifter. I use bands incorporated with Bulgarian bags, Power ropes & sandbags. You do not need free weights to build muscle. Bands twice a week, Bulgarian bag weighted push-ups with ropes & sand bag cleans works just fine. 6 to 7 sets of Giant super sets one day. Power ropes 10 30 seconds to 1 minute waves or power slams & sandbag cleans. Chose a weight you can do 6 to 10 sets of 10.
Correct. I have a BS in Exercise Science and have just read a recent book by Chris Beardsley on Hypertrophy to boot. When it comes to hypertrophy, we are looking at what happens at the fiber level and what stimulates growth is based upon the force -velocity relationship in which the slower the contraction (not purposefully) the more force the fiber produces. If you do a weight that’s 40-~85% of your 1RM, you’re able to stimulate growth.
What you’re looking for is fiber recruitment, doing the weight as fast as possible AND force production, which is getting to a point where you’ve fatigued the muscle so the velocity of the lift slows and the individual fiber produces much higher levels of force.
When it comes to strength curves, one has to remember to use the proper resistance. If I can curl 35, I set up my bands so that the BEGINNING of the pull is at 35 pounds (if I can’t do more than 4 reps, I change the resistance slightly).
All we are really going to have to play around with is HOW the hypertrophy takes place: are we going to see increases in muscle length or diameter?
In short: you have to stimulate the muscle properly at the fiber level. If you’re not doing that, free weights or whatever, you’re not going to see growth.
This is why doing optometric work doesn’t actually build muscle. Improper stimulation at the fiber level. Do all the jump squats you want, and you’ll get sore as all hell but the hypertrophy is minimal.
Hey Willie, thank you for the comment.
I haven’t seen the research, but it doesn’t surprise me that optometric work (where optometrists prescribe corrective lenses to help people fix deficiencies in their eyesight) doesn’t stimulate much muscle growth 😉
Recruiting our muscle fibres by lifting in a suitable rep range and taking our lifts close enough to failure is important, too, absolutely. That doesn’t really have anything to do with free weights versus resistance bands, though. Both can do that.
When we’re talking about strength curves, we aren’t talking about using the appropriate amount of weight, we’re talking about which part of the range of motion is most challenging. As discussed in the article, lifts that challenge our muscles in a stretched position stimulate more muscle growth than lifts that challenge our muscles in a contracted position, regardless of what percentage of our 1RM we use.
I do agree with you, though, that resistance bands can be used to build muscle. I think that part of the message got a bit lost in the article. I’m not saying they don’t stimulate muscle growth. They do. I’m just arguing that free weights stimulate even more muscle growth.
There really is no reason to believe they stimulate MORE muscle growth given rate coding, the size principle, the force-velocity relationship or what actually happens at the fiber level.
The strength curve is specifically about how we address sticking points and not about hypertrophy to the muscle at a fiber level, but how each strength curve affects HOW the muscle will find its particular growth pattern: flat, ascending, bell, descending. This is why we use various exercises to hit muscles at various angles to achieve growth throughout the muscle as a whole. Some can affect fiber recruitment differently, but when all else is similar in that starting resistance and curve are similar, the only true thing creating hypertrophy is stimulating reps.
When it comes to curves we have active and passive elements to exercise that affect how the muscle growth occurs but not the growth as a whole.
The major difference is confronting inertia and gravity at the beginning of a bell curve curl vs. simply elastic resistance hitting increasingly harder throughout the movement. This implies that the muscle grows differently and not that one elicits more growth.
Nobody would argue a partial range of motion brought close to failure at the right weight won’t elicit growth. It would only argue that growth would be different than free weights.
Much like machines result in different kinds of growth than free weights and cables do as well.
None of these methods are simply better for hypertrophy.
We DO see different amounts of growth when challenging our muscles at different parts of the range of motion, though. If we look at a systematic review of all 26 studies looking into this (as cited in the article), we see nearly three times as much muscle growth when challenging our muscles at longer muscle lengths.
There’s a mechanistic reason for it, too. The main driver of muscle growth is mechanical tension. When a muscle is stretched, there’s passive tension being added to active tension, meaning that there’s more overall mechanical tension. Having that higher peak amount of mechanical tension then stimulates more muscle growth.
“Lifts that challenge our muscles in a stretched position stimulate more muscle growth.”
With resistance bands, would starting from a position so that the bands are already stretched…so that the beginning of the positive motion is challenging, fix the problem?
That would challenge our muscles more in a stretched position, but then the problem is that we also want to lift through a large range of motion. Ideally, we’d have lifts that are hardest when our muscles are in a stretched position but that still allow us to lift through a full range of motion. Lifts like the front squat, bench press, and deadlift are great for that.
But it’s not the end of the world if the lift isn’t hardest in a stretched position. You can still build muscle with resistance bands. It may not be ideal, but it does still work 🙂
Some bodyweight exercises have great strength curves, too. You could supplement resistance-band training with deficit push-ups and chin-ups and whatnot.
FWIW, I was working out and making fantastically rapid progress with free weights; trip with the wife came about; I took resistance bands with me to try to not lose all I’d gained. I got some real nice ones, too, and made myself up the best routine I could using Google, YT, etc.
A month later, we got home, and I had become both weaker and skinnier, despite spending just as much (or *more*) time with the goddamn bands as with free weights.
Screw those things, man.
I hear ya. I had a similar experience. I bought resistance bands to add to my barbell home gym, thinking they’d be great for isolation lifts. I didn’t like them and couldn’t manage to get a good training stimulus. I wound up doing more bodyweight movements instead. I eventually bought some gymnastic rings and dumbbells to round out my barbell home gym.
If a training method isn’t good enough for me, it would feel bad to recommend it to others. If other people prefer bands, that’s great. I just want to be honest about my experience with them. I’d hate for a beginner to try bands, fail to get the results they want, and become frustrated, thinking it was their fault.
PLYOMETRIC work. I thought you might have gotten that point through context.
You can go through full ROM with weight that’s below threshold necessary and you won’t see any growth. Strength curve doesn’t matter in growth vs. non-growth but in what kind of growth you’d expect to see. Length or width? 😉
I hear ya. I was just kidding with you 🙂
What we both know is that ROM reflects in a specific kind of growth regionally in a muscle and not a dichotomy of growth vs. non-growth.
The mechanistic reason for it is that the fibers most stimulated result in the most growth. Hypertrophy is based on what happens at the fiber and not the muscle itself.
This is also why recent research shows some muscles may benefit from less than full ROM in regards to specific regional muscle hypertrophy.
Anyone still attempting to argue that one type of resistance is better for hypertrophy really don’t understand hypertrophy or what what causes it.
There’s recent research where a load cell is used to regulate resistance by bands comparatively in resistance training and showing hypertrophy being comparable: makes sense considering that resistance only has to meet a certain threshold to stimulate the proper fatigue to create full recruitment of high threshold motor units and to induce the force-velocity relationship needed to produce hypertrophy, Right? 😉
It’s really that simple.
I’d really wish more “fitness gurus” understood what happens at the fiber level to produce hypertrophy and stopped relying on guesses made around muscle damage and metabolic stress when looking at the reality of mechanical tension being THE driving factor AND WHY.
You seem to have hobbled together some ideas that don’t actually show a deeper understanding of the science, and if you’re going to keep this writing up, I’d suggest having an expert in the field edit and fact check your opinions.
I wish you the best in your journey, but would never advise anyone talking to those that understand the science to repeat what you’ve stood by, here.
I’m not arguing with you that mechanical tension is the main driver of muscle growth, but rather that the length-tension relationship factors into mechanical tension. When we challenge our muscles at greater muscle lengths, peak mechanical tension is greater, and so more muscle growth is stimulated. The referenced systematic review goes over 26 studies showing that to be the case. If you look at the differences in hypertrophy, challenging muscles at longer muscle lengths resulted in nearly 3x greater muscle growth.
Marco has a BHSc, is a fully certified strength coach, has interned under some of the top experts, has over a decade of experience helping thousands of people bulk up, including world-class athletes, such as our Canadian Olympic rugby team. Before we wrote this article, I asked him what he thought of resistance bands. He told me that they can work if that’s all someone has, but that they aren’t very effective, and he’d much rather use other methods to help people build muscle. If you look at the methods that other top strength coaches use, you’ll see that they primarily use free weights, too.
Just to make sure we weren’t totally off base, though, I also asked Greg Nuckols, MA, from Monthly Applications in Strength Sport (MASS). He confirmed that challenging our muscles in a stretched position seems to be better at stimulating muscle growth. Regarding resistance bands, he called their strength curves “wonky,” if I recall correctly, but said that they can be used to build muscle if nothing else is available. That’s the same stance we’re taking. I don’t think it’s all that controversial.
On that note, here’s a relevant quote from MASS, written by Greg Nuckols and reviewed by Eric Helms, PhD, Eric Trexler, PhD, and Mike Zourdos, PhD: “While active contractile tension of a muscle tends to be highest at around resting length, passive tension from non-contractile elements (the tendons and muscle fascia) increases as muscle length increases, such that total muscular tension is generally highest when muscles are in a stretched position. Tension primarily seems to matter for hypertrophy because tension is sensed at costameres (where muscles attach to the surrounding fascia), which activate a protein called focal adhesion kinase (FAK), which then triggers the mTOR pathway, which is primarily responsible for exercise-induced hypertrophic signaling. In exquisitely controlled rodent research (study), it’s been shown that tension itself, not just active tension generated by muscle contraction, is what kicks off this pathway. Thus, even though active tension drops off, the disproportionate increase in passive tension, which leads to more total tension, should also lead to more hypertrophic signaling.”
The main thing I asked Greg about (before writing this article) was if regional hypertrophy meant that there might be a benefit to challenging our muscles at a variety of different muscle lengths, such as choosing some exercises that challenge our muscles while stretched and others that challenge our muscles while contracted. He said that, no, there’s no evidence of that, and he’s skeptical that it would help. He thinks it’s better to focus on lifts that challenge our muscles at longer muscle lengths.
I wish you the best on your journey, too, man!
It never said that you *Needed Free weights* Nor did it apply as such. You need to read the entire article. It stated that you can build muscle using bands, and that if you incorporated them and enjoy them then that was fine. However it just educates on why free weights are a better option for the majority of times when trying to induce a hypertrophic stimulus. I.E from what we know from how muscle mass is formulated. It’s simple, we know that the stretch incorporated with load induces an incredible amount muscle growth and should be the standard, Most bands besides maybe reverse bands don’t allow this. And thats important for a lot of people to hear if they are interested in using bands is all.
How would you compare resistance bands with suspension straps regarding hypertrophy?
Hey Ron, that’s a good question.
What makes resistance bands unique is their resistance curve. Resistance bands have “variable resistance,” where the further you stretch the elastic, the more resistance they offer. This makes exercises gradually harder as you move through the range of motion. That’s bad for stimulating muscle growth. You’d build more muscle if the exercise were harder at the beginning of the range of motion.
Suspension straps aren’t elastic. The resistance isn’t variable. They don’t make exercises easier at the beginning or harder at the end. And that’s good! I think they’re a great tool. Marco has used TRX suspension straps with clients (along with weights, machines, cables, and everything else). My home gym has some gymnastic rings hooked up to suspension straps. I use them for chin-ups and inverted rows.
The downside to suspension straps is they aren’t ideal for every exercise. If you wanted to train at home with just one piece of equipment, you’d be better off buying adjustable dumbbells. They’re the most versatile.
If you’re choosing between suspension straps and resistance bands, though, I’d recommend suspension straps. They’re more than enough to get started, especially for upper-body training. Later, if you buy more equipment, you can fill out your home gym with some adjustable dumbbells.
I hope that helps. Good luck, man!
Hi Shane what do you think about systems like X3, which claims to have a lot of research behind it? Here’s a link to their science page, not sure I can post the link here but remove it if it’s an issue. It’s hard separating hype from reality so just curious on your take on it…
This is a neat question, yeah. This science page is weird, though.
The research there doesn’t say what it seems to be saying. The study he uses to prove that resistance bands are better than free weights is a study on accommodating resistance: adding resistance bands to free weights (as powerlifters often do). That absolutely works. The free weights make up the majority of the load, making the lift hard at the bottom of the range of motion. The bands kick in at the top, making the lockout hard as well. It’s a way of further flattening the resistance curve created by free weights. But if we remove the free weights, then we’re left with the resistance curve of just the bands, which is not good.
The next problem is that he claims that the study shows 3x the amount of muscle growth in the accommodating resistance group, but that’s not what the study says. It did find larger gains in strength from accommodating resistance, but there was no difference in muscle growth between the two groups. The conclusion of the study states: “while lean body mass was not significantly different between groups, both groups did significantly increase their lean body mass over the course of the study.”
Also, there are some other good studies looking at how accommodating resistance affects strength gains. If we look at them as a whole, they fail to show much benefit (or downside). When it comes to muscle growth, as with this study, it’s not even clear if accomodating resistance produces ANY extra muscle growth (although it might!). But again, that’s not what X3 is. Accommodating resistance is adding a light band to a heavy barbell, not adding a light bar to a heavy band.
Then he talks about electromyography (EMG) research, and this is admittedly not something I know a great deal about, but if I understand it correctly, EMG research runs into problems when comparing muscle activation at different muscle lengths. It gives higher readings when muscles are in shorter positions, which is where resistance bands are heaviest, but that’s a relatively unimportant part of the range of motion for stimulating muscle growth. For example, EMG research finds much higher glute activation in hip thrusts (hardest at the top), but squats produce much greater amounts of glute growth (hardest at the bottom/middle).
So, yeah, the X3 system would have all of the downsides mentioned in the article. What’s even weirder is that this guy claims that free weights are a bad way to build muscle, which is total nonsense. That’s not what the research shows, it’s not what the experts recommend, it’s not what bodybuilders (including natural bodybuilders) use to build muscle, that’s not how Olympic athletes lift, or professional athletes. It doesn’t make any sense.
But again, it’s not that resistance bands can’t stimulate muscle growth. They can. It’s just that free weights appear to do an even better job of it.
Also, take what I say here with a grain of salt. This is my first time looking into this. I didn’t look into it deeply.
I would take a deeper look then. If you understand the principles of GH and different forms of training that can cause larger dumps of GH (I.E. BFR training) there is definitely something to his methodology. Pro bodybuilders have been using BFR training for decades (even if they didn’t know why it worked so well). I have trained BFR and had amazing results. I just bought the X3 as a skeptic but am keeping an open mind. After doing a few of the workouts in get the same pump/burn I get while doing BFR. Not saying that means I will get a GH dump, but it sure feels like it.
For the record, I am not a proponent of band training, but I’m opened minded to anything. I think shooting down his website and product with a quick once over of the research is a bit of a jump. The idea that you could not build muscle with bands when they have the equivalency of a 450lb deadlift (elite band) for someone that is approximately 6′ is a bold statement.
6′ male
225lbs
9% bf
@spraggeth IG if you need to check. Only have a few videos posted though.
Hey Coty, I agree that people can build muscle with bands. I’m not trying to suggest that it’s impossible to build muscle with bands. Just that it’s easier to build muscle with free weights.
