What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Today we're going to start building some mass and our weapons of mass construction are going
to be these two bands.
You see, a lot of people have a misconception about band training.
They think that there's no way that you can build mass with bands.
It might be true if you're focusing on the big exercises and the big muscles, but the
bands are actually the perfect tool to train the small muscles that support the big muscles
to help you make those muscles bigger.
Today I'm going to show you the eight best exercises you can start doing – you need
to start doing – if you want to start increasing the amount of weight that you lift on your
bigger exercises by paying some attention to those often overlooked muscles.
Okay, first up is our band pull apart.
This is one of those exercises that targets the shoulder girdle.
Get used to it because the first five exercises are going to target this area of our body.
The band pull apart is going to help us to strengthen our rhomboids.
For anybody that has any kind of scapular instability – especially a winging of the
scapula, where they start to come off your back, the middle portion of the scapula can't
stay fixed onto your back – that causes some major instability issues when you try
to go bench press.
Now, it can be due to a weak serratus that the next exercise here will address.
These are our serratus punches.
Now, right here all we're trying to do is keep a straight arm and just straighten it
even further.
If you think you've reached out as far as you can go, try to reach out even further.
You do this because you're trying to make sure that the serratus is strong enough to
hold your shoulder blade up against your ribcage no matter what happens with your arm, no matter
how you're moving your arm.
You want that stability against your ribcage, even if it's rotated up or down.
It needs to be able to stay in contact with your ribcage if you want to be able to press
strongly.
Remember, if you're trying to execute a push with some serious strengths behind it you
have to have a stable base to work off of.
If I was trying to push this wall and my feet gave out, guess what?
I have no ability to push with any force on that wall.
The same thing is happening here, with our bench-press.
If you want to be able to push away and you don’t have any stability down below you're
not going to be able to push as hard.
So these two exercises are critical to work out that 1-2 combination.
Next we have a more dynamic version of this we call the over and back.
So what we're doing is working on both elements again.
Rhomboid strength and serratus strength, but we're doing it a little more eccentrically.
We need this dynamic control.
As I move the band in front of me I can't allow it to snap either in front of me too
quickly, and I have to make sure it keeps its distance away from my body.
The same thing when I come back behind my head.
We're going to work our rhomboids again, but we're working them dynamically and also with
control.
We can't allow it to just snap back and touch my butt with the band.
I want to be able to keep some distance away from my back as I make this transition front
to back, okay?
So another very important component – again, very often overlooked and not blaming people
because a lot of people don't know to do this.
Of course, here, when we train like athletes we've got to incorporate these things into
a complete training program.
Moving on, we're still on the shoulders, but we want to work on different areas of the
shoulders.
This time you've got to work on those lower traps.
The lower traps are going to kind of pull down and back.
So it's going to keep your shoulder blades tucked down and back.
Again, a very essential part of executing a proper bench-press, or at least a safe bench-press.
So working on that here with this overhead jack hammer is a great way to get this area
nice and strong.
Again, you incorporate this into your daily, or at least your weekly training plan, so
you have strong enough scapula so that it carries over when you go to do your bench-press
without incurring injury.
At least if you're not going to incur injury, at least increase the strength that you have
on this exercise.
So then we move on to another extremely important part of our shoulder joint and that is the
rotator cuff.
What we have to do here is we actually incorporate into one of my favorite exercise that works
our entire upper back.
It's the face pull.
You can see as I try to pull back, if I try to bring my thumbs back behind me as I'm showing
you here, that now gets a little bit of external rotation at the shoulders and the only muscles
that externally rotate the shoulders are the rotator cuff – three of the four muscles
in there for the rotator cuff.
If you are not doing exercises that purposely externally rotate your shoulder you're going
to set yourself up for an injury.
100% of the time, that's what's going to happen.
So you have to have devoted exercises that externally rotate your shoulder.
Again, this is something that we take care of automatically in our ATHLEANX training
system because we know how important it is to your overall shoulder health and how long
you can stay in the gym and how big and strong you can ultimately become.
