Something about resistance bands that just the friction it will take the skin right off your hands so make sure that you use gloves. I like full finger gloves because a lot of times you are getting a lot of contact with your fingers in my bag.
I also have this guy right here. This is a door anchor. So on the end, so it's, not a soft spongy foam and, on the other end, is a loop. This is a super awesome tool for being able being able to Train wherever you want to Train.
I'm gonna show you how I use it for our anchored exercises. So I'm, going to show you some unanchored exercises, meaning we just use our body to anchor the bands and then some are anchored now. If I was in a park and I had to pull up bar, I could go ahead and I can anchor the bands to that, but with a door anchor anywhere that you've got a door.
You can use this as an anchor point. So I'm, going to show you some of those exercises. So let's. Jump into this. I'm gonna get started here. Dump all my bands on the floor. We're, going to start with an unanchored exercise and this one's, a really simple one: you're gonna, be like god, it's.
So simple that's too easy huh. Think again, we're gonna be doing push-ups using the bands. Now, if you do these the right way, you think oh there's, no way a push-up compares to say doing a bench. Press you'd, be surprised! So, just like all my other routines that I do, I do four sets of every exercise, so we're gonna follow my traditional rep structure, which is a twenty ten ten fifteen meaning 20 reps the first time moving into set two, which is 10 reps set three ten reps again and then finishing off with fifteen reps, but we're doing them explosively, which is something you can do with resistance bands, which is a little more challenging with free weights, because you have momentum stripping the resistance.
So you can't, do that with free weights or with bands, so that's. One of the advantages, so we're gonna take advantage of that. I, with that being said, set number one is not a warm-up set. A lot of people.
Think! Oh, you're doing 20 reps. That must be a warm-up. No, this is not a warm-up. This is a working set. Why do I do 20? Reps? One this is to set the tempo for the rest of the workout. When you go just a little bit lighter you can focus on good, solid form, meaning peak contractions.
I actually did a video recently talking about the importance of peak contractions, getting constant tension through the range of motion, which also leads into another conversation, which is time under tension, so make sure you check out some of those videos.
But what I see is a lot of people rushing through the reps and they don't get peak contractions they don't, really work. The isometric contraction they're, not even really working. They're eccentric. Contractions, so what we're gonna do here is we're gonna focus on 20 hard reps, in other words, by 10? You should already be tired and you're gonna squeeze out ten, more of them.
Struggling with Resistance Band Workouts
So now a lot of people struggle getting into position with a band. They kind of do this maneuver right here it's, actually a whole lot easier than that. So you want to bring the band across your back, not too high, because then it's going to come off you don't go to low, so I like to just get it right across my shoulder blades just like that.
Put your hands down in position, then kick your feet out. So here we go 20 good, reps chest all the way to the ground, full extension, so good, solid concentric and I squeeze at the top your isometric and then a good, controlled eccentric.
One more! I'll. Tell you what, if you do those the right way there's so much harder than you think now? How do you choose the right level? Resistance, common question you get with bands? Well one! You got to learn to train by feel don't worry about how much weight it is to me.
People get focused on the numbers on the dumbbell or how much something weighs. How much does the bar way don & # 39? T worry about the weight worry about how it feels worry about getting good contractions every single rep.
You should get to the end of your set and be really righted that edge of almost hitting failure. So, even if you're training with weights, you need to adopt that same philosophy. The best physique athletes in the world, don't train by numbers.
They train by feel so that's. That number one woo. Even if I stuck to this same band sets two in sets three for ten reps, each still gonna be hard, but what I'm going to do the challenge myself here add a little bit.
We'll, see how this goes. I may have to make some adjustments, so this right here is the extra-heavy band. So I'm going to do that in combination with the medium band. Just like you stack weights, good stack bands, just like that, oh yeah.
I can already tell this gonna be hard. I get about 90 seconds rest that's. What I like keeps the intensity up through my workout keeps my total workout time. Sure remember the more you rests the longer your workout is, but if you also have less rest time, you're, keeping your heart rate up more then.
Theoretically, you're, also burning more calories in your workout as well, because I hate doing cardio. Okay. Here we go ten reps all right now, like I said, per set, you're setting the stage for the quality of reps and the quality of contraction.