I also agree with you that blood flow restriction training (BFR) is a proven method with a lot of high-quality research to back it up. As an overall approach, it doesn’t work as well as regular training done with free weights, but it works well when done in combination with free weights (which is what most people do). It’s not magic, but it can be an effective part of a muscle-building plan, for sure.
Getting a pump can be good, yeah. Resistance bands can be good for that if you’re doing higher reps with constant tension. Free weights can be good for that, too, if you train with that same pump-oriented style. In either case, that can be a good way to finish a workout.
I’m not trying to shoot down a product. It could be that people really enjoy it. I think resistance training (and exercise in general) is great, and there’s no need for people to do it in a totally optimal way. I was just commenting on the claim that resistance bands allow us to build muscle three times faster than free weights, but the proof is a study showing that accommodating resistance DOESN’T cause extra muscle growth when compared with just free weights.
Plus, the study is on accommodating resistance, which involves getting most of the load from free weights anyway. Adding a band to a heavy deadlift makes it harder at the lockout so that the entire range of motion is challenging, which is either neutral (as this study suggests) or good (as future studies may show) for building muscle. But a resistance band is only challenging at the top, which is bad for stimulating muscle growth.
I was also challenging the claim that variable resistance is good for building muscle. I don’t think that’s the case, and I’ve explained my reasoning above.
Shane-
I really appreciate your approach in the way you look at this and have been trying to respond since you wrote me last. However, the website seems to be a bit laggy no matter the internet source that I try (fiber and mobile seem to have issues getting your site to load).
You are a little flawed in the way that you are approaching this because I think you are looking at this research incorrectly. For one, the research shows a much greater increase in the hormone response (GH, test, cortisol) with banded training as opposed to free weight only. I think we can both agree that would make that a positive for banded training. If we can’t agree on that then this conversation would have to be dead.
Second, your idea behind your logical approach to this is flawed as well. You are correct in stating that the movement when using free weight resistance (FWR) is harder it the mid-range movement. However, it isn’t due to the fact that you are using FW, it is due to the levers and the mechanical advantages that you are currently at (IE the weight is furthest from your body at mid-range). This does not change when doing banded curls, your lever is still at its least advantageous position at mid-range using bands. However, the difference being in FWR the rep gets easier once past the mid-range; in banded resistance the rep gets harder as the bands are pulled (the mechanical aspect does go in your favor however).
Third, you are not looking at the banded+FWR training research in the proper light. FWR training combined with banded resisted training (CR) is essentially the same as doing bands the whole time. For example, when doubling up the Elite band with the X3, it is around a 400ish-lb deadlift at the BOTTOM. This is identical to doing a 400lb FWR deadlift at the start. However, with the bands, it gets harder every inch that you go up. Your argument that a band is only difficult at the bottom is a highly flawed statement. The deadlift is hard from bottom to top with the elite (the others are not that difficult).
(Your website just crashed on me after trying to submit and I am having to retype the rest of this)
Fourth, it is widely accepted that eccentric muscle contractions cause a muscle to hypertrophy more than a concentric muscle contraction. Banded training is known to have a much greater eccentric contraction than that of a FWR training. That is all I will say on this.
I think if you take a step back and look at this completely objectively (hard to do when we are biased), you will see that banded training offers a lot advantages over that of FWR training. However, FWR training offers a ton of benefits over that of banded training. They both have a place. In my opinion, you will do significantly more with the X3 than you will with some kettlebells (I do both of these most days since the shelter-in-place).
I love FWR training. Nothing will ever have a place in my heart like it does. Bands do not make steel bend around me when I am trying to back squat a set at 585. They don’t make my shins bleed when PRing on DL (the X3 actually did once because I wasn’t used to training with it but it was coming down from OH press hahah).
I really appreciate you having a conversation and keeping a cool head with everyone when they are coming at you from all angles. I do agree with you that the dude selling is making some claims that are bit BS (traditional style workouts don’t gain muscle bwhahaha what?). Either way, I suggest you get one of these and try them out. It isn’t your typical TheraBand exercise band.
My pleasure, man! I write about this stuff because I love it, and I really enjoy having these conversations. I appreciate you taking the time to comment.
The site is loading slowly because this article started trending on Google Discover and a ton of people are all suddenly trying to load the article at once. I’m sorry for that. It’s going to clear up soon. It’s already gotten better.
You’re talking about the “hormone hypothesis” to muscle growth, where the idea is to train with higher reps, shorter rest times, and keep constant tension on our muscles. That was a really popular way of training for muscle growth up until about a decade ago, at which point evidence started coming out that growth hormone doesn’t cause muscle growth (study), and that longer rest periods between sets can improve muscle growth despite lowering the hormonal response to training (study). That doesn’t mean that training with higher reps, shorter rest periods, and constant tension is worse. Far from it. It’s still an effective way to train. But it’s not a better way to train. If anything, it might be slightly worse. The best approach, though, is probably to combine both styles of training, starting a workout with some heavier compound lifts and then finishing it off with some pump work.
I’m not sure why being able to train that way would be a positive for banded training, though. If you wanted that effect with free weights, you’d just lift in a way that keeps constant tension on the muscles (e.g avoiding the lockout), you’d lift in higher rep ranges, you’d shorten rest times, you might even use BFR. But the reason people don’t favour that type of training is that it isn’t necessarily better. It’s just one of several effective ways of building muscle, and it can be done with either free weights or resistance bands. But with free weights, you’d also be getting more mechanical tension on your muscles by challenging them in a more stretched position. Free weights are still better.
I don’t think I’m misunderstanding the role of lever lengths in determining the resistance curve of a lift. This article explains lever lengths with both text and by drawing diagrams, and I’ve linked out to two more in-depth articles I’ve written on how external moment arms affect the resistance curve of lifts, as well as how our internal moments somewhat cancel that out. As you’ve mentioned, though, resistance bands add a new variable to the mix: variable resistance. It makes the lifts easier at the beginning and harder at the end. Now, it’s not that we can’t put any tension on our muscles at the bottom of a lift, it’s that there’s less tension on our muscles at the bottom of the lift. It’s disproportionately easy compared to the end. That’s not ideal for building muscle. If anything, we want the opposite, where the lift is harder at the beginning (where our muscles are stretched).
Accommodating resistance is different from using resistance bands. With free weights, you’re correct that some lifts are easier near the lockout. That’s not true of the chin-up or row, but it’s true of the deadlift, squat, and bench press. For those lifts, some people like to add bands or chains to make the end of the lift a bit harder, flattening the strength curve. The goal is to make the lift equally challenging throughout. However, even then, relatively light resistance bands are used to make sure that the lift is still hard enough at the beginning to be good for stimulating muscle growth. The only people who use high amounts of band tension are geared powerlifters who are trying to train specifically for lifting in squat suits and bench shirts. Adding a little bit of tension from bands might help with building muscle, although so far there’s no evidence of that. But adding a lot of band tension makes the strength curve worse for gaining size and strength. If all we’re using are resistance bands, that would be even worse.
Eccentric training can stimulate muscle growth, yes. But again, that’s a whole different style of training. Our muscles are much stronger while lowering weights, and so we’d need to use much heavier weights with eccentric training—heavier than we’d be able to lift. For example, instead of doing barbell curls, we’d do power curls, where we thrust a too-heavy barbell up with our hips and then lower it down slowly. The reason it isn’t popular is that it causes absurd amounts of muscle damage. As an overall approach, it’s not actually better for building muscle. That’s why we choose weights that we’re strong enough to actually lift. Does lowering those weights challenge our muscles enough to provoke growth? Not really. But does that matter? Not really.
Now, this doesn’t mean that resistance bands can’t be useful or that we can’t build muscle with them. We totally can. But when compared against free weights, free weights are generally better for building muscle.
And again, I appreciate the comments, man. Thank you!
Hey Shane
Awesome article with a great update! It’s so useful to have the myth-busting and clarification. It really puts it into perspective.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for this, man! I just bought some bands and I’m wondering if I should swap them for dumbells.
What do you think about this guy who does X3 bar? His schtick is that you do reps until you can’t even move the bar anymore. You might do 8 at full range of motion, then 8 at partial range, then 8 at a third range. It’s all one set and completely fatigues the muscle. Does that seem kinda BS?
I think if you have bands you can find some fun stuff to do with them. If you have the option to swap them for dumbbells, I would, but you can absolutely still use them.
Have you tried them yet? How do you like them?
Regarding the X3 stuff, check out the comment above yours. It’s … weird. The science page (unless I’m sorely mistaken) seems to have some major mistakes. For example, the study he references to show that accommodating resistance produces 3x more muscle growth didn’t actually have those findings. The conclusion of the study states: “while lean body mass was not significantly different between groups, both groups did significantly increase their lean body mass over the course of the study.” But X3 isn’t accommodating resistance anyway. Accommodating resistance is effective, but it involves lifting free weights AND using bands. It’s when you add a chain to your barbell bench press.
I’m not sure if completely fatiguing the muscle like that is a good way to build muscle. It’s an interesting idea, but lifting to failure doesn’t produce more growth than stopping a rep shy, and it comes along with the downsides of producing a ton of extra fatigue and muscle damage. That approach sounds like the equivalent of doing a bunch of cheat reps—going BEYOND failure. But again, I’m not sure.
Finally, it makes me skeptical when one specific product claims to have the ultimate solution, especially when it goes against the overall body of evidence, the expert opinion, what all the best lifters do, and tradition.
But I’ll totally admit to having a bias towards the conventional. I want to do what has been proven to work. I want all the kinks already worked out. I like all the research to provide the ins and outs of how to min-max our training. I’m not a hypertrophy revolutionary.
Hey Shane, thanks for the thoughtful reply! What you’re saying makes a lot of sense.
After you mentioned that approach of failing at all different parts of the range of motion, I thought it was interesting, so I was thinking about it a little bit more.
If we look at a chin-up, we have an iffy strength curve where the lift is disproportionately hard at the very end, similar to resistance bands. To do a “complete” pull-up, we need to bring our chests all the way to the bar. However, when training for muscle growth, we usually want to push our sets a little further than that. We want to do an extra couple of reps. If our chin passes the bar, it counts. It’s a “chin-up,” after all. So I think that idea of doing a bit more work once we’ve failed at the very top of a lift does make sense in some cases. But this is a way of mitigating a small downside, not an advantage.
Plus, we can do this with any lift! We could squat higher and higher every rep, starting with deeps squats and ending with partial squats. Same with the bench press, starting from the chest and doing smaller and smaller partials. So, yeah, it is doing cheat reps. It’s just more similar to doing cheat reps on a chin-up or barbell row, where the top is the hardest.
Shane,
Thanks for the great article! This post doesn’t have anything to do with bands, other than I’ve found a way to not have to use them & thought I’d share for your readers that it applies to (limited space, funds, can’t find equipment right now, etc$
I live in apartment with limited space for equipment. I found that for $80 I could pick up a sandbag with multiple filler bags so I could start with my big compound lifts & take out weight as I progressed through the workout to smaller isolation lifts. It’s insane how much I’ve been able to do with this one piece of equipment.
Bands just don’t do it for me. Sure, they’ll stress the muscle, but it just doesn’t motivate me the way moving something heavy does.
Sure with the sandbag I can’t load it enough to do a heavy 3rep set or anything (cleaning & pressing that over my shoulders would be a no go, ha) but I can up my reps, focus on MMC, & do slow controlled reps working all those stabilizer muscles to combat the shifting sand. You can get these things up to 220lb!
Best solution I’ve been able to find to the current gym less situation. They are currently available, very economical, & don’t take up much space. Plus they work all those smaller muscles that may not get as much love. Most importantly I still get to do my big lifts (stiff leg DL, squats (front & back), rows, presses, cleans) I’ve found a way to work every muscle group & get a good pump.
That sounds like a sweet setup, man! It sounds like a pretty effective way to build muscle, too. And fun! I dig it 🙂
Thanks so much for publishing this. I was thinking about getting some resistance bands but this made me think twice. With that said, I live in a small apartment and don’t have the space for any of the equipment you recommended in your barbell home gym article. What kind of equipment would you recommend getting for guys who live in small urban apartments? I have a pullup bar and have been trying to get by with that plus situps, pushups, etc. Really hoping I can avoid losing my hard earned gains until my gym reopens. Thanks again!
Hey Robert,
Between a pull-up bar and push-ups, you’re already doing pretty well for upper body training. Add in some jump squats or single-legged squats and you’ve got a pretty good makeshift muscle-building workout.
If all you’re trying to do is maintain your gains while you wait for the gym to open back up, I think you’d be okay with what you have. You could make good progress on your chest by doing a few sets of deficit push-ups to failure a few times per week, you could do handstand or pike push-ups for your shoulders, chin-ups for your back and biceps, and crunches/hanging leg raises for your abs. I bet you’d be able to make good progress on all of those muscle groups.
With your legs, glutes, spinal erectors, traps, and some of the smaller muscle groups, you might just maintain or even lose a bit of muscle, but that’s not really much of a concern. Within a couple of weeks of being back at the gym, that muscle would spring right back.
If you want to go beyond just doing makeshift workouts, though, my recommendation would be to get a couple of kettlebells, a couple of dumbbells, or a pair of adjustable dumbbells. Again, it all depends on how much you want to spend and how permanent you want your home gym to be. Adjustable dumbbells are more expensive but allow you to do entire bulking programs without any real compromises.
When I made my own makeshift home gym, I decided to get kettlebells. Even cheap ones are very sturdy and comfortable to grip, so I found them more comfortable for goblet squats, overhead presses, rows, carries, and overhead triceps extensions. And then for my chest, I’d use them as handles for my deficit push-ups. Kettlebells aren’t totally ideal for some of the other lifts (such as curls), but they get the job done. And your pull-up bar will take care of your biceps anyway.
So I think the correct answer is to get some sort of adjustable dumbbell, but sometimes the cheaper ones can be rickety, so it really depends on how much you’re willing to spend and what quality you’d be satisfied with. So if I were in your position and was planning on eventually going back to the gym, I might get, say, a 25 and 50-pound kettlebell. (Back in the day, I got a 15, 35, 50, and 75-pounder, but I mainly used the 35 and 50.)
I really hope that helps. I’ll be going into more detail on this stuff in our next article, too.
Shane,
Thanks so much for the fast and detailed reply. The kind of personal attention that you and the other founders give to members is one of the reasons I’ve been a part of the B2B community for over five years.
Regarding my goals, the reason I originally said my goal was just to maintain is that I figured it would be nearly impossible to actually build muscle without access to a gym or gym equipment that won’t fit in my apartment. But if building muscle is relatively straightforward with just a pullup bar and a set of kettlebells, that absolutely changes things.
If you don’t mind, I have a couple follow up questions. First – are there any adjustable dumbbells you’d recommend? I don’t mind splurging on those if they’re going to be significantly more effective than getting a couple kettlebells. But if the difference is relatively minor, I think kettlebells will suffice until the gym reopens.
Also, do you have any suggestions for workout routines for this type of minimal home gym? I know you mentioned you’d be going into more detail in the next article, so it sounds like you might be addressing that soon.
Thanks again man! I really appreciate all the info.