This exercise is a great way to do that.
Next up, number six, now we move down to the lower body where we attack the hips.
The hips are an area now that have lots of muscles that intertwine and work together
and a lot of times it's the smaller ones that don't get the attention.
Sure we work on our quads, yes we work on our hamstrings, but do we work on the smaller
muscles?
You have to if you want to get the most out of those other muscles when you're trying
to execute bigger lifts.
So we work on one of the most fundamental movements of the lower body for anything.
For a deadlift, for a squat, it's the hip hinge.
This hip hinge can actually be strengthened in a really fundamental way with our hip hinge
band exercise.
You just anchor the band around your body, first of all, to let the tension pull you
back into a normal hip hinge.
Understand what it feels like to hinge the hips and not just bend at the knees.
You could save yourself a lot of potential knee problems down the road if you learn how
to execute a hinge of the hip first and then get some bend of the knee as you go down into
whatever it is, either a deadlift or a squat.
So this exercise allows us to do that and as we, of course, resist it with the band
we strengthen our gluts as we push forward.
So a great option for you to learn both the mechanics, and also strengthen those mechanics.
Number seven, now we get really creative here and it's a multi-dimensional movement.
It actually could be called Perfect Overhead Squat Exercise here, but it's the Overhead
Sidestep.
So the Overhead Sidestep, what you do is step into the band and you cross it over.
Now, with the X made you put your hands up over your head, you try to spread your feet
as far as you can against the resistance of the band, and your arms are going to be overhead
in this X position.
Here what you're working on is, can you maintain thoracic extension?
Can you stand up nice and tall?
That's what that overhead arm positioning is going to do, while you do a sidestep.
The Sidestep here is actually working on resisting abduction.
I'll tell you, you'll be amazed at how weak we are in our hips in the ability to abduct.
Some people can't even lay on the ground.
These are elite level athletes that can't even lay on the ground and execute 25 leg
lifts Jane Fonda style without it burning so bad that they can't even make it there.
That is so critically important if you want to start increasing the strength of all your
lower body exercises.
Your hips better be able to support and stabilize the bigger muscles.
Finally, hit our core.
You can't leave the core out of this, guys.
This is going to transition between the hips and the shoulder blades as your core – we
could do this with one of those often overlooked muscles as well.
That's the obliques.
Again, everyone likes to focus on the 6-pack abs, but really, what's more important to
the function of the abs are the horizontally running, the diagonally running internal-external
obliques.
So if you want to get stronger in all your core related movements you'd better start
working on your ability to get stronger through rotation.
So here we can work on those oblique muscles with this easy, easy oblique crunch.
Again, you step yourself out and you're really just working on rotating and contracting at
the same time.
You can literally see the muscles here contracting.
You want to be able to put your own fingers on those muscles and feel them contract.
They're very easy muscles to feel, even if you're carrying a little bit of body fat.
You can still feel these muscles working and you want to get into the habit of making them
work more often.
So there you have it, guys.
There's the eight best band exercises you can do, especially if you want to start building
mass.
I know it's not that sexy, but I can tell you this: if you start adding these exercises
to your routines you're going to find that those big lifts will take a big jump up because
you're finally working on the supporting muscles that you've never really worked on before.
When those muscles are in place you'd be amazed at how much power you can generate with those
bigger muscles that rely on those small muscles.
If you're looking for a program that builds them right into our program so you don’t
have to really think about it – I've already told you what exercises to do, when, and I
kind of weave them in exactly when they need to be – you can get the ATHLEANX training
program over at ATHLEANX.com.
It truly is me as a physical therapist trying to put the science back in strength and get
you not only a better program, but a safe program.
In the meantime, if you've found this video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below and let me know what you want to see on this channel here, guys.
Remember, this channel is about you.
I make the exercises and the videos that you want me to cover and see.
I'll continue to do that.
I'll be back here again real soon.
See you.