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10 resistance band exercises you can do at home

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1 year ago

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10 resistance band exercises you can do at home

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Resistance bands are large elastic or fabric bands used for strength training and improving balance, flexibility and mobility in all areas of the body.

They can help build muscle, improve physical function and strengthen bones without having to use heavy weights or signing up to an expensive gym membership.

Resistance band exercises can also improve your balance, reducing the risk of falls and injury, and making everyday activities, like carrying something heavy or climbing stairs, easier.

Here are my tips on how to use resistance bands, plus 10 different exercises you can try for your back, shoulders, chest, arms and legs.

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Benefits of resistance bands

  • They’re cheap – you can usually buy 1 or 2 bands from your local sports shop or online for around £10.
  • They’re lightweight – resistance bands are light and do not take up much space, so you can even take them on holiday.
  • They’re versatile – you can perform lots of different exercises that target many different muscles with just 1 band.

Finding the best resistance band

There are a few different types of resistance bands. Some are just long bands, while others form a loop and some have handles at both ends.

You can also get them in a variety of sizes and resistances (which is how hard they are to stretch).

For the exercises below, you just need a long elastic band, so most resistance bands should work.

Make sure the band you use has the right amount of resistance for you – it needs to be stretchy enough for you to complete the entire movement but have enough tension to feel it in your muscles.

You might want to get a set of several bands so you can change the resistance as you try different exercises and get stronger.

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Getting started with your resistance band workout

You can choose to perform all these exercises either standing up, sitting down or a combination of both.

In the video above, you can watch me demonstrate the exercises standing up, and Peter Richards, who has participated in cardiac rehabilitation, perform them sitting down.

Inhale as you begin each movement and exhale as you do the movement.

If you’re finding the exercise too difficult to complete while keeping the right form, use a band with less resistance, so it’s easier to stretch.

Try to perform some or all of these exercises at least 2 to 3 times a week. Make sure to leave at least a day in between each session so your muscles can rest.

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If you have a heart condition or high blood pressure, check with your doctor or cardiac rehabilitation team before you get started.

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Resistance band back exercises

1. Pull apart

This exercise targets your upper back muscles, which can help to improve posture. It also opens your chest.

This can be helpful after you have fully healed from a sternotomy (a procedure where the chest bone is cut to operate on the heart).

 

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  1. Sit or stand with feet hip-width apart.
  2. Hold the resistance band with both hands at shoulder level, shoulder-width apart, and your palms facing down.
  3. Keeping your arms straight, pull the band by moving your hands round to the side until your shoulder blades squeeze together.
  4. Slowly return to the starting position.
  5. Repeat the exercise 8 to 12 times.

Next step: Start the exercise with your hands closer together so the band is tighter to make it more challenging.

2. Lat pull down

This exercise strengthens your ‘lats’, which are large muscles in the back.

Peter performing a seated lat pull down.

  1. Sit or stand with feet hip-width apart.
  2. Hold the resistance band with both hands about 6 inches (15 cm) apart.
  3. Lift the band above your head just slightly in front of you, with your arms out straight.
  4. Move your hands away from each other and bring your elbows down until the band is below your chin.
  5. Slowly bring your hands back together and move the band back above your head.
  6. Repeat 8 to 12 times.

Tip: To decrease the resistance, start with your hands further apart.

Resistance band shoulder exercises

3. Dumb waiter

This movement builds strength in the rotator-cuff muscles, which helps the shoulders stay stable as you move.

Hara and Peter performing a standing and seated dumb waiter exercise.

  1. Sit or stand with feet hip-width apart and your arms by your side and bent at the elbows so they’re at 90 degrees.
  2. Hold the resistance band in front of you in both hands so it’s slightly tight.
  3. Try to keep your elbows by your side, move your hands out to the side away from each other and squeeze your shoulder blades together.
  4. Slowly move your hands back to the centre.
  5. Repeat 8 to 12 times.

Next step: After you move your hands to your side, straighten your arms out to the side for an extra stretch. 

4. Lateral raise

This is another exercise that can strengthen the shoulder muscles.

Peter performing a seated lateral raise.