My pleasure, Robert! Yeah, you can absolutely build muscle without access to a gym. Hell, you can even build muscle without any equipment whatsoever. It’s easier for some muscle groups than others, but now would be a great time to focus on your back and biceps with the chin-up bar, your chest and shoulders with push-us, your abs with hanging leg raises and crunches. If you decide to get kettlebells/dumbbells, it becomes even easier, and you’ll have a better time bulking up other muscles as well.
There are advantages to adjustable dumbbells, yeah. You can increase the load in small increments allowing you to lift in narrower rep ranges. That’s not needed to build muscle—progressively increasing rep ranges and training volume works, too—but it can make things a bit easier. Another advantage to dumbbells is that you can do lifts like dumbbell curls and wrist curls without the grips twisting in your hands. For arm training in general, I’d lean towards dumbbells. But the differences are indeed minor, and to be honest, I prefer kettlebells to all but the highest-end adjustable dumbbells (like BowFlex or IronMaster). Even cheap kettlebells are sturdy and feel nice in the hands, and they’re really comfortable for the compound movements: goblet squats, front squats, overhead presses, Romanian deadlifts, loaded carries, and so on.
When I had to train at home for a while, I got a couple of kettlebells, really enjoyed it, and made some good progress. Mind you, you could also make good progress with resistance bands, or even with bodyweight. Making progress doesn’t hinge on you getting free weights. It just makes it easier and more enjoyable.
Awesome, thanks Shane! I did a quick search for adjustable dumbbells and unfortunately it looks like most of the good brands are sold out. All I could find were some cheap looking off-brand ones that were still selling for over $500 for a pair. So I’ll probably stick with kettlebells until the gym reopens.
Also, does B2B have any plans to release a workout plan for guys with minimalist home gyms? It looks like no gyms will be open for at least a few more weeks so it would be great to make sure we’re getting the best use out of limited equipment. I know you guys are busy so I completely get it if you don’t have time but I’m sure a lot of your members would really appreciate it. Thanks again!
Yeah, man. I hear ya. That’s important. We’ve already got a minimalist home gym plan up in the member community. Check out the “How to Train During a Pandemic” thread. And much more is to come 🙂
If that thread doesn’t answer all of your questions, just make a post there and Marco, SteveM, and I can help you figure it out 🙂
I read through the thread you suggested and it seems like a great place to start. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I’m looking forward to seeing what else you guys come up with for home gym routines!
This seems like a one sided argument. You can definitely build muscle with bands and work a lot of muscles that dumbbells wouldn’t touch with the negative and extra resistance at the top. Resistance bands will get you more ripped but maybe not as much mass as lifting for 1-5 reps with heavy weight. Seems like more research is needed especially for specific goals.
Hey Kevin, I’m sorry if I didn’t communicate this properly, but I totally agree that people can build muscle with resistance bands. They’ve got a funny strength curve, and I think free weights are an easier way to build muscle, but resistance bands are still viable, and if you prefer them, sweet.
I’m confused by your second point. What are the muscles that you can’t build with free weights? And why would that be the case?
I wasn’t trying to argue that heavy strength training was better. Doing sets of 1–5 reps isn’t very good for building muscle, either. As with resistance bands, it’s certainly possible to build muscle that way, but it’s much harder. If I recall correctly, Schoenfeld compared a group doing 7 sets of 3 reps against a group doing 3 sets of 10 reps. They both built the same amount of muscle, but the 10-rep group finished their workouts in fifteen minutes feeling fresh, whereas the 3-rep group took 90 minutes to finish their workouts and felt wrecked by the end of the study. So if I had to guess, I suspect that the guy doing sets of 10 reps with resistance bands would be able to build muscle more easily than the guy doing 3-rep sets with a heavy barbell. (Not that 10 reps is a magic number or anything, but it’s within that 6–20 range that makes it easiest to build muscle for most lifts.)
If I understand what you’re saying, getting ripped (lean?) versus gaining mass (bulking?) is mainly a difference in calorie intake. To lose fat, eat a low enough amount of calories that you lose weight. To build muscle, eat enough calories that you gain weight. Both could be done with either resistance bands or free weights. Or am I misunderstanding you?
Thanks for clarifying. In opinion resistance bands requires more of a dynamic strength squeeze as opposed to free weights. Gravity also has to be taken into account where you use stabilizing muscles and contestant tension with bands where free weights there is not much negative benefit unless purposeful in working that. Thanks for clarifying and bringing knowledge to my ignorance
My pleasure, Kevin! It’s true that resistance bands give more of a squeeze at the top of the lift. That can be good for getting a muscle pump, and that’s not without value. However, free weights can do that, too, but they also allow us to lift heavier weights with a more challenging overall range of motion, which should, in theory, stimulate at least a bit more muscle growth. I don’t want to overstate these differences, though. We won’t know for sure until more research comes out.
Gravity plays a bigger role when we’re lifting free weights. With bands, we’re mostly pushing against the tension of the band. With free weights, we’re mainly lifting against gravity. I’m not sure this matters for muscle growth aside from free weights having a more natural strength curve, though.
Building stabilizer muscle strength is definitely a nice feature of bands, but again, the same is true with free weights. Furthermore, since free weights are more similar to what we lift in day-to-day life, especially considering the strength curve, I’d expect them to translate to better general strength. Again, though, I’m not sure how big that effect would be. It may not matter.
I’m confused,why is it that the inventors of bodylastics and TA2 have proven that you can build a great body with using just resistance bands? Also Jim Stoppani who’s well respected in the science of bodybuilding over the years is a strong proponent of using resistance bands only to build serious muscle.
I agree with this. To me bands are just as beneficial however not as sexy as the free weights in the gym. Bands got a bad rap somewhere as being less beneficial without the science. However now we have an article addressing the science which I believe has flaws in interpreting gravity and tension. Hmmmmm
I think it’s clear why people who invented a particular product might be interesting in showing the benefits of their product. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, but it’s not an unbiased source of information. I’m not super familiar with Jim Stoppani, but he’s not one of the lead hypertrophy researchers. Again, not there’s anything wrong with that. However, Dr Brad Schoenfeld, the leading hypertrophy researcher in the field, has called Stoppani’s ads “charlatanism.”
This is such an eye opening Shane so thanks for the article.
I have bought a resistance band but it’s taking forever to arrive but have resulted into doing 500 plus pushups a day and just mocking up some water bottles for the free weights.
I intend to use the resistance bands for the time being as it’s the only alternative available for me. Thanks once again.
Hey Justus, that sounds like a great plan! I think resistance bands are a cheap and effective way to add some variety to your home workouts. Even if the strength curve isn’t as good as with free weights, they can still work quite well.
Push-ups are about as good as it gets for building muscle, especially if you raise your hands up a bit (on a couple of books, say) to get an even bigger stretch on your chest at the bottom of the lift. If you keep up with that push-up routine, you should be able to make killer progress on your chest and shoulders. And adding in some resistance band work will only make your progress all the better 🙂
This is very one sided, it’s simply they do different things in an ideal world you would incorporate both, which is what I do.
The best advice is try it and see, bands aren’t that expensive so it’s worth the investment in my opinion.
Hey Gavin, I’m sorry if the article seems one-sided. I tried to mention in every section that we can indeed build muscle resistance bands, just that it’s probably a bit easier with free weights. I wasn’t trying to make it sound like it’d be a bad idea to get resistance bands, or that if you prefer training with them, that it’s not a valid way of building muscle. You can absolutely build muscle with them, they’re cheap and portable, and some people prefer them.
That’s a really interesting idea that you’re bringing up, too. Is it better to incorporate a few different lifts with different strength curves into our bulking routines? Would that yield more muscle growth than simply choosing lifts with better strength curves? For example, if we combine preacher curls, which work our biceps hardest in a stretched position, with resistance-band curls, which works our biceps hardest in a contracted position, will we stimulate extra muscle growth than doing just preacher curls?
One of the researchers who’s been looking into strength curves recently is Greg Nuckols. He’s been reviewing all the studies on strength curves and accommodating resistance for Monthly Applications in Strength Sport. I asked him about that idea and he said that we’d likely build more muscle by focusing only on the lifts that challenge our muscles in a stretched position. He’s guessing that the lifts that work our muscles in a contracted position just aren’t as effective for building muscle, even when combined with lifts that work the stretched position.
Now, that isn’t to say that using resistance bands for some lifts is a bad idea. That’s not to say that resistance bands aren’t a useful tool to have around, either. They can allow us to do a wider variety of lifts, and I’m sure there are some good uses for them even when free weights are available 🙂
Very informative and honest article.
I’ve been training with resistance bands for last 8 years for personal reasons. Before that, I was well trained with free weights and weight machines at a gym( had been a gym gore for 15 yrs ). I lost much mass over the time I used bands only. I’ve used all kinds of training techniques but still lost muscle mass.
Those band sellers who have videos on YouTube, if you watch them, mostly perform metabolic types of training. Yet they claim that builds ‘ extreme’ muscle. ( Watch bodylastics videos and Dave, the bandman videos). If the circuit training ( bandman’s training techniques most of the time ) and high rep ( we are talking 30-40 reps like in bodylastics videos) truly build ‘extreme’ muscles as they suggest, everyone would have huge mass on their bodies.
The author nailed it on science part with resistance bands. Beginning of any movement has to be loaded to stimulate muscle. That’s where you feel most ‘ difficulty’ when you strength train. With bands, that part of any given movement is the easiest part. You make that part hard like many blind and inexperienced band supporters suggest, then you never can complete the movement as the resistance increases too much halfway through, hence effectively( or ineffectively in this context) removing the benefit of having the complete range of motion.
Bands can provide excellent conditioning training. No doubt. As for muscle building, if you are beginner, you could get that beginner’ gain but after that, you will have load muscles from the beginning to the end in a movement.
It never ceases to amaze me about how uninformed many are when they say that bands provide constant tension. Really?? Try to do a set of shoulder press with dumbbells and then do with bands. See which gives the feel of ‘ constant tension ‘.
Don’t fall for the sales pitch and bad information circulating on internet about bands.
It’s good if all you can use to get in shape. For muscle building, stick with something heavy. Heavy that is from the beginning to the end.
Hey Regjoe, yeah, that’s a great way of putting it.
You’re making a good point. It’s weird how as soon as people move away from free weights, they throw out all the principles of hypertrophy training. If we’re trying to build muscle, it doesn’t matter whether we’re training with barbells, dumbbells, or resistance bands, we still need to focus on gaining strength and work capacity in our muscles, not just on fitness, conditioning, and pump work. If our cardiovascular system is the limiting factor, then it’s our cardiovascular system that will see the most robust adaptations. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s great. But it’s not going to be as effective for building muscle.
As far as gaining muscle with resistance bands goes, if you’ve built a lot of muscle over a long lifting career, it might be hard to maintain your size and strength with just bands. I’ve seen a number of the more advanced powerlifters and bodybuilders worrying about that if they can’t get back to the gym within the next couple of months. Even then, though, if all you have access to is bands and bodyweight training, that’s still so, so much better than doing nothing at all. Even if it’s hard to maintain peak size and strength, band training can still allow us to be muscular, strong, and healthy.
Mind you, I think for a lot of us, we’d be able to maintain our muscle mass or even make progress with bands and bodyweight training, especially in some muscle groups, such as our chests and shoulders. Free weights would just make it easier.
Bands don’t put on muscle the same way weights do.
Show me one bodybuilder who built their physique through bands exclusively and I’ll eat my words but I won’t have to.
Why, because no bodybuilder ever did.
Go to Undersun Fitness on Instagram he’ll prove your wrong.
As per Doug Brignole: “Elastic bands are convenient, of course. They are light-weight and very portable, so they allow a person to do a type of resistance exercise wherever they happen to be. However, they are NOT ideal from the perspective of muscle development.
Muscles have a “strength curve” which usually allows them to be stronger when they are elongated, and LESS strong when they are contracted (shortened). So, the ideal resistance curve of an exercise would accommodate the strength curve of the muscle. It would provide MORE resistance when the muscle is elongated, and LESS resistance when the muscle is contracted. Elastic bands do the opposite. They load the muscle less when the muscle is elongated (i.e. stronger), because the elastic band has not yet been stretched. Then, they load the muscle more as the muscle is shortened (i.e. weaker) because the band is increasing its length and tension.
This is an unfortunate aspect of using elastic bands as the source of resistance. This “backward” resistance curve (regardless of angle) is less than optimally productive for building muscle, and is also LESS comfortable, to a degree. Using elastic bands tends to leave you wanting more resistance where you’re stronger (in the early phase of the range of motion), and wanting LESS resistance where you’re weaker (in the latter phase of the range of motion).
Nevertheless, it’s important for us to understand the factors involved in evaluating the resistance curve of elastic bands, as they do represent one type of resistance exercise.”
That’s correct, yes 🙂
Hey Miggy, I disagree. This article is based on the latest research.
Plus, James Grage of Undersun Fitness says that he built his muscle with dumbbells. Here’s a quote from the Undersun website: “The foundation for his success was built with a pair of dumbbells, that he got for Christmas at the young age of 15.”
Finally, I’m not trying to saying that people can’t build muscle with resistance bands, just that free weights tend make it easier. If you see someone who has an impressive physique built with resistance bands, that doesn’t disprove the idea that free weights make it easier to build muscle. And even then, most muscular people tend to build their muscle with free weights anyway.
Miggy, he was a traditional weightlifting bodybuilder long before he went to bands and began selling his own line of resistance bands.
I do not agree. I am a 48 year old ex powerlifter. I use bands incorporated with Bulgarian bags, Power ropes & sandbags. You do not need free weights to build muscle. Bands twice a week, Bulgarian bag weighted push-ups with ropes & sand bag cleans works just fine. 6 to 7 sets of Giant super sets one day. Power ropes 10 30 seconds to 1 minute waves or power slams & sandbag cleans. Chose a weight you can do 6 to 10 sets of 10.
Hey Tom, thanks for the comment. I tried to make it clear that we can indeed build muscle with resistance bands. And I know that some people enjoy it, especially given how convenient it is. That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the best way to train for muscle hypertrophy, though. What is it that you disagree with?
That’s similar to how I train: resistance bands; sandbags; kettlebell and bodyweight.
I’m 50 this year. I ditched free weights when I took up grappling. I needed the body to work as a unit. I’d only use static lifts to work on a weak or injured area. Resistance bands emulate a person pulling against you which dead weights don’t.
Daud, that’s an interesting point about resistance bands being more similar to grappling. I hadn’t heard that. For what it’s worth, Dr Mike Israetel is big into martial arts, with his focus being on BJJ, if I recall correctly. He’s one of the guys saying that free weights are far more effective than resistance bands for building muscle. I haven’t heard him comment on how that transfers to grappling, though.
Great article, and exactly what I’ve been thinking about for weeks.
Any thoughts on the door gyms that are just a more sophisticated band system, like Body by Jake’s Tower system?
Hey Jerry, yeah, okay, I just watched a video of someone going through one of the official workouts using the Body by Jake Tower System. The resistance band and pulley system would have the same strength curve as regular resistance bands, it’s just got a different way of anchoring the bands and adjusting the tension. It seems like more of a system for doing specific general fitness workouts, sort of like P90X or Insanity. I’d guess that the less sophisticated resistance bands would be easier to build muscle with.