So I want you to focus on the same thing just because we're going heavier now, doesn't mean that we get sloppy. So you see, I couldn't even get the tenth one there, those that was nine and a half. What I'm going to do here for this next set.
Since I didn't get ten, and that is my goal. I'm going to drop from this medium to this guy right here, which is the light band. So I'm going to do the extra-heavy plus the light. Now the big thing here when doing push ups, what do most people do when they do push ups, they think about? How many can I do, how many push ups and they'll? Do it at all cost meetings sloppy forms, so they're, not going all the way down.
It also means that they're, not squeezing all the way up and what I want you to do as says you get to the top don't just press it here. I want you to think about squeezing your chest together. Almost think about bringing your hands together.
Obviously you're not going to because they're planted firmly on the ground, but imagine if you could squeeze your hands closer together, because that's. What your chest does has helped bring your arm across your body when we're, doing bench, press or even push-ups.
You can see that even at the top of the range of motion we're, not getting all the way across our body, so you can at least get a peak contraction by squeezing together getting a good isometric squeeze at the top.
Now keep in mind you're, not gonna be able to do as many pushups as you could, if you just rep them out, so it's, not about numbers, not about how many you can do not about how fast you Can do it's about the quality of every single rep, those 90 seconds jump in and set three all the way down all the way up: a nice isometric contraction.
Oh man, oh yeah, five, more! Six! Okay, here's, a cool little trick, couldn't, get the seventh right. What do I do here? The Bandit just like doing a drop set if you ever do drop sets with dumbbells that's.
All you do. Is you drop the weight a little bit, so we're at six, so I got four more. Oh man, I was a crappy eight. So what are we gonna do same thing? I'm gonna go from the extra-heavy right here to the heavy finish off.
Those two reps fill my chest all ready. Here we go nine. Ah there's. Ten just think this is just exercise one, but hey bands are easy: right can't build muscle with bands. If you have doubts, the bands can build muscle, make sure to check out some of the other videos that I do on the subject.
Comparing free weights to resistance bands, but also what the triggers for muscle, hypertrophy or muscle, building what they really are, because it's, not just about lifting heavier. So just know that you can build the same kind of muscle with bands you can with free weights.
Alright, here's, what we're gonna do the last set this one's hard. We're, going back to our original weight or in this case original resistance level, which is the extra heavy band here, and we're gonna do 15 reps, but we're going to do these explosively.
We're really going to fire those fast twitch, muscle, fibers and remember your fast twitch muscle. Fibers are also the ones to make. You run faster and jump higher, but also are the ones that get bigger.
They're, the ones that grow so who same set up. What I want you to do, though, is control these just because we're, doing them fast, don't. Do them sloppy, but we're gonna, do them roughly double time.
This is gonna pump a lot of blood into the muscle and again that's, a trigger in itself for muscle hypertrophy. They call that metabolic stress well. It starts to happen here, is you switch over into anaerobic metabolism and your body starts to build up, lactate and other metabolites in the muscle and then, of course, a lot of blood comes in to flush out those metabolites, and this is what we call the pump And the pump is a trigger for muscle growth, so this it's.
Gon na give you a good pump here. We go psych yourself up fifteen explosive one. What 4000 yep? How's? This exercise, one it's! Good time to take a drink of water, gather your composure and get ready for the next exercise.
Now, with resistance bands, we're, not reinventing the wheel. Here we're, not really training any different than we would train with weights or machines, same concept here same kind of split, same kind of exercise.
Variety with that being said, we're gonna be doing two compound movements, so we just did one of them. So remember: a push-up is a compound movement. We're, not just using our chest. We're, also using our anterior delts and our triceps as well.
We're gonna move into another compound movement, which is another press before we move into some of our isolation exercises to really target our chest. So this next one is a single arm, incline press and we're gonna use our door anchor here now, just like you'd approach in the gym, doing bench, press and then you'd, move to incline to Target upper chest: we're, going to do the exact same thing so first, let me show you how to use this guy.
All you need is any door it doesn't have to be a door like this any kind of door. Open the door take the soft foam end, put it through the door, make sure that the strap is flat against the door, simply close it.
That's. It now, because we're gonna be doing a incline press. That means I want my angle of pull to be going up. So what I'm gonna do is go lower with this and that's. One of the cool things is, we can anchor this at all sorts of positions.