  1. Sit or stand up straight with your feet together.
  2. Place the middle of the resistance band under 1 foot.
  3. Hold the ends of the band in each hand so the band is tight.
  4. Start with your arms slightly bent by your sides with your palms facing towards you.
  5. Raise your arms straight out to the sides until they’re at shoulder height.
  6. Slowly move your hands back down to your sides.
  7. Repeat 8 to 12 times.

Tip: Raise each arm at a time to decrease the resistance.

Resistance band chest exercises

5. Chest press

As well as mobilising your shoulders, this exercise builds strength in the muscles in your chest.

This can help with things like pushing open a door or lifting yourself up.

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Hara and Peter performing a standing and seated chest press.

  1. Sit or stand with feet hip-width apart.
  2. Put the resistance band behind your back and hold the ends with both hands, bringing it forward under your arms.
  3. Bring your elbows up and out to the sides with your knuckles facing forward.
  4. Press your hands forward until your arms are nearly straight. 
  5. Slowly bring your arms back to the starting position.
  6. Repeat 8 to 12 times.

Next step: To increase the resistance, start by holding the band tighter across your back.

Tried this at home?

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Resistance band arm exercises

6. Bicep curl

Try these bicep curls for stronger upper arms that will help you carry the shopping home or lift a heavy laundry basket or gardening waste and tools.

Hara and Peter performing a standing and seated bicep curl.

  1. Sit or stand with feet hip-width apart.
  2. Place the middle of the resistance band under 1 or both feet.
  3. Hold each end of the band by your sides with your arms straight down.
  4. Slowly curl your hands up to your shoulders with your palms facing upwards while keeping your elbows next to your sides and squeezing your upper arms.
  5. Slowly release your arms back down to your sides.
  6. Repeat 8 to 12 times.

Tip: You can lower the resistance of the exercise by lifting each arm at a time.

7. Triceps extension

This exercise helps to build strength in the triceps, which are muscles at the back of your upper arm that help you push.

Hara and Peter performing a standing and seated tricep extension.

Standing:

  1. Stand with feet hip-width apart and hold the resistance band on your right hip with your left hand.
  2. Hold the other end of the band with your right hand just behind your hip, with your elbow pointing behind you.
  3. Slowly straighten and lift your right hand behind you.
  4. As you move your arm, try not to move your elbow and avoid arching your back.
  5. Slowly return your right hand back to your side.
  6. Repeat 8 to 12 times on both sides.

Seated:

  1. Sit with feet hip-width apart and hold the resistance band on your right thigh with your left hand.
  2. Hold the other end of the band in your right hand at your hip, with your elbow pointing behind you.
  3. Slowly straighten and lift your right hand behind you.
  4. As you move your arm, try not to move your elbow and avoid arching your back.
  5. Slowly return your right hand back to your side.
  6. Repeat 8 to 12 times on both sides.

Tip: If you cannot pull the band all the way back, extend your back arm as much as you can before returning to starting position.

Resistance band leg exercises

8. Leg press

Get stronger leg muscles and more mobile hips and knees with this exercise.

Hara and Peter performing a standing and seated leg press.

Standing:

  1. Stand with feet hip-width apart and place the middle of the resistance band under the middle of 1 foot.
  2. Hold the ends of the band tight in front of you at waist height.
  3. Slowly lift your knee up, keeping the band under your foot.
  4. Slowly press your foot down into the band and towards the floor.
  5. Repeat 12 to 16 times per leg.

Seated:

  1. Sit with feet hip-width apart and move your knee towards the chest.
  2. Place the middle of the resistance band under the middle of 1 foot. 
  3. Hold the ends of the band tight by your waist.
  4. Fully extend and straighten your leg out in front of you as far as you can.
  5. Slowly lift your knee back up, keeping the band under your foot.
  6. Repeat 12 to 16 times per leg.

Tip: Hold the ends of the band lower and closer to your feet to decrease the resistance.

9. Abduction

Abductions can strengthen the abductor muscles that sit on the outside of your hips, which can help improve your balance.

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Hara and Peter performing a standing and seated hip abduction.