Resistance bands provide more resistance through the entire range of motion. This is not the same for free weights. I was a competitive raw bench pressure for years, don’t misunderstand, I loved throwing 300 plus pounds off my chest…Ego boost. But, I find because of the full range of tension resistance bands provide, I am still able to add muscle. At my age, it allows my joints to feel less pain & allows me to recover faster. Respectfully, Tom.
Hey Tom, that’s awesome! A 300-pound bench press is sweet! It’s great that you’re keeping up with resistance training as you get older, too. I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t use resistance bands or anything. Some people like them and that’s awesome. The important thing is to exercise, you know?
As a general rule, free weights have bell-shaped strength curves where the lifts are hardest in the middle. That’s true with the barbell curl, a deep squat, the bench press, the conventional deadlift. The lift is challenging at the bottom, hardest in the middle, easier at the top. That’s good for building muscle.
With resistance bands, the lift is easiest at the bottom, hardest at the top. It’s not providing more resistance throughout the range of motion, it’s just providing more resistance at the top. But if we’re trying to build muscle, it’s better to have more of the resistance at the bottom.
That’s not to say that resistance bands are bad or that we can’t build muscle with them. Just that the variable resistance is a disadvantage. I hope that makes sense.
Great great article however, does the question change when you consider using suspension training (TRX)?
Hey Ron, yeah, great question!
With free weights and bodyweight exercises, gravity is providing constant resistance, and so the strength curve is determined by our lever lengths (external moments), internal leverage (internal moments), and how stretched our muscles are (length-tension relationship). What makes resistance bands unique is that they add variable resistance into the mix, where the further the bands are stretched, the more force they exert. This almost always makes a lift disproportionately hard at the end of the range of motion, which isn’t ideal for gaining muscle size or strength. That’s the problem of variable resistance.
With suspension training (like TRX), we’re lifting against gravity, and there’s no variable resistance. However, we can set up at various angles so that we aren’t just pulling straight up or down. That can change the strength curve, for sure, but it’s not always going to be making the lift hardest at the very end. In some cases, it might even improve the strength curve. For example, it’s possible to set up bodyweight rows with a TRX machine so that they’re easier at the end.
For another example, doing push-ups with resistance bands shifts the emphasis away from the chest towards the triceps. But with a TRX suspension trainer, the chest would need to work extra hard to keep the handles from flying apart. It become more like a dumbbell bench press. And again, that can be an advantage.
Mind you, I don’t have a lot of experience with TRX suspension trainers, and I don’t know how versatile they are. I’m not sure they’d be great for training the legs, say, or the shoulders, or for doing curls. They’re one of those tools that can be handy to have around, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to do an entire workout with them. (The same can be said of a chin-up bar.)
If it were me, I’d still lean towards getting free weights first. But a suspension trainer is one of those tools where even if you have free weights and a chin-up bar, you might still use it for some lifts. (I’ve seen Marco use TRX suspensions trainers with clients either to progress them towards chin-ups or as a good horizontal row variation.)
Great article. As you said, you can build muscle with free weights, bodyweight, and yes bands. I use a combo and have had great results.
I want to take issue with one of the main premises of your argument though: you claim much of muscle building comes when loading the stretch position. It is something i heard before and have always thought this sounded like “bro-science”.
You reference this literature review: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32030125
However, that review does not study “stretch” it studied partial versus full range of motion which is very different especially since “full range” itself is contested.
Any thoughts?
Hey Barry, thank you!
I totally agree that it’s not about the range of motion, it’s at which point in the range of motion our muscles are most challenged—the strength curve.
I suppose it does sound like bro science, yeah, but sometimes the methods bodybuilders use to help them build muscle become popular because they work. That’s where research can be most useful—to test ideas that appear to work in practice.
In the section on variable resistance, we go over the results of this meta-analysis (a review of all relevant studies). It shows that challenging our muscles at longer (more stretched) lengths yields nearly three times as much muscle growth as challenging our muscles at shorter (more contracted) lengths.
We also have a mechanistic explanation for why challenging our muscles at longer lengths is so effective for stimulating muscle growth. Muscle growth is stimulated via mechanical tension, and when our muscles are stretched, this adds extra passive tension. That means that when we challenge our muscles in a stretched position, overall mechanical tension on those muscles is higher, increasing the hypertrophy stimulus.
Great article, but X3 bar is not weird. It works great! Don’t take my word for it. Check the FB group of other X3 bar owners. I had my doubts, but finally jump in and boy, what an experience. Combined with bodyweight, it’s the best of both worlds. The platform and the bar makes all the difference. It’s not as much about bands, it’s about clever variable resistance.
I’m glad you like it, Jan. That’s sweet 🙂
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that people shouldn’t use it or that it’s bad or anything. I was just saying that the variable resistance from bands isn’t ideal for building muscle and the claims on their science page are incorrect. But if you love it, go for it. You can still make progress, improve your health, and build a rad physique 🙂
Are we talking about pure muscle mass increases, or are we taking into account mass and performance?
I am a triathlete between 170 to 175 pounds. I do not do very much free weight training except during the winter. I mostly do resistance band and body weight exercises. Yet I a can out squat and bench a lot of bigger dudes. I think it depends on your goals.
This article is about gaining muscle mass, but performance increases are better when challenging our muscles in a stretched position as well. For example, this meta-analysis found that working our muscles at longer muscle lengths was better for improving general strength and athletic performance. Resistance bands are easier at longer muscle lengths, harder at shorter muscle lengths, which is the opposite of what we want. So when training for performance, better to use free weights. And that’s what we see in practice, too. The vast majority of athletes train with free weights, cables, and machines rather than with resistance bands, even though resistance bands are cheaper and more convenient.
Thats what I figured. I was first wonder about the basis for the discussions. I was gathering most were talking about mass more than performance. Most studies with show that bands and free weights are equivalent or close to equivalent for performance. I will do free weights in the winter and mantanice phases. One can find free weight sets for not that much online then all you need is a bench. You can put together a small home work out set up for less than what most pay over time for there iphone. But people these days do not put value ion their health.
@John : There are other considerations to not building a home gym than laziness or bad priorities. Some, like myself, have wood floors and downstairs neighbors, where a home gym that isn’t based on metal weights isn’t from inconvenience; it is a requirement. Resistance bands are one of the few options that are both compact and relatively noiseless. Plus, they are compact and mobile. E.g., I have a strap set I take on trips to workout in hotels when they don’t have a gym, where I can get access to free weights.
Shane already mentioned a better alternative to bands or a band-like gym set, which is bodyweight exercises (which I believe includes non-stretching straps). I can personally attest that I built more muscle faster using bodyweight exercises than my resistance band door gym set, but that’s one data point.
Certainly, exercising at all is better than nothing, even if the exercising is with bands, but the topic is about which type of exercising is most beneficial to adding strength and mass.
Shane…
This was an extremely well writing article for many reasons. Well written, easy to understand and supported with basic research that has withstood the test of training time. At no time did I feel defensive, just very engaged.
Obviously I am a Resistance Band Training guy who has committed his career to helping others training with large heavy-duty bands which I feel far outweighs the tubular based devices. However, RBT is never been about training just for muscle hypertrophy but rather a way to achieve strength training longevity.
I was an ectomorph who trained very hard with weights to gain size in his 20s and early 30s. However, I found around age 35, the more I tried to train with free weights, heavy or light, the more my body continued to break down, leaving me unable to train or significantly modifying my workouts regularly. What I have found in RBT is that by alternating up both forms of training (free weights with resistance band training), it allowed me and my followers the ability to continue training for strength and metabolic conditioning without feeling beat up. As a result, we could train more frequently and at high intensity which are keys to muscle growth as well. I have never said the RBT System is the best for building muscle but it is definitely better than getting injured and not training at all. Plus feeling and moving good becomes a much bigger training goal with age as does having strength training longevity.
After reading this article I feel you would appreciate that goal which was another reason I enjoyed it.
Thank you for sharing this article. Very excited an RBT follower pasted it on to me to see. I will continue to follow your site and look forward to learning more.
Dave S
Hey Dave, thank you!
I couldn’t agree more. A big part of resistance training, whether with free weights, resistance bands, machines, or bodyweight training, is finding exercises that suit our bodies, don’t beat up our joints, and that we can find some joy in 🙂
Old guy here. I’ve been using a chest expander and kettlebells (meels and bulgarian bags) for the last 5 years or so. It started out because I was traveling on sales calls and hotel gyms have bupkis for weights. Bands and handstand push ups for upper body; bridges and free squats for the rest.
Bands are great for maintenance, and for biceps training, I think it actually is better than dumbells. One of the things about them; except for stuff like curls, you’re not doing useful exercises that look much like barbell exercises. The “money” exercise for pushing motion is the back press; overhead down pull for pull exercise. Check out Fatman’s guide to cable training. Many of the greats; Reg Park, Chuck Sipes, swore by ’em. Of course, they used weights and gymnastics too.
Hi guys. Big fan of your writing; I think this is the first article I’ve found on this site that I didn’t find well-argued. Two main reasons come to mind:
Reason the first: The central technical claim as to why resistance bands are inferior to free weights (or whatever else) seems to be that the variable resistance curve of bands causes resistance to be lower where it’s most important for stimulating muscle growth, e.g. as you wrote here:
> Resistance bands have variable resistance. As we stretch resistance bands further, the load gets progressively heavier. The beginning is fairly easy and then the band only truly challenges our muscles at the end. We’ve turned a full biceps curl into a partial biceps curl. And, worse, it’s the most important part of the range of motion that’s rendered most useless.
or here:
> After all, if the lift is easy at the bottom of the range of motion, then we aren’t developing as much mobility or strength there.
So, *is it actually categorically true that “the beginning is fairly easy and then the band only truly challenges our muscles at the end” when you do resistance band exercises*? Do you really think it’s just generally not possible to configure your body and a resistance band together in such a way that you’re near-enough-to-optimally challenged through the full range of motion of the exercise? If you go on YouTube and look at any of the more detailed how-to videos on resistance band training, they usually emphasize that the band needs to already be under significant tension at the start of the range of motion. And, in my limited experience with resistance bands, there does seem to be a “sweet spot” of starting tension where the exercise is already difficult at the start of the range of motion, and then more difficult at the end of the range of motion, but not so difficult at the end that I can’t achieve the full range of motion.
I guess what I’d like to see is much more empirical firepower behind this claim:
>What’s insanely cool is that most free weight lifts are like the biceps curl, and they have their resistance curves at least partially flattened by our natural strength curves.
i.e. for all the most popular lifts, what do we (ideally) *measure* the resistance curve for free weights vs. competently-used resistance bands to be, and how does that compare to the *measured* strength curve of the primary muscle used in that exercise?
Reason the second: If you go back to those popular resistance band how-to videos on YouTube, you’ll be able to find a large handful of comments from people who claim to be highly experienced lifters who’ve started using resistance bands and also claim that resistance bands kick their ass appropriately (which also aligns with my experience). If what you write in this article is accurate, then I think it has the very interesting implication that people who know what they’re doing with free weights can “fool themselves” into having the exact same subjective experiences they associate with time-efficient muscle-building by using resistance bands — almost failing after 3 sets of 10 reps, immediate fatigue, the “pump”, DOMS, all of it — despite those exercises not building muscle nearly as effectively.
I think this implied claim is very bold, and would probably have fascinating implications of its own if true. What do you make of it?
Hey James, thank you! I appreciate that. And thank you for your thoughts, too.
Okay so the first point is about the strength curve. We want the lifts to be heavier when our muscles are stretched, lighter when our muscles are contracted. But resistance bands do the opposite of that. As we pull the resistance band tighter, our muscles contract, and the resistance band provides more resistance. So that’s the opposite strength curve of what we want for building muscle. No matter how much tension you put on the band at the beginning, it’s still going to get harder as you contract your muscles, stretching the band further. The strength curve is still backwards.
For example, look at one of the best muscle-building lifts: the barbell bench press. If you arch your back and use a moderate-to-wide grip, most people find that their upper arms are about horizontal to the ground at the bottom of the lift, meaning our moment arms are the longest, meaning the weight is the heaviest. That’s also when our pecs are under a deep stretch, which makes them stronger. So at that point where the weight is heaviest, our muscle is strongest, allowing us to put it under maximal tension, and thus stimulate more muscle growth. Then, as we lift the weight up, the moment arms get shorter, giving us better leverage, and allowing us to finish the lift even as our pecs get weaker. That’s a great strength curve, and it explains why the bench press is so massively popular, so great for bulking up our chest muscles. But resistance bands are the opposite of that.
Your second point is that resistance bands are still challenging, can still give us a pump, and can still make us sore. And you’re right. We don’t REALLY care about those things, we just care about how much muscle we build and how much strength we gain. Fatigue, pump, and soreness are just proxies. That’s true. Those proxies are often pretty good, but they don’t always account for everything. They’re just proxies.
I’m not saying that resistance bands can’t be challenging or hard. And they can absolutely give you a good pump—they’re great for that. What I’m saying is that they aren’t great for maximizing mechanical tension, which is the main driver of muscle growth, because they aren’t good at maximally challenging our muscles in a deep stretch.
That doesn’t mean they’re bad or useless. Just not as good as free weights for building muscle.
And to be clear, I’m not saying this as an absolute immutable fact. Just that based on the evidence we have right now, this seems to be the case. Resistance bands still haven’t been studied very well. And they aren’t very popular among serious lifters, either, making things even harder. I suspect the reason they haven’t been studied and they aren’t very popular is because they aren’t as good, and I’ve written about why that is, but I could be wrong.
My opinion isn’t an outlier opinion, though. If you look at most hypertrophy experts, they recommend free weights, think machines can be pretty good, find bodyweight training difficult but workable, and then don’t think very highly of resistance bands because of the funky strength curves. That’s how strength athletes train, it’s how bodybuilders train. And keep in mind that there’s very little bias here. These people aren’t selling lifting equipment or anything. But then most people who disagree, talking about the benefits of resistance bands, seem to sell resistance bands.
So overall, I’m very skeptical that resistance bands are as good as free weights for building muscle, and even more skeptical about the claims that they’re better than free weights. But I also don’t doubt that you can build muscle with them, so I don’t mean to discourage you or anything. You can build muscle that way. I just don’t think they’re totally ideal. But not all of our training needs to be ideal. It’s totally cool to use resistance bands.
Thanks for the reply. I don’t think you’re really getting at my central issue with point 1; *by how much* does the resistance curve increase through the range of motion with competently-used resistance bands, and *how much* does that curve actually matter for muscle growth when you compare it with the resistance curve for free weights? The answer to the first is obviously “more than nothing”, but it’s not at all clear to me that the answer to the second is therefore “enough that anyone should care”.
On that note, I took a look at the study you referred to in an attempt to answer this question, at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30580468/ — I don’t think it’s appropriate to generalize the effect size from this study solely looking at isometric training to full isotonic training. (Presumably you do, so I’d be curious to hear why.) I’m doubtful that the sign of the effect would *reverse* for most exercises if you attempted to measure the same thing with isotonic exercises, as some resistance band boosters claim, but it’s totally plausible IMO that the analogous effect size for isotonic exercises could be, say, an order of magnitude smaller or more, given that almost all of the time under tension with isotonic exercise is somewhere in between full extension and full contraction.