I could anchor it really low. If I want to do some back movements, let's say I want to do straight arm push. I could incur it up high, so we're gonna anchor it down here just about hip height. Maybe a little bit lower, I'm gonna take this extra heavy band and the way you do this run it right through the loop and the anchor just a little bit just enough where you create a loop here and then you're running the band through itself, just like that.
Normally I like to do this the opposite way. So when I close the door when I'm, doing the exercise, it's, pulling the door closed, not the opportunity for the door to open, so this door swings out. So if I pull on it and it wasn't latched, it would open you don't want that you, don't want the door anchor smacking you in the back of the head, so make sure your door is Actually, shut, okay, loop, your hand right through what we're gonna.
Do the foot that's on the same side as your hand that one's. Gon na go back step far enough forward where you start to get a good stretch on your chest. Don't turn your body. This way, I want you to square up your body, and by doing so, you're gonna feel that tension on your chest, so the key to resistance band training is you need resistance all the way through the range of motion people say yeah, But there's, not enough at the bottom.
I'm doing curls and it's too easy. Well that's because you're, not stretching the band enough. So, in an anchored exercise like this, you just step further away. You have linear variable resistance, meaning the more I stretch this, the harder I get or the harder it gets.
So if I want more resistance, I set further away. If it's a little too hard, I can step a little bit closer and it'll be easier. So you're gonna have to kind of feel this out, set one ten reps or not.
Ten reps sorry already spacing out here the push-ups wore me out twenty ten ten fifteen. So we got twenty reps here. We'll, see how this feels with the extra heavy I might have to drop down to the heavy, all right so square up your chest.
You can place your other hand right on your thigh here and brace yourself. There's. One thing that people aren't used to with resistance bands. You have to stabilize yourself, and this is why it's. Great functional strength is because you have to transfer all that power from the ground up through your legs into core.
I have to stabilize here all right that's, what its gonna look like, so we're coming up to about this height right here, full extension bar step forward a little bit a little more tension. Fine, you want to feel enough resistance at the very back.
If you don't just step forward, a little bit stretch the band a little bit you'll, get more resistance. You got to feel tension at the back. You want to stretch here, adjust your foot position to get the right tension and then make sure you really get that isometric squeeze, in other words, don't just push forward here.
I want you to think about pushing towards your midline, see the difference between pushing here versus pushing here. Remember again, our chest brings our arm across our body. So if we want to really get that peak contraction, think about pushing towards your midline, just like our push-ups, now we're, going to bump up the resistance set number two.
We're, going to do ten reps same thing with set number three now here's. The thing I've got a couple options here again. Remember that bands have linear variable resistance, so this isn't. Just constant resistance level, meaning the same amount of resistance, no matter what linear variable resistance, the more I stretch it the harder it is.
So if I want to make this harder, I can just step further away, use this exact same band and step-up in resistance and get my 10 reps. So I'm, going to try that first now, here's, where it gets a little bit tricky.
I'm going to share with you something that most people don't talk about with resistance bands. The Morais pre-stretch this, the more I'm, taking the variable resistance out of it. So at the beginning of the range of motion it's almost as hard as at the end.
So I & # 39. Ve got two options here. I can pre stretch it more and then I'm, taking out that linear variable resistance and it's, going to be hard all the way at the back here, all the way through or if I want more linear variable resistance.
I'm, just gonna go ahead and add another band to it and not pre-stretch it as much so that's kind of a whole video in itself. So I'll, probably tackle that subject to another day. So this is about where I started before my feet.
I can feel that tension right, maybe not only see yeah. This is my starting point from before it. Doesn't. Take much so I'm, going to creep up a half a step and I can already feel the difference here.
We go. Oh yeah. Oh, come all the way back, get that stretch, so you can see by stretching it just a little bit more created a whole lot more resistance. One of the challenging things about doing presses, like this with bands, is that you have to stabilize yourself and that's.
The thing that a lot of people aren't familiar with they're, used to having the luxury of bracing themselves on a bench. Somehow you know laying down or sitting down, so you have nothing to brace yourself with so that's.
What makes it a challenge? The flipside is like we talked about you're developing that core strength and that stability. Now you can take all this strength and apply it to things think about. If you're, a martial artist, where do they tell you all your punching power comes from right, so it's.