Standing:

  1. Stand with feet hip-width apart and wrap a looped band or tie a band around both ankles.
  2. Slowly lift 1 of your feet out to the side, with your leg straight and foot pointed.
  3. Lower your foot back to the ground.
  4. Repeat 12 to 16 times on each leg.

Tip: If you feel wobbly standing up, hold onto the wall or the back of a chair for support.

Seated:

  1. Sit at the edge of a chair with feet hip-width apart and wrap a band around both legs just above the knees and hold the ends.
  2. Place your feet slightly wider than your shoulders.
  3. Slowly press your knees out away from each other, keeping your feet steady as your legs move apart.
  4. Hold for 2 seconds, then bring your knees back together.
  5. Repeat 12 to 16 times.

10. Squat

This is a more challenging exercise that builds strength in your leg muscles, as well as improving mobility in your hips, knees and ankles.

Hara performing a squat and Peter performing a sit to stand exercise.

Standing:

  1. Stand with feet hip-width apart and place the middle of the resistance band under both feet.
  2. Hold the ends of the band at your waist.
  3. Slowly lower your hips and bend the knees as far as it’s comfortable.
  4. Slowly move back up to standing.
  5. Repeat 12 to 16 times.

Seated:

  1. Sit with feet hip-width apart.
  2. Place the middle resistance band securely under both feet.
  3. Hold the ends of the band in front of you at waist height.
  4. Stand up while keeping the ends of the band at your waist.
  5. Slowly sit back down again.
  6. Repeat 12 to 16 times.

Tip: If you cannot stand up, try a seated leg press (see above) instead to build strength in the leg muscles.

Meet the expertHeadshot of Hara Markos

Hara Markos is a Cardiac Rehabilitation Exercise Physiologist at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex, where she helps people recover from heart conditions or surgery through exercise. She’s also a course tutor and assessor for the British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR).

What to read next…

Andrew Scard demonstrates a hamstring stretch.

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“Forget living longer, exercise can make life easier right now”—a 72-year-old fitness influencer and marathon runner shares two accessible ways to start moving

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Why 21-15-9 Might be the Smartest Workout Format in Fitness – and How to Use it to Drive Muscle Growth

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Why 21-15-9 Might be the Smartest Workout Format in Fitness – and How to Use it to Drive Muscle Growth

CrossFit means a lot of things to a lot of people – because it’s made up of a lot of things.

Since the rise of the fitness giant, countless brands, events and training methods have sprung up around it – not claiming to be CrossFit, but looking suspiciously CrossFit-esque.

There are, however, a handful of things that are uniquely CrossFit: the ‘Girls’ benchmark workouts. The Hero WODs and, of course, its signature rep schemes.

Chief among them is ’21-15-9′.

The 21-15-9 rep scheme may just be the single most CrossFit thing in existence. But what exactly is it? Where did it come from? And why might it actually be better at building muscle in a hurry than its conditioning roots would have you believe?

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Let’s have a look.

What Is 21-15-9?

If you’ve never encountered it before, the format couldn’t be simpler. Choose two exercises (occasionally more) and perform 21 reps of each, then 15 reps of each, then nine reps of each, completing the entire workout as quickly as possible – with good form.

Probably the best-known example is ‘Fran’: 21 thrusters and pull-ups, followed by 15 of each, then nine. On paper it doesn’t look especially intimidating. In practice, it’s one of the most feared benchmark workouts in fitness.

Where Did it Come From?

Unlike many modern training methods, 21-15-9 didn’t come out of a study. It came from the gym floor.

CrossFit founder Greg Glassman has explained that the format emerged through years of coaching and experimentation in the 1990s. Rather than chasing a perfect sets-and-reps prescription, he was looking for a workout that allowed athletes to maintain a high power output from start to finish.

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The thinking is surprisingly elegant. You begin with 21 reps while fresh. By the time you reach the set of 15, your ability to produce force has already fallen. By the final nine, you’re significantly more fatigued – but the workload has dropped by almost the same amount.

Instead of grinding through increasingly miserable sets of the same length, the workout ‘meets you where you are’, reducing the work required as your capacity declines. The result is a workout that encourages you to keep moving instead of standing around trying to recover.