> If you look at most hypertrophy experts, they recommend free weights, think machines can be pretty good, find bodyweight training difficult but workable, and then don’t think very highly of resistance bands because of the funky strength curves.
Can you share some examples aside from Marco? In a few cursory Google searches, I was able to find some high-profile athletes and their trainers (skin in the game and all that) who like resistance bands, but nothing coming down in a well-supported way on the other side aside from this article — in fact I found this one while literally searching for “are resistance bands as good as weights”. (Not that the results of my Googling mean much, of course people are going to be more likely to bother making the somewhat interesting claim that resistance bands are highly effective than the already-conventional-wisdom claim that free weights are the only real option for anyone who’s serious about growing muscle.)
And, you know, I’d hope that we can strive to arrive at the truth regardless of what the summarized conventional wisdom is among those who’ve made their way into social positions of supposed expertise, and therefore have a clear incentive to not rock the boat too much with respect to conventional wisdom among their *clients*, i.e., emotionally-invested non-experts. 🙂
> And keep in mind that there’s very little bias here. These people aren’t selling lifting equipment or anything. But then most people who disagree, talking about the benefits of resistance bands, seem to sell resistance bands.
You sell a $197 *ebook*, far more than what anyone would spend on resistance bands themselves, on how to build muscle using free weights. Come on now Shane.
Yep, that’s true James. I’m not trying to say how much worse resistance bands are. You’re totally right. I’m not sure. Small changes in the strength curve don’t seem to have a huge impact on muscle growth. With resistance bands, it’s the worst type of resistance curve, so it’s possible that it’s a larger change that results in a big different in muscle growth, but I’m not sure. Hopefully new research gets published comparing actual rates of muscle growth and I can update the article accordingly.
The isometric study is good to look at because, like you said, we get to see an extreme case and how it affects muscle growth. But if we look at subtler changes on lifts done through a full range of motion, such as hamstring curls done seated (hamstrings stretched) vs lying down (hamstrings at shorter muscle lengths), we see the same effect, and with meaningful differences in peak muscle activation (study). But again, it would be great to have more research. I’ll keep this article updated as it comes out.
I’d say the top hypertrophy researcher right now is Dr Brad Schoenfeld, and when giving recommendations for how to train, he recommends free weights, but makes sure to add that exercise machines can be good, too. Resistance bands don’t make that list. Now, with that said, when gyms closed and he set up his home gym, he got some resistance bands along with his adjustable dumbbells and chin-up bar. But he points out that it isn’t ideal. He’s making the best of it, you know? And that’s what I’d recommend, too. Making the best of what you have access to.
Another leading hypertrophy researcher is Dr Eric Helms. He recommends using “a dumbbell, barbell, or exercise machine as desired” to build the chest, using “any variation of free weight squat” to bulk up the quads, and so on. All of his exercise recommendations for building muscle talk about how dumbbells, barbells, or exercise are all great ways to build muscle. He’s not explicitly saying that resistance bands are worse or anything, they just aren’t being mentioned as an ideal way to build muscle. (It’s not like he’s forgetting about them, though. He mentions accommodating resistance—adding light bands to heavy barbell exercises—and says there’s little evidence to suggest that it helps.)
Another of the big hypertrophy experts is Dr Mike Israetel, and he actively recommends avoiding resistance bands. He says if you need to train at home and don’t have much of a budget, just get some dumbbells, even if they aren’t quite the right weight and you need to lift in a wider variety of rep ranges.
If you know of a hypertrophy researcher or expert who thinks otherwise, I can look into it. Plus, I’m not saying that nobody recommends or uses resistance bands, but rather that free weights and exercise machines dominate bodybuilding, strength training, and athletics training. I’m sure there are examples of people who do otherwise, but they’re surely outliers. Like you say, it’s possible that resistance bands are as good as free weights and it’s just that nobody has realized yet. But I’m very skeptical of that.
Again, though, I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t use them. They still work. You can still build a great body with them.
“You sell a $197 *ebook*, far more than what anyone would spend on resistance bands themselves, on how to build muscle using free weights. Come on now Shane.”
No, no. You’re assuming that we’re stuck selling a free-weight program, but we aren’t. We aren’t “the free weight” guys, we’re the “help skinny guys build muscle” guys. We update and expand upon the workout program all the time. We can make it into whatever is best. If we thought we could get people similar results with resistance bands, we’d just add a resistance-band workout routine to our program.
We already have a barbell version, dumbbell version, and, when gyms closed, we developed a bodyweight workout routine. I’d love to develop a resistance-band routine. That would make it easier to help skinny guys build muscle, exercise, and improve their health. I’d love that. I’m just not confident that it would work as well. We might still do it, but right now I say use barbells as a default, dumbbells as the next-best option, exercise machines after that, and bodyweight training after that. I know that all of those methods can work amazingly well. Resistance bands, I’m not so sure. But hopefully I’m wrong.
I think this whole idea of people ONLY advocating barbells or keto or intermittent fasting or whatever it is, it locks people into biases, and it doesn’t serve the ultimate purpose of helping people accomplish their muscle-building and fat loss goals. That’s not what we’re about at all. We just try do recommend whatever is best, whatever it is.
I’m totally openminded on this.
I asked the hypertrophy researcher Eric Helms, PhD, too. He responded, “Not a lot of research on the topic, but I would agree with your general recommendations of free weights and machines for hypertrophy, with bands and bodyweight working in a pinch. So no, you’re not wrong on that, in my opinion.”
As for why that is, he explained, “If you think about doing a band curl, you’re standing on the band, holding it in both hands. At the bottom, right before you start the rep, there is less tension in the band than at the top when you’ve elongated it, providing more resistance as the muscle shortens and less when it’s at a longer muscle length.”
I appreciate you questioning me on this, James. You’re making me question my assumptions and triple check all of the points I made, and I think that’s a very good thing.
Another study came out, following up with that seated vs lying hamstring curl research. This new study measured muscle growth from challenging the hamstrings at shorter and longer muscle lengths, finding that exercises that challenge our hamstrings at a greater length produce proportionally more muscle growth.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33009197/
What’s neat is that the different areas of our hamstrings are stretched to different degrees by bending at the hips. The areas that got the greatest stretch saw the greatest growth. The areas that were unaffected didn’t see a difference in muscle growth. And the areas that were shortened by bending at the hips saw less growth.
So this gives us a really good indication that challenging our muscles at longer lengths helps us build muscle faster.
In that case, I’m tentatively willing to buy that resistance closer to the start of the ROM does indeed matter more for gainz than resistance closer to the end of the ROM, in general. (I suspect this argument might “prove too much” — if tension near full extension in particular is *that* overwhelmingly important, why hasn’t anyone decided you can save some time in the gym and get the same results by only doing the first 50% of the ROM of every lift? — but whatever.) I’m still not convinced that means that resistance bands therefore “might not be better than bodyweight” for hypertrophy as in claimed in the article (“might”, ok, but ridiculous IMO), or are strictly inferior to free weights for all hypertrophy-directed exercises one might want to do, or are inferior *enough* to free weights for those hypertrophy-directed exercises where they are technically inferior that anyone but literal professional bodybuilders should care, assuming you’re using the bands thoughtfully.
As you well know, our muscles have an increasing strength curve for some movements; assuming that you want to be as close to the sticking point as possible throughout the full range of motion, with a preference for being close to the sticking point earlier in the range of motion rather than later when you must choose, then resistance bands should compensate for that strength curve (to some unspecified extent that’s totally dependent on the exercise you’re doing and the fiddly details of individual technique) and (if used well) be preferable to free weights for those movements, right? e.g. it doesn’t really prove anything, but I do ~feel~ more challenged through the full range of motion when I squat with resistance bands compared to with a barbell, since the resistance is increasing along with the force I can output (even though there’s already a lot of resistance at the start of the ROM since the band is already under significant tension at that point), and if that subjective experience is accurate then it’s hard to imagine that wouldn’t be at all beneficial, even if it probably doesn’t matter much.
But more importantly, even for the movements where our strength curve isn’t strictly increasing and that might naively disfavor resistance bands, I’m still quite unconvinced that the magnitude of the effect would matter to anyone but the most obsessive or literally-professional of bodybuilders as long as you put some thought into having “enough” resistance at the start of the ROM. For an extreme example, when I do resistance band neck curls, the band is very stretched at the start of the range of motion (~200% stretch ratio, maybe — hard to actually measure by myself) and, since the range of motion is so small, barely more stretched at the end (surely no more than an additional +20% to the stretch ratio); assuming the band has a linear relationship between elongation and tension, that’s close enough to a flat resistance curve that I’d be utterly spoiled to care about the fact that it’s not truly flat, IMO, and the mechanical details resulting from my form, the height of my anchor point, etc. would probably matter more for “optimizing” the movement.
Obviously the resistance is lowest when the muscles you’re working are extended when you use resistance bands, we don’t need three people with graduate degrees to tell us that, and in principle that matters more-than-not-at-all for some movements, but as a layman who wants to build muscle reasonably quickly and has some hands-on appreciation for the magnitude of the forces involved here, *should I actually care*?
e.g. concretely, suppose I’m doing 3 sets of 10 of some hypothetical movement with a roughly flat strength curve, using a resistance band, where I’m 85% of the way to my sticking point near full extension and 95% of the way to my sticking point near full contraction. Should I expect to put on muscle… 99% as quickly as I would if this hypothetical movement had a perfectly flat resistance curve when using a free weight and I were 90% of the way to the sticking point through the full ROM? Or, 90% as quickly? Something as low as 75% effectiveness would be surprising, right? (It would be to me!) Or maybe that “85%-to-95%” is optimistic compared to many actual non-hypothetical movements, and for some important lifts it’s just not practical to appropriately flatten the resistance curve when you’re using a resistance band; I’d be willing to believe that, but, *which movements* is that true for, then? I, and many other people, already own free weights as well as resistance bands; if I want to munchkin the hell out of my gains, and I delude myself into thinking I’ve already addressed every other factor that would matter more, which tool should I be using for which particular jobs, given that it beggars belief that resistance bands are strictly inferior to free weights for *every possible strength training exercise*?
And if even the expertest of experts don’t know the answer to these types of question with any numeric confidence, that’s fine, but in that case why say (in the article if not in the comments) “resistance bands are definitely much less effective for hypertrophy than free weights, just do bodyweight work if it comes to that, rofl” rather than “we don’t really know for sure, free weights would be the conservative choice if you have access to them since we know for sure that works well, but resistance bands are probably almost as good, so you can do that too if you’re willing to take the risk that it *turns out* they’re surprisingly and dramatically worse than free weights *after the question is studied more*”?
Your first question is a good one. Why don’t people just do the first 50% of the range of motion, training at longer muscle lengths instead of at shorter lengths? And they do. For example, if you watch high-level bodybuilders train, such as Jay Cutler (as shown here), you’ll see that they often get a deep stretch at the bottom, lift the weight partway up, and then lower it back down. And if you look at powerlifters, you’ll see that they do the bench press with an arch, shifting the range of motion towards longer muscle lengths on their chests. There’s a big stretch on the chest at the bottom, but it reduces how contracted the chest gets at the end of the range of motion. Plus, with something like a barbell bench press, even at the very top of the movement, our hands are still a few feet apart. We’re not getting a full contraction of the chest. You’d need to do a cable crossover for that. So the bench press itself is a lift that works our chests only at longer muscle lengths.
Now, that doesn’t mean that training with a shorter range of motion is the answer. After all, at different parts of the range of motion, different muscles come into play.If you cut the lockout out of your bench press, you’ll be working your triceps much less hard. So as a default, a fuller range of motion is still often a good idea. Using the example of the triceps, though, when people are trying to bulk them up, what they often do are skullcrushers or overhead triceps extensions. By having your arms out in front or overhead, it stretches your triceps, meaning that the entire range of motion is shifted to longer muscle lengths. The whole lift is done under stretch, avoiding ever fully contracting the triceps.
The most proven example, though, is the hamstring curl. If we bend at the hips, it puts the hamstrings under greater stretch throughout the whole movement, meaning that we miss out on training them at shorter lengths. And we stimulate quite a bit more muscle growth than if we do lying hamstring curls, where we’re training them at shorter muscle lengths. The range of motion is incomplete in both cases, as it is in almost every exercise, but the part of the range of motion that works our muscles at longer muscle lengths is better.
So I think you’re right. If we focus on training our muscles in a deep stretch, we can build more muscle in less time.
Regarding the three people with graduate degrees, you asked me what the top hypertrophy experts thought, saying you were having trouble finding their opinions online. I asked the top experts and gave you their answers. And their answer was that free weights and exercise machines were probably better.
As for how much better free weights are, it’s hard to say for sure, but I think it might be by a meaningful amount. If you’re having trouble stimulating muscle growth, finding better exercises can be the difference between 0 and 1. It can be the difference between a plateau and progress. And that can be a big deal. You might have an arm circumference of, say, 15 inches, and it’s hard to make them bigger. By choosing better exercises, you provoke more muscle growth, and all of a sudden they start growing again.
That isn’t to say you can’t build muscle with resistance bands. But I do think it might be substantially easier to build muscle with free weights or exercise machines. And with bodyweight exercises, obviously that’s a last resort, but even so, many of them are quite good. Deficit push-ups, chin-ups, dips, hanging leg raises, and so on are all great exercises. We recommend them to people who are training at fully equipped gyms, with access to every tool. There aren’t any resistance band exercises that I know of that are better than their free weight, bodyweight, or exercise machine alternatives. They may very well exist, I just don’t know of them.
With neck training, I have a Neck Flex harness that came with a resistance band kit for neck training. I tried a few workouts with it, but I found that I preferred training with free weights. So I hung weight plates from the chain instead. I know some people who like using some band training for their necks, though, and that’s perfectly fine. And your logic is good. If the range of motion is very small, the variable resistance won’t interfere with the strength curve very much.
Is it possible that the average person wouldn’t notice the difference between resistance bands and free weights? I doubt that. I suspect working out with free weights would allow you to get more muscle stimulation with less time spent training, that you’d be less likely to run into muscle and strength plateaus, and that you’d indeed build muscle noticeably faster. But that’s a guess. It could be that the difference is small.
I don’t mean to hate on resistance bands. People who like them can use them. I’m just trying to write about the pros and cons so that people can decide for themselves. There’s a whole section in the article talking about how we can build muscle no matter what we have access to.
I should note that in the hamstring curl study, bending the hips challenged three heads of the hamstrings under a greater stretch: the biceps femoris, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus. They saw more than twice as much muscle growth than the group doing the hamstring curls without bending their hips, even though the total range of motion was the same in both groups.
So training under a greater stretch stimulated more than double the muscle growth. It can be a huge factor. I don’t think it’s something that only professionals care about. I think these are differences in results that almost everyone trying to build muscle would care about.
We work with a lot of people who are frustrated by a lack of progress. I try to optimize the details so that they can build muscle faster and more reliably. I really care about these things. I realize not everyone does.