It's in your lower body and it's in your core. So now we're developing functional strength. So if you're an athlete, this is especially important that's. Why the best athletes in the world incorporate resistance bands into their training yeah all right.
I want you to remember. Every single rep counts. It's, not just about your set. It's about every rep. Take advantage of the three kinds of contractions your concentric, but then get that isometric squeeze really get a peak contraction.
Then a nice controlled eccentric, so good get all three of those a lot of times. What people do is they rush it boom boom. So there's, the concentric, but there's, no isometric squeeze and there's, no control the eccentric.
So it's, not just about controlling it. You got to think about time under tension. That's; the other major variable there. So if I go out and it's, one second and one second back - that's, two seconds per rep, multiplied by ten reps: that's only 20 seconds.
A time under tension, you need about thirty to seventy seconds of time under tension per set for maximum muscle hypertrophy, so change it up. Ten reps one. Second, a second hold on your isometric and a two-second eccentric.
You just doubled your time under tension there to four seconds per rep times, ten now your forty seconds, so that falls right in that thirty to seventy seconds. So it's, not just about controlling your eccentric, just for the sake of controlling it.
For good form, there's, a reason you want to do it with that being said, we're moving in to kicking our water bottle. We are moving into our fourth set of these. Just like our pushup, we're gonna make these explosive now think about time under tension.
Again, we're, going back to fifteen reps, but think about time under tension here, because we're, doing them faster. Just because we're doing fifteen doesn't mean that this is muscular endurance. No, we're still falling in that thirty to seventy seconds of total time under attention.
So there's, still muscle, building benefits here, not to mention metabolic stress, which is what we talked about that pump doing these wraps gonna give you that pump gonna be a trigger for muscle growth.
So we're gonna strip off this light band. We're gonna go back to just the extra heavy band and we're gonna blast out. Fifteen explosive presses. Alright, maybe doing it fast, remember good form. Here we go Oh keep holding on to the band, Oh keep you from falling over other side.
I don't want you to come in all the way back. I want you to cut it short just a little bit, so full squeeze come back. 3/4 of the way, why want to keep nice constant tension? You don't want that band, going tight and slack tightly slack.
We want tension throughout the whole thing, so almost think about like pumping these out constant tension. The whole time that is our to compound movements, so now we're moving into our isolation exercises so, instead of presses, where we're using our triceps and our delts, we're gonna try to focus just on Our chest - and that means movement where we're, bringing our arm more across our body.
Think about when you look at someone bench press and you look at the contraction in their chest versus when they do cable fly's. Think about the difference when they do cable fly's, that's. When you see all the muscle, striations and the veins are popping out it's, just a much stronger contraction.
Now a lot of people are confused when it comes to muscle contractions there's, a bit of truth that gets distorted, which is people say well, you can only contract your muscle, all at the same time. Well, yeah, you can't contract.
Just part of your chest. You're gonna contract. The whole thing as far as the length, but that doesn't mean that you're activating all of those motor units you have to have peak contractions in order to activate as many of those muscle fibers as possible.
Think about it. This is what allows us to do fine, motor skills like drawing or putting a spoon into our mouth without jamming ourselves in the eye right, we have the ability to do smaller movements with those muscles or more explosive, stronger movements, basically, our brain and the electrical system, Which is our nervous system? Can fire different muscle, fibers at different times, and so our goal is to fire as many of those as possible to activate as many of those as possible.
In order to do that, you want to get full range of motion. You want to get maximum resistance at that peak contraction, so that's. What we're gonna focus on here. I'm gonna open the door, and I'm gonna anchor this right at chest height here, and we're gonna start off with let's.
Try this small one to start now. I'm, showing you exercises that you can do with just one anchor point and with just one band now it flies. If I were saying in a pull-up bar, I could anchor separate bands on both sides step through and do flies, but we're gonna.
Do a single arm fly here. One anchor point: the reason I went with the small band is: I & # 39. Ve got a lot of options here, one I can just step further away to create more resistance or I & # 39. Ve got another option, which is just simply shortening the length of the band, so I'm gonna do a combination of both I'm, going to take a little bit of this slack out.