The numbers themselves are also remarkably practical. Forty-five total reps per movement provides plenty of training volume without turning the session into an endurance slog, while every set divides neatly into thirds if you need to break it up.

(Although I’ve got to be honest, I’m a 20-15-10-5 man myself, just for the sake of round numbers.)

Why Does it Work So Well?

Although there isn’t research showing that 21-15-9 is somehow the magic formula, there are obvious reasons why it consistently produces brutally effective workouts.

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Descending reps help maintain intensity. As fatigue accumulates, reducing the target allows movement quality, bar speed and overall work rate to stay higher than they would if you simply repeated the same number of reps over and over.

It also tends to land in a physiological sweet spot. Most 21-15-9 workouts take between three and eight minutes, depending on the movements and the athlete. That’s long enough to create a serious cardiovascular challenge while still requiring meaningful force production throughout. You’re taxing your anaerobic systems hard while relying on your aerobic system to help you recover just enough to keep going.

Finally, there’s the psychological trick. The hardest-looking part comes first. Once you’ve survived the opening 21, every remaining round appears more manageable. ‘Only 15 left.’ Then, ‘Just nine.’ In reality, you’re becoming more fatigued with every rep, but the shrinking target keeps you attacking the workout instead of pacing too conservatively.

Why it Might be Surprisingly Good for Building Muscle

Perhaps the biggest misconception about 21-15-9 is that it’s ‘just cardio with weights’.

Choose the right load and something interesting happens. Very few athletes complete every round unbroken. Instead, the workout naturally evolves into a series of short, broken sets separated by only a few seconds of rest.

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Your 21 might become 11-5-5. Your 15 becomes 8-4-3. Your final nine might stay unbroken – or become 5-4.

In effect, you’ve accidentally turned the workout into a form of rest-pause training.

Those brief pauses allow just enough recovery to squeeze out more high-quality repetitions before fatigue catches up again. By the latter stages of each mini-set, you’re repeatedly working very close to failure, recruiting the high-threshold motor units with the greatest potential for muscle growth.

It’s a similar principle to rest-pause training, myo-reps and cluster sets: all methods used to accumulate hypertrophy-friendly volume while keeping the load relatively heavy and the rest periods brutally short.

You’re basically speed-running a large number of hard, growth-stimulating reps in a very small window of time. Could this help explain why elite CrossFit athletes often carry an impressive amount of muscle despite spending relatively little time performing traditional bodybuilding splits?

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It’s certainly plausible, although the ‘elite’ part often selects for athletes with the greatest muscle-building potential.

Much of their training isn’t simply conditioning. It’s high-density resistance training performed under accumulating fatigue, with only fleeting recovery between efforts. In other words, they’re often doing something bodybuilders have deliberately programmed for decades: packing a lot of hard work into a very short period of time.

That’s not to say 21-15-9 is superior to a well-designed hypertrophy programme. If your sole goal is building muscle, there are more efficient ways to do it.

But if you’re looking for a workout that develops fitness, tests your mettle and still provides a meaningful stimulus for strength and size, it’s easy to see why this deceptively simple rep scheme has remained one of CrossFit’s defining fingerprints for more than 20 years.

Best Bodyweight 21-15-9 Workout: ‘JT’

If you’re looking for an interesting twist on the 21-15-9 format, look no further than Hero WOD ‘JT’, which concentrates the muscle-building potential of the format into a brutal upper-body workout.

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Created in honour of Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Taylor, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006, the workout strips away barbells altogether and relies solely on three bodyweight movements:

21-15-9 reps of:

Don’t let the lack of equipment fool you. The volume – 45 reps of each movement, 135 reps in total – combined with the descending rep scheme makes this a brutal upper-body test, hammering the shoulders, chest and triceps while demanding serious muscular endurance.

Better still, it perfectly demonstrates one of the biggest strengths of 21-15-9. As fatigue mounts and the sets naturally fragment, the workout begins to resemble one giant rest-pause set, allowing you to accumulate a huge number of hard, near-failure reps in less than 10 minutes.

If your goal is building an impressive upper body while developing serious work capacity, there are few bodyweight workouts that deliver quite so much bang for your buck, making ‘JT’ one of my personal favourites.

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If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.

Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.

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