In case it wasn’t already clear, I don’t find vague assertions all that convincing, even if they’re accompanied with a reference to one or two narrow maybe-directionally-relevant studies. I was hoping these experts might show their work in a way that you haven’t yet to back up the extremely bold claim that the hypertrophy efficacy difference between free weights and resistance bands is unequivocally and universally “large”.
I hear ya. That’s fair.
I’m not claiming that the hypertrophy difference between free weights and resistance bands is necessarily large. I’m just saying that most evidence points to resistance bands being worse for building muscle, and seemingly all of the top experts agree. Everyone—myself included—is being careful not to overstate their position because, as you’ve correctly pointed out, there hasn’t been much direct research on this yet. If you want to wait until more research is out, that makes total sense 🙂
Okay, I reached out to Greg Nuckols, MA, who runs the research review Monthly Applications in Strength Sport (MASS). He’s perhaps the most respected reviewer of hypertrophy research. I asked him if free weights and exercise machines were better than resistance bands for building muscle, and he told me:
“Yeah, I do think, in general, bands are probably slightly worse for growth since it’s a lot harder to load a muscle at long muscle lengths.”
Hmm.
This still comes off as pretty biased. A lot of the assumptions are just plain wrong, such as implying that only free weights will contribute to building bone density. Any load on our frame will do that, whether it’s with bands or weights.
The assumption that there isn’t a challenge at the beginning of a movement on the bands – all you have to do is “choke up” on the band a little. Problem solved in 1/2 sec.
Research has also repeatedly shown that instability helps build muscle faster, which is something you seem to make out as a wash, when it clearly favors bands.
Just speaking anecdotally… at 40 y.o., having spent 10 years in the Navy (half of that with USMC units), wrestling in my youth, and working a lot of hard manual labor jobs, NEVER in my life have I built muscle as quickly than the last 3 months. I don’t worry about my diet much and take no supplements, not even protein. I’ve put on as much muscle in three months as I did the previous 20 years with traditional free weights, taking creatine, BCAAs, etc. I mostly just do the P90X “Shoulders and Arms” and “Chest and Back” workouts alternately, every 2-3 days as quickly as I can (no breaks; I’ve memorized the workouts so I move on when Tony is talking) with just some bands. I do the ~46 minutes in ~28 minutes now. Nothing crazy, and by far the best results I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve had an 8.8% increase in body mass in the this time. The only other exercise I get is walking up a few flights of stairs to my apartment when I come home from the market. 🙂
I’d definitely recommend not just looking at theoreticals and trying it out for yourself. I think its too easy to get confirmation bias and see what you want to see in the data.
Hey Jordan, congratulations on the gains, man! That’s awesome!
I’m not trying to imply that only free weights improve bone density. I think you’re right on that. But if we look at the heaviest loads we put on our bones, we’re looking at lifts like heavy barbell squats and deadlifts. It’s rare to see that amount of loading coming from resistance bands, right? Or am I missing something?
I think the disadvantage with resistance bands comes from the strength curve. If you choke up on the bands, the lift will still get harder as you go through the range of motion. And that’s the opposite of what we want for muscle growth. It would be better if the lift were harder at the bottom, where our muscles are stronger, and easier at the top, where our muscles are weaker. And if we’re being limited by how strong our muscles are at the top, then we aren’t maximally challenging our muscles in a stretched position.
My understanding is that stability allows us to work our prime movers harder. But I could be wrong on this. What research are you referring to? I’d be happy to take a look at it.
As for having tried them, I have. I don’t like it. The resistance curve feels backwards. I don’t feel that deep ripping feeling that I get with the best free weights lifts. And they feel too wobbly and finicky. But that’s not really the point. Just because a lift feels bad to me doesn’t mean that it won’t stimulate as much muscle growth.
For what I try personally, I’ve been leaning in the other direction. I’ve been trying to choose lifts that challenge my muscles in a deeper stretch with a better strength curve. I feel like I’m getting more stimulation and greater strength gains out of fewer sets, and this year I’ve added 50 pounds to my bench press. I could try experimenting with what I think would make my training worse, but again, I’m not sure how valuable that would be.
But I guess the idea would be to, say, train one arm with resistance bands, the other with free weights, and then compare how they grow relative to one another? I mean, I could, but even then, I’m not sure the conclusion would be all that strong. I’d rather see a properly constructed study testing that.
Taking all this in, what if you used bands to reverse the resistance properties of different exercises. For example, in a squat, you hang bands from above, and they pull the squat bar up. Then the resistance is lower at the bottom and greater at the top, even compared to the free weight case. To make up for the help of the bands, just put more weight on the bar to compensate.
That’s correct, yeah. If you check out the accommodating resistance section, you’ll see that there are some theoretical benefits to adding chains or resistance bands to some of the big barbell lifts. You can do them banded (making them harder at the top) or reverse banded (making them easier at the bottom). The effect is the same in both cases: the bottom gets easier compared to the top.
The thing to keep in mind here is that we want to make sure that the deepest part of the lift is still the hardest. That’s where we want our sticking point to be. So we don’t want to REVERSE the resistance curve, we just want to flatten it a little bit. That’s why with accommodating resistance, you want most of the resistance coming from the weights, only a little bit coming from the bands.
If you add bands or chains to a squat, for example, then you can keep it hard at the bottom of the range of motion while SLIGHTLY increasing the challenge at the top, flattening the strength curve and perhaps stimulating more muscle growth. It hasn’t been proven yet, but it could indeed offer an advantage.
The thing is, we stimulate more muscle growth at the bottom of the range of motion, so it’s unclear how much benefit we’d gain from increasing tension at the top. That’s why, I think, the research hasn’t shown a clear benefit to accommodating resistance yet. But it might. It does make sense. It’s a logical way of training.
I like the article and agree mostly, but find bands very useful as a compliment to shoulder training, simply because shoulders injure easily. I can’t do dumbbell side raises right now due to a tendon injury but I can do band side raises. There’s something about them that lets me go to failure on side delts without pain. Likewise rear delt work with bands is useful (Reverse flies, pull aparts) and has helped my posture immensely. Triceps are another they seem useful for as a finish after dumbbells to build strength around the elbow as that has been a weakness for me.
I prefer dumbbells for most training but see bands as essential for the things they do very well.
Hey Patrick,
I hear ya. I think bands can be a good complement for free weight training. If you’re already getting the advantages of dumbbell (or barbell) training, nothing wrong with using bands for some isolation exercises, especially if it’s easier on your joints 🙂
Well, I disagree…
Resistance bands are a different type of strength training.
Are free weights better for building muscle size, if that’s your training goal? Clearly.
Are bands better for building lean muscle, avoiding injury and perhaps even athletic performance? Clearly.
So it depends upon your goals.
I’m not sure I understand your point. Why would resistance bands be better for building muscle or avoiding fat gain? And why is that clear?
Well, it’s clear to me because I’ve used both. And currently use both in my training program.
One way in which they are better is the way the exercises are performed. With bands, gravity is not necessary which places the body in more natural alignment.
For example, I’m a mountain biker. Excessive muscle strength and size from lifting free weights, the way most free weighters lift, does not benefit me. It hinders me.
Now I can reduce the amount of weight. But I wont change the posture of the exercise. Because gravity is required.
The strongest men in the world are not considered lean. And generally speaking wouldn’t last long on a mountain bike or in a boxing ring.
If you prefer bands, that’s totally cool. I think people should train how they like.
I’d argue that we’ve evolved to lift objects against gravity. When we present our bodies with that stimulus, they grow stronger so that we’re better able to lift even heavier things against gravity. Our bodies are very well suited for it, too. This idea of using resistance bands for resistance training is a very new thing, less natural (for whatever that’s worth—maybe nothing).
You’re right that having a muscular upper body would make you needlessly heavier, reducing your mountain biking performance. That’s not a case of resistance bands being better for building lean muscle, though, it’s just a case of your sport not benefitting from bigger upper-body muscles. If someone DID want to build bigger muscles, though, weights seem like the easiest and most efficient way to do that.
The strongest men in the world carry a lot of body fat, yeah. That’s not a result of how they train, though, it’s a result of how they eat. To gain muscle, it helps to eat in a calorie surplus, which means gaining weight. Since their sports often benefit from having more fat as well as muscle—think of a sumo wrestler or powerlifter—they just keep eating a ton of food to gain a mix of both muscle and fat. Plus, to get to very high degrees of muscularity, it seems that being at a higher body-fat percentage can help. So again, another reason to eat a ton of food.
If we look at the most muscular AND LEANEST people in the world, though—bodybuilders—then we still see people who build their big muscles by lifting weights.
Thank you for that article!
I was wondering why working with bands felt so awkward and straining but still didn’t give me any burn.
I guess they’re a typical “girly” fitness item since it’s been featured in a lot of “booty growth” videos, and my postpartum fitness coach handed them out via mail to all of the moms in our online course—which is great in a pandemic obviously. They’re also easy to store if you don’t want your apartment to look like a gym, and they come in happy colours. Some women also aren’t looking to build muscle mass and go for a leaner look, I guess.
Anyway, my experience tells me free weights, machines, and even bodyweight exercises are just so much more effective, at least for me. And I feel that very often bands tend to suddenly snap away or wobble at the wrong moments, and that resistance/weight is generally harder to calibrate with a band. Thin ones can be unconformable and cut into your skin, too. I’ve had bruises from bands.
This tendency to be less easy to control is is what makes using the band feel awkward to me. And I suspect that they’re also more prone to causing injury in beginners, especially when they’re the cheap, thin kind.
Our pleasure, Emma! So glad you liked it!
I think you’re right about all of that. Resistance bands are definitely handy and convenient, and I can see how they’d be less intimidating, especially if someone isn’t looking to build a ton of muscle. With that said, even if someone wanted to gain 5 pounds of muscle instead of 20, I’d still recommend weights. They could do shorter workouts, easier workouts, or accomplish their goals much faster. I’m not sure why choosing a less effective method becomes more appealing. I’ve definitely heard that argument, though.
I can’t argue with the evidence of stretched loading, but why do I feel it more when using bands? I’ve tried weights, bodyweight, and bands, and can confidently say my muscles feel more worked with bands.
We often feel greater muscle activation when our muscles are bunched up. It burns. Resistance bands are hardest at shorter positions, giving more of a burn.
Resistance-band exercises can also feel more difficult. Maybe it’s the shakiness of them. I’m not sure. But whatever the reason, it feels harder.
For most people, this is a downside. They’d rather get more results with less pain and effort. But some people love the pain and effort. That’s the draw of resistance training. They yearn for the challenge.
I think that’s why shortened partials are so popular in bodybuilding. They aren’t as good for building muscle, but they sure feel like they are! So back before it was known that training our muscles at longer muscle lengths was better for stimulating growth, it fit in with that “no pain, no gain” mentality.
There are studies indicating small advantages with stretched loading and fuller loaded ROM… But does this really matter in the long run?
I think the differenced in effectiveness between modalities (machines, free weights, calisthenics, bands…) is greatly exaggerated. I think that you end up at your genetic limit by doing enough, well enough, consistently enough, for long enough.
There are so many great physical specimens out there who reached their peak by very different means, and they nearly all swear up and down that their specific method was the key and everyone should copy them. What they all have in common is great hypertrophy genes plus doing enough, well enough, consistently enough, for long enough. Fred Rollon swore he only used chest expanders, which are almost identical in function to bands… except less versatile! I would say they are inferior!
If bands reduce barriers to training, why talk them down?
I’ve trained in various modalities over many years and found that progressing through very heavy loop band deadlifts did wonders for my traps, hams and grip at a stage when I thought I was pretty much maxed out already. They were my principle ham movement for many years, and when I went back to the gym, I never saw anyone equal my hamstring curls. So whatever role genes might’ve played in that, I can say that I probably was not ill-served by bands!
Hey Gordon, that’s a good question.
I tried to be clear in the article that resistance bands are fine, and if you like them, you can use them. We can build muscle with anything that challenges our muscles.
The studies showing an advantage to stretched loading tend to show a HUGE advantage to stretched loading. When comparing people training in the bottom vs the top half of the range of motion, the people training in the bottom half often get something like 2x the muscle growth. It’s even more meaningful because they get complete development along the entire muscle fibre.
I think you’re right that the difference in effectiveness between bodyweight exercises, free weights, cables, and exercise machines is exaggerated. The movements are often quite similar, with similar strength curves. Resistance bands are a different beast, though. They’re much less stable and have a totally different strength curve. I suspect this creates a fairly large difference in the amount of muscle growth they stimulate, especially in muscles that are already hard to challenge at longer muscle lengths. It may be less true for hamstrings. Hamstrings are the easiest muscle to train at long muscle lengths. I suspect that even with resistance bands, you’re working them quite hard in a deep stretch.
It’s hard to say whether it matters in the long run.
If we imagine that resistance bands stimulate 2/3 as much muscle growth as free weights, you could make up for that by doing 50% more volume. You’d build muscle at the same rate and get the same results, just with more effort.
If the person using resistance bands isn’t able to make up for the lesser stimulus, and they build muscle at a slower pace, then you could imagine them catching up. However, if it’s harder to stimulate muscle growth with resistance bands, you could also imagine them hitting a plateau sooner. Perhaps they find themselves unable to continue stimulating muscle growth.
The other factor to consider is that training at shorter muscle lengths stimulates less distal muscle growth. When you train at longer muscle lengths, you get more balanced muscle growth all along the muscle fibre. Maybe the person using resistance bands never fully develops the distal portion of their muscle fibres, never fully catching up. Or maybe they do. Maybe they reach their genetic potential either way. I’m not sure.
I’m not convinced resistance bands reduce the barrier to entry. Bodyweight exercises are cheaper, more portable, and probably more effective. Adjustable dumbbells are more convenient, versatile, and can be stored in a closet. Barbell training tends to be the most efficient. Training in a gym tends to be the most motivating, especially for more social people. I’m not sure where resistance bands shine, especially since they make exercise feel harder and more painful without a proportionate increase in results.
Most of all, I think people enjoy doing what works. If they aren’t getting great results with resistance bands, or if the results don’t feel worth the pain, then people give up. I think that’s the most important thing. I want to help people get impressive results that get some stoked about resistance training, exercise, and fitness.
On the other hand, if someone PREFERS resistance bands, by all means, go for it. There are plenty of people who do. More power to them. I say that in the article, though.
I’ve recently started jogging. I know jogging hurts more than other forms of cardio. I know it has a higher rate of injury. I know it’s harder to recover from. But I’m enjoying it. I like being able to run outside between the palm trees. I don’t want to sit in the basement on a stationary bike. Some people feel that way about resistance bands, and that’s great.
I want people to exercise in the way they prefer. I just want to be open about the pros and cons of each form of exercise. That way people can make informed decisions. I’m glad I know about the pros and cons of jogging. That doesn’t stop me from doing it.
When I’m jogging, I pass through a park full of exercise machines. There are always a bunch of shirtless guys there doing callisthenics. They’re in great shape. They all bring resistance bands with them, working in resistance-band exercises along with their bodyweight exercises. They’re having a blast and it’s clearly working well for them.