We want to make sure that we have good tension here at the beginning, so you should feel this band pulling against you at this point. It shouldn't, be slack like this. It's too easy here in the beginning of the the movement so tension here in the very beginning chest you want to stick it out, keep your chin up and we're gonna squeeze all the way across the middle of Our body notice, I got my hand here on my chest.
I want to feel that peak contraction get that mind-muscle connection. 20 reps. Oh man, it's. 20. Now, if I were doing say, cable crossovers, I am coming more across the middle, but usually what ends up happening, your arms hit each other.
You've got limited range of motion here. What I like about doing singles is, I can come much further across my body, get more of a peak contraction. There do the other side now, whether using bands free weights common mistake that I see people making when doing any kind of fly with cables or a crossover, because it starts to look like this right here.
This is not chess. This is all triceps right here, anytime. You see this if you get a lot of movement at the elbow that's triceps, so you want to go ahead and try to keep your arms in a fixed position.
They don't have to be perfectly straight, just a slight Bend. So again, if you're, doing any kind of flier crossover, it shouldn & # 39. T. Look like this. You really want to get that peak contraction.
There really squeeze your chest: it's almost like you see, bodybuilders do a most muscular that's. What they're, doing, trying to get that peak contraction again two different options to adjust your resistance either.
I can step further away, step closer or grab it closer to the anchor point and nice thing is you can do it right in the middle of your set? Let's say I start here and I do a couple reps. I'm like oh right, dad it's too heavy.
All I have to do is just let a little bit of the band out and adjust it, so you can adjust your resistance on the fly if their dumbbells, you'd, have to go, set the dumbbells down and get another set here.
You just make those small adjustments or same thing with your feet. You want to feel every muscle that you train you, shouldn't, go through a workout and just feel tired. You should actually feel the fatigue in the pump within that muscle.
That's, the difference between like strength, building powerlifting versus what we call body building with body building you're sculpting. You're, putting muscle where you want to put muscle, which means it requires, like.
I said that my muscle connection and that focus being able to really target muscles. I always tell people all the time that if you're pushing your car, if you ran out of gas, would you rather push the car by yourself or would you have three friends help you, you'd rather, have three friends help You it's.
Gon na be easier to do. Well, your body's the same way. If you do a movement, your body wants to recruit as many muscles as possible for the movement, so it requires a lot of discipline. A lot of focus to override that and to just really focus on the one muscle that you're trying to train, not recruit other muscles.
So when we talk about isolation, that's, what we're talking about it's, almost it's, that mind-muscle connection / discipline. We're gonna. Do our third set 10 reps each side just like set two before moving on to our fourth and final set, which I already know what it is it's gonna be 15 explosive, reps.
Alright, that was our third exercise. We just have one exercise to go now. I showed you one compound movement that was unanchored, which was our pushup. Now I like unanchored exercises, because I can do those anywhere, for example, just recently I went on a trip and I did a full workout on top of a mountain.
Obviously I didn't, have a door or a pull-up bar on top of a mountain, so it's, nice to be able to have exercises that you can do without relying on a door anchor or tying the band off to something. So that's, what an unanchored exercise is.
So we did one unanchored chest movement, a compound movement that was our push up. Then we came in and we did an anchored compound movement, which was our incline press. We did an anchored isolation just now.
So now I'm, going to show you an unanchored isolation exercise for chest. First thing: we're, going to incur this right underneath our feet. You got a couple options here for increasing the resistance one.
We know that if we shorten the length of the band, we create more resistance. So by the width of my stance, you can tell I'm, shortening the band, so we can adjust it on the fly by adjusting our stance, but we can also adjust on the fly by how far down see how there's.
All this loose slack band in the middle versus grabbing up here, so we can make little adjustments on the fly to create the right resistance. Now I showed you this extra sighs. If you watch the video I did when we were out paddle boarding one day, I showed a complete total body workout.
We did this exact same movement. Now we're just doing it here in a chest, specific workout, but what it's, going to look like just in case you haven't, seen the video chest out nice and high, and we're.
Going to bring our arms straight up in front of us and together, so they're, not just coming straight out here. They're coming to the center line. Just like that, you want to keep your arms, nice and straight and really squeeze through the middle.
So you want to make sure you got good resistance down here. If you need more again, just grab lower down one more now we talked about doing most muscular body builders coming in here like this. To squeeze your chest.
