Are Booty Bands Actually Useful?

Resistance bands are portable, convenient, and definitely have their uses. It’s no wonder they’re popular, but why are booty bands the focus of so many butt-focused workouts? Let me explain what’s going on here and where these bands can actually help you in your workout routine.

What exactly are booty bands?

A “booty band” is a nickname for a type of resistance band that is a short loop, usually a few inches wide, and either rubber or thick elastic fabric. (Cloth ones are more comfortable to use.) The length makes them perfect for exercises that require a band around your legs. This includes many hip exercises that, yes, can build your butt muscles.

I have a set of fabrics similar to this one. I don’t really do “booty” exercises, but I find this type of group useful for hip warm-ups that I sometimes do before squats or Olympic lifts. When I was in rehabilitation following a knee injury, I remember a plot of this type of exercise during my physiotherapy appointments. So they’re definitely useful for more than just loot building.

Besides, there East a company called Booty Bands, but the term “booty bands” has also been applied to the general category of resistance bands that can go around your knees or thighs. There’s no shortage of workouts that incorporate the use of these bands in squats, kickbacks, and glute bridges, all while promising you major booty gains. As with many popular workouts, the promises are overblown.

Resistance Bands Have General Advantages and Disadvantages

Before we dive into booty-focused bands in particular, it’s worth taking a look at the pros and cons of all resistance bands. I compared them with dumbbells here, and as you may recall, the takeaways included:

• Resistance bands can provide more total “weight” than small dumbbells.

• Resistance bands wear out over time.

• Resistance bands change in degree of difficulty depending on how far you stretch them.

If your home gym items need to be small and inexpensive, you can go much further with resistance bands than you can with dumbbells. Indeed, it’s easy to find upper body exercises that you can do with smaller dumbbells, but you need to use a little more weight to find challenging lower body workouts. Your main options are resistance band exercises and single-leg bodyweight exercises (without a resistance band) like lunges and split squats.

Easy exercises aren’t doing you any favors

If you’re trying to build your butt, you’re trying to build muscle. And the most effective way to build muscle is to lift heavy, not a million reps of light work (although that can work, if you’re very patient).

So how do you know if you’re working hard or “hard” enough? As I mentioned before, you want to do a small number of reps (12 or less, most of the time) that are challenging enough that the last few reps feel really hard. If you’ve been using the same band or weight for a while, try a harder one every once in a while to find out if you’re stronger than you think. If so, it’s time to move forward.

I mention this here because the band portion of a “booty” workout is usually pretty easy and light. If you do band exercises And they meet my definition of heavy And if they really feel like a challenge to you, then they might just do what they promise. Stay with the groups for now.

But bands may not be enough for your entire workout. For many of us, heavy weights will be necessary to give your butt (or any body part) a proper workout. Deadlift champions need a lot of strength in their butt, but you won’t see powerlifters avoiding the bar to focus on band workouts on YouTube, you know? They will However, often use bands in addition to the bar.

Bands are perfect for warm-ups and props

Put it all together, and it’s clear that bands make more sense as a side dish to your workout, as an appetizer, or as dessert. To build muscle, the main course should probably be a more intense workout with weights, if you can swing it. Otherwise, you need to make sure your band exercises are intense enough.

If you bring your bands to the gym, you can do kickbacks as part of your warm-up or as a high-rep finisher after a leg day. You can use them for “activation” exercises, which is more or less a new word for warming up. And then you can move on to your squats, deadlifts, weighted lunges, or hip thrusts. Which brings me to another point about using booty bands at the gym: if you’re doing squats with a band around your knees, the squats do the real work, with the band offering – to continue our culinary metaphor – maybe a little garnish.