Oh, I think it would be really dogmatic to do bands-only when bodyweight exercises are, in most ways, even more convenient. I’ve never done bands exclusively but don’t consider them second-best. There’s just not enough of a culture of using and understanding bands for the studies to make a true apples-and-apples comparison or to infer a comparison from theory.
This Coach Kassem N1 podcast gave me the impression that the effect-size of stretched loading is widely misunderstood and exaggerated (skip to 10:28):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiU4ejXwvso&t=1101s&ab_channel=N1EducationAndTrainingFoundedbyKassemHanson
I see what you’re saying about regional hypertrophy etc… but I easily get around this with a little creativity. It doesn’t take a lot. I don’t find it takes any more effort, and my ‘gym’ stores in a basket and cost next to nothing. For example, I do seated rows with the loop round my feet. I start sitting upright, go to failure, then lean back a few degrees–at this different angle, I suddenly have a few more reps in the tank, stressing slightly different areas. Rinse and repeat. I also can tailor the resistance on-the-fly to change where in the ROM the challenge is. So I can do the Holy Grail stretched partials if I want. Just like with trad weights and calisthenics, I’ve gradually learned to get more out of bands without making it onerous or time-consuming.
Dumbbell biceps curls are only really challenging through part of the ROM… Arthur Jones though he’d come up with the ultimate solution to this ‘problem’ with the Nautilus machine, but subsequent studies seemed to show all the extra complexity yielded no additional benefit.
Right now I have a borked bicep and would love to own a heavy dumbbell to do pullovers until it recovers. I might be able to figure out a band equivalent that works with the bands and the layout of my home–I’m still working on it! 😀
I respect how much you guys thoughtfully engage with commenters here.
I dont think, the argument with the stretched loading and having better results apply to the bands sooo much as most of you think. As long as you have constant tension trhoughout the Range of Motion, slow eccentric (4-6 sec), concenntric (2 sec) sec) and isometric hold (1-2 sec), it acutally is pretty hard and enable enough stimulous for muscle growth. Sure, the lower part is still weaker, but its the way how you tell your muscle with your mind how to apply the force onto it during the tension applied to it. If you push too fast at the beginning of the movement, sure there is less engagement at a strechted length. But doing the negative very slow, its pretty hard to withstand the band which is pulling you back, like weights. And to work the stretched position even more, you can hit partials after you are not able to do full reps anymore, until you are not able to move the band any milimeter anymore. So for example you do 2 sets with normal full rom and on your 3rd set with full rom, you do the partials in the end. At your 4rd set, you start with an even heavier band, where you are only able to hit the partial are at the beginning of a movement and after you are not able to do partials anymore, you drop to a lighter resistance to finish with full rom. It actually feels pretty close to weights. This extra soreness might be also some misunderstanding. Maybe the majority of people workout with bands in a rep range until 20 (which is fine), but if you workout at a rep range 6-8 and progress up from there to 10-12 and then go up in resistance, you get a pretty good soreness and it takes like 3-7 days until your muscle is ready again. I just dont see any downsight vs weights. Im working out with bands for 1 year already and gained a good amount of muscle mass. Going from 71 kilo (road cycled a lot many years) to 83 kilo at 187cm. Would I have make more gains working out with weights? Maybe, who knows. But I wouldn’t hit the gym as much as I can hit my body working out from home. I just can tell, that working out in gym before when I was younger (Im 28 now) I didn’t have a better result. Im in the best shape of my life at the moment. After another year of working out, my progress pics will follow. As other peoople said, look at fred rollon who only worked out with a chest expander. He was impressively strong, and able to push more then 140 kg in a bench press.
Look at Micheal Boyd on instagram who built his physique with just bands and bodyweight. Look at KHP Fitness on youtube who is working out with bands since 4 years already and made more gains in muscle and strength then all the years before he went to the gym. Also a meta analysis study showed that bands and weights are similar when it comes to strenght and muscle gains. And yeah, there is the EMG which shows similar muscle activation. But anyways. Thats a lot of theorie and the fact is, that resistance bands build muscle really well, not better or worse than weights. If you check the facts on people who worked out with the bands, then the theorie just does not make sense. Then the loading a stretched muscle is just not so bad as everybody thought with bands. Its the mind muscle connections, the focus and concentration, which makes the difference working out with bands, weights or bodyweight. Apply any force to your muscle and it will grow. Also you do get stronger at a loaded longer muscle, because you do progressively overload.
It would be interesting to see, if some bodybuilder tries to get on stage and just workout with bands. I guess nobody would do that, because moving weights or going to the gym with the perfect setups there is just easier then working out with bands, where you need more focus and concentration to have the right tension throughout the ROM, then you might need when you sit down in a chest press machine for example.
Congratulations on gaining those 12 kilos, man! That’s awesome!
Can you tell me the name of the meta you’re referring to? That sounds like valuable reference to incorporate into this article.
I tried to make it clear that you can build muscle with resistance bands. You can build a great body. Many people have. It’s just that, as you said, it’s much harder. The training is more difficult, more painful, and you may need to add in extra sets of partials and whatnot.
I put bodyweight training in a different category from resistance bands. Bodyweight training doesn’t have the same disadvantages. Push-ups are arguably even better than the bench press. Chin-ups are arguably even better than lat pulldowns.
You can build muscle by focusing on the mind-muscle connection and lifting slowly. It’s usually more effective to focus on lifting athletically, naturally, and explosively. It stimulates slightly more muscle growth, and you also get far better strength and performance gains. Different people benefit from different approaches, though. Nothing wrong with favouring the mind-muscle connection.
Thanks! I will search out the links I was reading for you! (the studies and EMG activation comparing weights and resistance bands on specific excercises)
As comparison, that link will refer to the studys in general:
https://www.garagegymreviews.com/how-effective-are-resistance-bands
The EMG shows, that activation on the lower portion of a squat is not so good, but on some other study I’ve read, that because of the force being higher at the top, it evens out (in my opinion even if the stretched part is not being activated as much in the beginning of the movement as at the top, but the negative controlled the way back is a lot). You still have tension on the lower portion when you overcome the deadzone of a squat (And additionally I workout this part with partials after full ROM and do harder partials on an extra set). I do leg presses standing while beding over with the band on the lower back. While going down to the bottom I also press the band down to put more pressure onto the bottom portion, to have a more even resistance curve. I just make sure my muscle is exhausted in the whole range.
And if I look at KHP Fitness on Youtube, how he was building up his legs after an injury just with bands, then the studys and EMG asides, his legs are being built better then ever before. He took measurements and pictures before and after. Of course he could lie for his business or whatever, but I dont see a reason or believe he is lying.
The other muscle parts in the upper body had similar activation compared on an EMG. So it seems like the upper body is equal, and according to the 2017 study, the EMG for a squat is bad.
Here are some other links I was finding.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6383082/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1440244022002201
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5873332/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17461391.2017.1337229
I was not reading them fully, just reading the conclusions and the interesting parts.
I need to agree with you, it’s much harder or difficult to train with bands, then just workout a muscle through the motion with a weight. I myself needed a lot time to learn how to train with resistsance bands, how much time under tension in which part of the motion is needed and how to progressively overload the best way. But I do like, that the training with resistance bands sometimes feels more painful or harder, especially if you incoporate partials and drop sets.
Your soreness is also high, the same as with weights. But the soreness with weights feel different than the soreness with bands. Not better or worse. It just feels different. So even though the muscle is stupid, the soreness feels different.
But the thing is, relaying on one tool for building your body alone, is not the best approach. Its better to train with both tools, weights + resistance bands. That way you have the best strength curve possible and possible more gains. But now that im writing that, there was also a study who compared weights, weights with resistance bands and resistance bands alone and it came out, that there was no significant difference. Need to search that article out.
Anyways, I also incoporate bodyweight excercises like dips, pushups and pullups a bit and I like the different soreness from the bodyweight as well.
But I only did it like 10 percent and 90 percent resistance band training.
I will let you know, how my journey continous and if Im possible to make more gains after my one year approach.
Ah, great! Thank you!
I don’t doubt that KHP Fitness is doing great. If my argument was that bands don’t work, this would be a contradiction. But I agree with you that bands can work. Just probably not quite as well as lifting weights. If my position is true, you’d expect to see plenty of people who build great physiques with resistance bands. However, you might expect to see more people favouring free weights. That’s indeed what we see.
The first Silva Lopes meta-analysis was looking at strength, not hypertrophy, but it’s still interesting. Some of the studies were measuring strength gains from aerobic programs, which isn’t quite relevant. The most relevant one was comparing push-ups with bands against the bench press. A huge portion of the resistance in push-ups comes from our body weight, so that study was comparing accommodating resistance (body weight + bands) to free weights (weights only). The second Andersen meta is similar. Again, it’s only looking at strength, and it’s looking at accommodating resistance (weights combined with chains/bands).
If the argument is that accommodating resistance is as effect as conventional resistance training for gaining strength, I tentatively agree with you. The new research on stretch-mediated hypertrophy is compelling, and it hints that emphasizing the lower portion of a lift stimulates more growth, but I won’t bet all my gold on that yet. I can be more positive about accommodating resistance in the article. I’ll edit it to make that clearer.
The third and fourth studies are EMG studies. I cover EMG research in the article. It’s useful when trying to figure out what muscles an exercise works, but it isn’t very good at telling us how effective that exercise is. The issue in this case is that EMG readings peak when our muscles are contracted, whereas muscle stimulation peaks when our muscles are lengthened. As a result, EMG research will often favour the exercise variation that’s less good for gaining muscle size and strength.
The final study mentioned is by Liu and colleagues. It compared bodyweight exercises against resistance-band exercises. As far as I can tell, it’s the only one that looked at muscle growth. It concluded that “the effect of resistance bands on muscle gain is not ideal.” They say resistance bands caused fat loss but failed to stimulate a robust amount of muscle growth. They recommend bodyweight exercises and weights for building muscle. I think the findings are a bit harsh. There are certainly resistance-band programs that can stimulate robust amounts of muscle growth.
I think you’re smart to do lengthened partials with the bands. That sounds like a good way to do it.
I don’t want to come off as overly negative. I’m absolutely certain you can continue to make great gains with bands for many years to come. Sounds like you’ve got a great work ethic. That will easily overcome any small disadvantage in muscle stimulation, if indeed that disadvantage even exists at all.
Shane, this was incredibly well written response.
EMG studies don’t indicate any information about hypertrophy.
For one KHP or absolute band supporter, there are at least 10 physical therapists or other strength coaches that say band training, though good for conditioning, balance and movement training, do not build big muscles. Gaining more than 20 lbs( 11 kg ) like the other guy stated is what we call ‘ beginner’s gain’. Funny thing is that he said in his first post that he’d trained in a gym before but never saw as much weight gain till training with bands. IT doesn’t make any sense unless he didn’t train with any structure in the gym. Even then, how do you know it’s from muscle hypertrophy? I mean, I can gain 10 lbs if I just wanted to by overeating. Then that wouldn’t be from muscle gain.
Sergio, that’s a good point. Sometimes people follow a bad weight training program, putting the blame on the weights instead of the program. Or they don’t do a good job of following the program, putting the blame on the program instead of themselves.
I remember when I first started lifting weights, the trend was to say that hypertrophy training wasn’t good for building muscle. Mehdi from StrongLifts and Mike Matthews from Legion Athletics were both saying they tried bodybuilding, but it didn’t work—that they were only able to build muscle once they switched to low-rep strength training. I think it’s the same thing. They either weren’t following a good hypertrophy training program or they weren’t following it properly. That might explain why a method that’s slightly less ideal for building muscle gave them better results.
On the other hand, there’s something to be said for individual differences, as well as for finding a style of training that resonates with us. If someone prefers callisthenics, resistance bands, CrossFit, or powerlifting to conventional hypertrophy training, they might get better results from that extra enthusiasm. And that’s great.
The reason I wanted to write this article was because some of the resistance-band promoters were making false claims. I’ve written about that here. I want people to have an accurate understanding of the pros and cons. From there, they’re free to choose whatever method they prefer. If someone prefers bands, that’s great.
David, I agree. I think callisthenics and weight training both have a nice feel to them. They feel natural and athletic. We’re moving our bodies in the way we’re made to move them. Resistance bands have this alien resistance curve that doesn’t occur in nature, doesn’t quite line up with our internal leverage. I think we can feel that. I think that’s why it feels less satisfying. Some exercise machines have that same feel to them. The better ones take it into account.
You’re right that resistance bands make the lockout much more challenging. However, recent research shows that skipping the lockout entirely stimulates more muscle growth (study). Much better to challenge yourself at the beginning of the range of motion. The end feels the hardest but stimulates the least amount of growth. So with resistance bands, you need to do more difficult work to get a comparable amount of muscle stimulation. Mind you, some people really like that feeling of the burn.
Either way, we’re talking about relatively small differences, and if you put in the work, you’ll get great results. I’m not trying to discourage you. You will do great. My only goal was to help people make an informed decision about whether to choose bodyweight training or resistance bands, or decide whether to invest in a pair of adjustable dumbbells instead of resistance bands. If you already have an enjoy resistance bands, and if you’re already getting great results, I have no doubt you can continue killing it 🙂
Awesome respone Shane, thanks!
I agree, more people are favouring weights over resistance bands, because of the simple fact, that lifting a weight feels more satisfying for most people. I also think its satisfying. I like to move/lift weights. Nothing wrong with that.
Thanks for your deeper dive into the studys and explanation about the EMGs. That helps me to better understand.
“They say resistance bands caused fat loss but failed to stimulate a robust amount of muscle growth. They recommend bodyweight exercises and weights for building muscle. I think the findings are a bit harsh. There are certainly resistance-band programs that can stimulate robust amounts of muscle growth.”
Even with more and more data on that topic, It’s still not 100 percent clear. Even when most data or study tend to say that weights are better. Its just data, its not the fact. Too few people who built their physique with just plain bands for years. Thats why I think its hard to compare or tell that one is better than the other. But I myself think, if you want to get stronger lifting a weight, the only way to get stronger the fastest way to lift the weight is, to actually lift it. You get better with the tool you are using.
I think my soreness and strenght is improving incoporating these partials. Im still not sure if they are necessary because even with a less stretch at the beginning, in the end the lenghten muscle is still trained and I cannot perform any full rep any more.The question is if the lengthen muscle is just exchausted because the shorten muscle gets exhausted so much and if its stimulating the most growth possible.
What I can tell for a comparing is, 2,5 months ago I had a session at a friends place, where I lifted 50 kilo bench press for 5-7 reps each set. So that was like after 9 months of training almost only with resistance bands. Now 2,5 months later, since I started to do less reps (6-8 and when I reach 10-12 on each set, I go up in resistance) and incoporating these partials, my bench press is 60 kilo with 5 reps now. I just had a session today to test it. What’s also interesting, when I did a high to low chest press kneeing down on the floor with a cable machine, I felt it at the beginning way more than the banded version of course, but much less in the end range of the movement or the so called lockout. It just feels 10 times crazier harder to do that with bands. A downsight of the band is, I cannot go for max 3 reps (I wouldnt do that on the cable machine on a working set, I just figured it out, that its possible to do) or something like that on that excercise, because the band is pulling you back when you hit the bottom portion. You are forced to do at least 8 reps to be stable enough. That applies for all standing excercises. For a lat pulldown Im able to hit just 6 reps to completely tear my muscle fibers on my lat without being lifted up. For excercises with a plattform like a banded bench press, you dont have that issue. What was even more interesting, that the leg press felt way less muscle activating then the version I do with bands. I dont know if I will get a big soreness like I normally get form the bands. Even though a big soreness is not the most optimal for recovery, Im always chasing it, because it feels awesome. For a deadlift I felt less activation on my hamstrings and glutes than a banded version, but my traps are under a lot more stress on a banded version, so you need to overcome the stress on your traps to exhauste your hamstring and glutes.