There's, a second style, most muscular, you'll, see guys do and they & # 39. Ll come from the bottom up. Like this same thing, you want to focus on really squeezing your chest here's. What I don't want to see.
Is you're? Doing these, though the movement is not in your arms, in other words, it doesn't. Look like this. I don't want to see any movement at the elbow so instead of thinking about bringing your hands up, because if you focus on your hands, you're gonna have a tendency to use your biceps here to bring it up.
Like this so focus on bringing your elbows up so elbows up squeeze towards the center pinky pinky right out in front of you chin height, just like that, we're almost done with this workout. Okay, you already know the drill by now.
How many reps are we doing this next set yeah, you guessed it 10, reps, 10. Good reps, here really focus on squeezing that chest. Every rep this is home stretch now make this count. A lot of people feel make the mistake of they rushed their last sets just to get done with the workout, but you & # 39.
Ve worked this hard to get to this point. You & # 39. Ve, worked this hard to get the muscle this tired. So this is when you want to come in, and you want to finish strong. I want to keep good form mmm, feeling it gonna be sore tomorrow.
I don't think I need to tell you how many reps we're gonna do on our third set. You got the routine down 90 seconds. Rest shake it off toughen up suck it up. Six is my marker. If it's too easy, then I'm gonna grab a little bit more for the band.
If it's too hard, I'm gonna loosen up you don't, see it because it's subtle, but that's. Why? I'm, usually able to finish right on the mark like hitting that wall where it's, just like almost that point of total failure.
Why is it that I always hit my mark with my reps? It's because I'm, making those little adjustments on the fly you just can't really see it in between each rep. If I feel like it's too easy, I'm subtly grabbing just a little bit more or if it's a little bit too hard.
I'm, loosening up just a little bit, so I just seen that resistance. So when people say well, you know that's. The thing that I don't like about resistance bands. It's, not a fixed weight. It doesn't have a number on it.
You're right, it doesn't, but with everything in life it's. A double-edged sword there's, the good and there's, the bad, so the bad yeah you're right. It's, not one fixed level resistance. The good! Is it's, not one fixed level resistance, so makes it easy to really maximize the the value of every single set, and if you don't want it smacking you in your junk just take out some of that slack.
You know one likes me smack to the junk with a band. Maybe some people do not me alright, that's, it that was our complete chest workout now those are just four of my favorite exercises with chest. There's.
Actually, I can't even really call my favorite. Those are four that I use a lot. I & # 39. Ve got a lot of other exercises. If you happen to follow the TA to build program that I put together for resistance bands, there's, a ton of other chest exercises in there a lot of different variations, different angles, etc.
But those are for that, if you got a set of bands, you can take your chest workout anywhere, you want, like we talked about in the beginning, take it to the beach. Take it to your backyard. Take it on a trip you could travel around the world with a set of bands and get a workout wherever you are and that's.
One of the things that I love about bands is that freedom to be able to train wherever I want and still get an awesome workout. This wasn't some sort of subpar. You know workout that, like wow, it's better than not getting to workout at all.
No, that was just as good as any chest. Workout that I get in the gym. I feel the same kind of fatigue. I feel the same kind of pump. The same kind of burn so that's, it I'm James greige, and this has been our BT resistance band training.
I'll, see you guys. Next week we got more cool videos coming your way, so make sure you subscribe make sure you turn on notifications. So you don't miss any future videos I'll, see you guys soon.
8. Showering after a game is the best and worst thing in the world. Best, because it feels fantastic to get mud and sweat off your body. Worst, because it hurts like hell and you discover all the injuries you were not aware of.
9.Any body type is welcomed. Oh, you gained 20 pounds? Don’t worry, you can switch positions. You lost 30 pounds? We have a spot for you as well.
10.Some women actually can outdrink men.
11.You will never appreciate a shower more than you do after three days of rugby games and a toga party with no shower. It. Is. Heavenly.
12. If you have fake nails, you will not be playing rugby. If you have long nails for that matter, you will not be playing rugby. During the season, the privilege of having presentable nails is a no-no.
13.If you are in the middle of an awkward silence with someone you just met, bring rugby into the conversation. It is bound to keep, or at least start, a conversation since it is still not overly common in the U.S.