My goal is like yours once Shane, to go from “Bony to Beastly” and my personal experiment is just bands and sometimes bodyweight.
To sergio:
When I was around 16, I lifted weights for a year, but nothing was on point there. Form, eating and consistency were lacking. I just didn’t know how to train properly and how to progressively overload. But since im on the world, Im eating as for 2 or 3 people and was always the skinny guy. Then in the beginning of my 20s I did a good programm where I was hitting 3600 kcal each day and I was able to progress every single training because of the energy I got from the foods. I did it consistently for 4 months and then stopped. 4 months are not a good progress to tell, but when I compare my brother, he worked out for 3 months and got already more hughe than me. Just a different bone structure and genetics. So going from 71 kilo where I was around 12-15 percent body fat to 84 kilo with a body fat of 17 percent. Thats my assumption. I do have more fat of course I added over time. But my frame in general is bigger. My arms, chest and also back got more thick and wider. Still not where I want them to be. You could look onto a picture before and after and see only slight changes, but looking into the mirror you definately see a lot of change, also people are recognizing my physique changed.
I think the strenght coached and physical therapist are not wrong what they say, but as stated before, to less examples who tried building body with bands only for years and didnt have the mass before from lifting with weights. But a Fred Rollon was able to bench press over 140 kilo and only worked out with a chest expander, so thats crazy. I will keep trying to do my best with this tool and see where it will lead me.
Maybe one day I will end my expirement with the result, that bands are shitty or that bands are great for building big muscle mass. I dont know yet. I will let you know!
Hi Shane,
Intuitively, the argument that bands are not as good as free weights does not make sense to me.
Let’s say your benchpress PR is 100 LBS with free weights. If you have a band that produces 100 LBS of force in the “sticking point” range of option, but 150 LBS in the “lockout”, I don’t see how that would not be the superior option. Humans can produce more force as the muscle transitions from long to short. If you can apply force such that it matches the strength curves of humans, I believe you would gain as well if not better – in addition to the other benefits of bands, like safety, cost, portability, and space utilization.
This idea of variable resistance training is not new at all, and most people are already using VRT and don’t even realize it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YLAUbh9u1O0
It’s exactly how cams work on nearly all workout machines. (Side note, some people think machines are less effective than free weights due to the lack of recruitment of stabilizer muscles – this would also be mitigated with bands to some extent.)
“The band only truly challenges our muscles at the end.” I think this argument is debatable. Companies like Serious Steel produce 32″, 36″, and 41″ inch loop bands that can produce significant forces at the start of the range of motion. If you select a properly sized band for your height, I believe you can approach the same forces as free weights in the “sticking points”.
Thanks for engaging with the community.
My pleasure, Michael! Let me try to go through your points one by one.
Intuition isn’t always right, but if you want to get an intuitive feel for why bands might not be ideal, think about what our bodies evolved to lift. We weren’t pulling against bands, we were moving our bodies around, picking up heavy objects, carrying things around, swinging axes, and throwing javelins. It would make sense if our joints and muscle insertions were designed to help us with those tasks. It would make sense if our muscles were designed to grow in response to those stimuli.
If we look at the bench press example, let’s consider 4 situations:
1. Free weights: A conventional barbell bench press that’s hardest near the bottom of the range of motion.
2. Accommodating resistance: A barbell bench press with a little bit of band tension to make it equally hard throughout the range of motion.
3. Exercise machines: A chest press machine designed (with cams) to be equally hard throughout the range of motion.
4. Resistance bands: A resistance-band press that’s hardest at the top of the range of motion.
#1, #2, and #3 should stimulate similar amounts of muscle growth. The bottom of the range of motion stimulates the most muscle growth, and both of them are challenging at the bottom. The top stimulates less muscle growth, but still some, giving the advantage to accommodating resistance. But spending more effort at the top of the range of motion tires us out, cutting the set a bit shorter, giving us slightly less stimulation at the bottom. It evens out. Most research shows similar growth between free weights and accommodating resistance, and between free weights and exercise machines. (At least in the main muscles being worked. You’re right that free weights are often better at developing the stabilizer muscles.)
#3 is where the trouble is. Bands don’t match our strength curve. Resistance bands aren’t challenging enough at the bottom. They’re disproportionately hard at the top, where it’s hardest to stimulate muscle growth. Emphasizing the lockout also stimulates less muscle growth at the distal portions of the muscles—biceps and triceps near the elbow, quads and hamstrings near the knee, etc.
We could also imagine a fourth scenario, where we do the opposite of resistance bands, putting even more emphasis on the bottom of the range of motion. For example, we could do dips instead of the bench press, and we could skip the lockout entirely. We’d expect that to stimulate even more muscle growth than the regular bench press (study). This is how I’ve been training my chest lately.
Our muscles are under the most tension at the deeper part of the range of motion. We have active tension (flexing our muscles) combined with passive tension (our muscles stretched like elastics). Our muscles aren’t working harder at the top, there are just smaller moment arms for them to overcome. They have better leverage at the top of the range of motion. But having better leverage doesn’t stimulate more muscle growth. For example, quarter squats give your quads better leverage, allowing you to lift dramatically more weight, but deep squats work your quads harder. That’s similar to what’s happening with resistance bands.
Bands aren’t safer, cheaper, as compact, or as portable as bodyweight exercises. Bodyweight exercises are challenging but extremely effective, both for the main muscles being worked and for the stabilizer muscles. For example, push-ups are as effective as the bench press for building a bigger chest, with the added benefit of working your abs and serratus muscles. Dips are arguably even better.
You can get bands at different lengths, and you can do deeper partials, but the band still adds disproportionate tension at the top of the range of motion. I think it’s better to emphasize the deeper part, lift with a natural free-weight resistance curve, or keep tension relatively constant throughout. There are exceptions, of course, but I think that’s a good rule of thumb.
Also, I’m arguing with you, but that’s because I enjoy arguing (and hope you do, too). I know you can stimulate muscle growth with resistance bands. I have no doubt you can be healthy, strong, and build a great physique with them.
I think your “sticking point” is that “Resistance bands aren’t challenging enough at the bottom.” This is really the central part of your argument. I can’t argue with that, to be honest. Bands will not produce that type of force, and if they do, you most likely won’t be able to move through the full ROM because the band is insanely oversized. The feature of gravity it kicks in 100% once the supporting force is removed. Bands just can’t do this.
I feel like you can get pretty close though with the right size/type of bands even getting clever with stacking bands. I like to keep things simple, so for me, a single band is the way. I will say that I consider the fact band’s force production approaching zero when they are unstretched is a feature to me, not a bug. My primary goal is to not get hurt, second is to build muscle.
If you were to assign an effectiveness score to free weights and bands and assume free weights are 100%. I think the bands are closer to 100% than to o%. Proper-sized bands, bars, and stabilizer plates all help you get bands to work closer to the effectiveness of gravity-based resistance training with a better safety profile.
I would like to see a study where all this is accounted for (lots of researchers use tubes or Therabands for studies). It would be fascinating to see the injuries too.
There is a lot of nuance to unpack with bands. I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I have never heard of the evolutionary argument against bands. That’s a new one 🙂
Thanks again.
Something I don’t often see accounted for, not even by people encouraging the use of resistance bands for resistance training or the methods sections of the rare study that attempts to look at anything touching on this question, is configuring yourself and your bands such that the resistance curve is as flat as you can practically make it for each movement. (Sometimes it’s more complicated, but often this just comes down to “stand far away from the anchor point, and use ‘less resistance’ than you would if you were standing closer”.)
I’ve been using resistance bands pretty much exclusively for about two years now and continue to see results I would characterize as “great”, though I’m not consistent enough about either the training or going in for DEXA scans to draw firm conclusions on effectiveness even just for myself. I actually bought a force gauge and a little improvised apparatus to loop my resistance bands around it appropriately, and every now and then I’ll measure how the resistance at the beginning of my ROM compares to the end for my band movements. For all of my movements as I do them, even ones where I sometimes find it hard to make it “feel like” they’re appropriately challenging at the bottom, I measured a minimum resistance of about 70% – 80% of the maximum resistance; while I’d assume that means something, I would just be absolutely shocked if that makes the enormous difference compared to free weights that Shane seems to think it must.
(Especially considering that, if you do the trigonometry on it, the force of gravity that’s actually resisting the movement of the muscles you want to work for many free weight movements that people like to do isn’t anything close to flat either! e.g. I don’t think anyone should waste their time on free weight lateral raises, where the effective resistance is literally 0 at the very bottom, if they have bands they could be anchoring at just the right height and distance instead so it’s nice and challenging throughout the ROM.)
On the other hand, I could easily imagine the same movements done without much thought put into actually trying to make the movement effective have more like 0% resistance at the bottom — or even, I dunno, 35% if you’re “trying” but not really trying — and who knows where people fall on this spectrum when they actually try using the things.
“Resistance bands used to build muscle require putting a certain type of thought into what you’re doing that free weights don’t and there’s very little guidance out there on how to get this right so you kind of have to derive it from first principles” is a fine criticism of them, though it’d be a very different criticism from “unequivocally less effective than bodyweight exercises”.
To James: I don’t disagree as much as you think I do.
I don’t doubt people can get great results with resistance bands. I think they can make up for the disadvantages with some cleverness and grit. Maybe not all of the disadvantages. I’m not sure you could replicate all the benefits of doing deadlifts. But deadlifts aren’t exactly a mandatory lift anyway. Many people who lift weights don’t do them. And besides, resistance bands have other advantages to offer.
I know free weights don’t have a flat resistance curve. Sometimes that’s a good thing. The long moment arms at the bottom of push-ups, dips, bench presses, deadlifts, and squats make the lifts harder near the bottom. That’s great. Other times, as you’ve noted, the moment arms are most extreme at the top. Bands don’t make that better, though.
For example, with lateral raises, you could set up a resistance band beside you, such that you get resistance at the very bottom of the range of motion. You could also do dumbbell lateral raises while leaning or lying on your side, getting even more resistance at the bottom of the range of motion and without the extreme tension at the top.
I don’t think resistance bands are enormously worse at stimulating muscle growth. I suspect they’re ever-so-slightly worse at stimulating muscle growth. As mentioned above, I think you can make up for those slight disadvantages with cleverness and grit.
I’m not too worried about someone needing to learn how to use resistance bands properly. I think it pays to learn to do resistance training as well as you can, whether that’s using bodyweight, resistance bands, weights, or exercise machines.
I wrote this article after getting the 50th email from a skinny guy asking about resistance bands, convinced they stimulated 3x more muscle growth than free weights. Most were referencing the ads for the X3 Bar, but tons of other resistance-band promoters were claiming that resistance bands were far superior to weights.
I was skeptical. I looked at the study being referenced. It was a study on accommodating resistance, not resistance bands. It didn’t show 3x more muscle growth from using resistance bands. It was a patently false claim. That bothered me.
That false claim doesn’t undermine resistance bands, though, just certain promoters. So I tried training with resistance bands, and it felt harder to work my muscles hard, and they didn’t feel as sore afterwards, and I found progressive overload somewhat more confusing. Those aren’t insurmountable challenges, though.
I reached out to the top hypertrophy experts. All of them told me that bands can be handy in a pinch, but that weights are popular for a reason—they likely work somewhat better, though perhaps only very slightly.
That’s when I wrote this article. I wasn’t trying to say that bands are awful. Just that they probably aren’t better. In fact, they probably makes it at least slightly harder to build muscle. Big emphasis on slightly. Also, something being harder doesn’t mean impossible or unrealistic or anything like that. If someone wants to bulk up with resistance bands, more power to them! That’s great.
I wouldn’t make an unequivocal claim about the superiority of any one style of training. I think a mix of bodyweight, dumbbell, barbell, and machine exercises gets you the best of all worlds. I don’t even train that way, though. I train in a simple barbell home gym. I know the disadvantages of that, and I’m happy with them.
However, I do think if we compare the different styles of training, and if that training is fully ideal, then resistance bands are slightly behind dumbbell, barbell, exercise machine, and bodyweight training. And if the training is average, as it is for most people, then resistance bands probably fall a bit further behind.
In your case, it sounds like you’re doing great. I’m not suggesting you change. I’m not trying to discourage you. As I said, I’m comfortable with the limitations of my own training. I don’t expect people to blindly chase whatever seems ideal on paper.
To Michael: Yeah, I agree. I’d guess that bands are somewhere between 60–90% as effective as free weights. I’m leaning more towards 90% for the movements bands are well-suited for. Maybe more like 60% when comparing resistance-band lat pulldowns against chin-ups, or if we’re talking about exercises like deadlifts. I suspect the disadvantage can be overcome with extra grit.
Resistance training isn’t very dangerous, especially if you do it properly. We could look at guys maxing out on the barbell bench press without safety bars or guys knocking out their eyes and teeth with snapped resistance bands, but that stuff is easily avoidable with proper due diligence. I’m not sure resistance bands are necessarily safer, though they certainly could be.
I wasn’t trying to make an evolutionary argument, just trying to say that intuitively, one might assume that the more natural way of training would produce better results. It was a naturalistic fallacy argument on purpose, because that fallacy plays into intuition.
Hi Shane,
“I don’t expect people to blindly chase whatever seems ideal on paper.”
Thats a smart approach. I’m doing the same. Only because some experts, people with a phd, coaches and expert say something, there is no reason to blindly believe it. If everyone would believe everything other people say, then you cannot be successful, if you think something works out for you. With that thinking you can also be successful in other aspects of life.
I’m going to do the band workouts because I believe they give me great results and will continue to do so in the future. Also, I incorporate bodyweight workouts because I like to do them as well. But mainly resistance band workouts. There is no study or data of a people who worked out with bands for 2,3, or 4 years. That’s why no one can be 100% sure.
The force of a band at the negative, if you resist against it, is higher than the force of a weight. That means the lengthened muscle is under more load or stress than a weight. That’s my personal experience training with weights, bodyweight, and resistance bands.
That sounds great. I hope it goes well. I think it will 🙂
Nothing really to say here on topic, but it’s awesome that you’ve engaged respectfully and fully with every commenter here. That speaks to your integrity along with your professionalism. I found this article after a random Google search about resistance band training as I’ve just started a second phase of 75 Hard (death to dad bod!) and was looking for ways to add some variety to my typically dumbbell-heavy workouts.
I’ll definitely dig into Bony To Beastly, simply from the way you engaged all the folks above. Spot on!
Thank you so much, Matt!
Good luck murdering your flesh cage. I hope your inner patricidal spirit wins out.