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Can you build muscle with resistance bands? Yes, absolutely. Are resistance bands better than free weights for building muscle? No. Just no. Both observation and science back this up. But if this is true, then why do resistance bands seem so popular these days and why do you hear so many people claiming bands are better?
The Rise Of Resistance Band Training During Covid
Resistance bands have been around for ages, but there was a huge surge in popularity in 2020. When the covid pandemic lead to gym closures, it changed the way most people worked out. If you were lucky, you had a small set of weights at home or some kind of resistance training machine. But most people didn’t. Free weights became scarce, and if you could find any for sale, the prices were exorbitant. Overnight, millions went from having a gym full of barbells, dumbbells and machines to having nothing to lift but their body weight.
Trainers immediately took to their social media channels, encouraging followers to hang in there and do what they could with what they had. Fitness influencers flooded instagram and You Tube with videos of how to do bodyweight resistance exercises and calisthenics. They also also demonstrated elastic resistance band exercises and encouraged people to use this training tool while they were stuck at home in quarantine.
A flood of home workout programs was hitting the market, which wasn’t a bad thing – it was helpful for those stuck at home. Many of these programs included resistance band exercise. People started doing more band training at home than ever and many found that they not only got good results, they enjoyed it too.
I had been gifted with a set of tube bands with various handles and bar attachments years ago, but never used them. I broke them out of the closet for the first time. I also purchased a set of loop bands, which unlike most home gym equipment, were easy to get. As luck had it, I ordered adjustable dumbbells (Powerblocks) when I caught wind of the first hint that my gym would be shut down. I must have been one of the last people to get an order in before the dumbbell shortage.
While I waited for the dumbbells to arrive, there was a two-week period when I did nothing but body weight and resistance band exercises. Many people were in similar situations – stuck with only bands and body weight and this is how they kept up their resistance training in the early days of the pandemic. At this time, bands were a great tool to have.
Even after my dumbbells arrived, I continued using bands for months until I was finally able to acquire a full home gym with barbells, a rack of dumbbells, a bench, squat rack, and a landmine. Then I went back to using free weights except for the occasional band exercise as an accessory movement. Most bodybuilders that I know, including ones who were teaching and personally using band exercises during the lockdown, did the same.
Social Media Band Training Experts Thrive
Even as the end of the pandemic was finally in sight in 2021, band training remained popular and band training gurus continued to capitalize on that and ramp up their businesses. At times, this went beyond simply saying, “Hey, bands are one more great tool to have in your training toolkit – ideal for home training and travel training” which is absolutely correct, but also went overboard, with claims of superiority or even warnings that free weights should be avoided.
There’s one prominent trainer with a channel on You Tube who promotes resistance band training and teaches viewers how to do band exercises. He’s a former bodybuilder who trained with free weights for years when he was competing, then decided to stop lifting weights completely. Now he only does resistance band training and he still has an impressive physique. He claims you can build as much muscle with bands as you can with free weights. Selling bands and band training programs is his business.
There’s another muscular guy with a large online presence who says resistance bands are better than free weights. Specifically, he claims that bands produce three times the muscle growth as free weights. He says everyone should stop weight training and switch completely to bands. He also sells resistance bands and band training programs.
There’s no evidence to suggest that resistance band training is better than free weights. In fact, we can make a case with both science and observation of common practices among bodybuilders that free weights are better, likely substantially so. Those who argue for superiority of bands are simply promoting their band training business or else they’re simply pushing their personal ideology or personal favorite training method.
So if free weights are better, how do you explain the muscular development displayed by some of these guys who train only with bands? Well, for starters we know that some of them trained with free weights for years before switching to bands. Others use bands and free weights, not bands alone. If you stop lifting and switch to bands only, it’s probably possible for you to maintain most of the muscle size that you previously built with free weights (maybe all of it). But it’s a stretch to say resistance bands are better than free weights, especially when it comes to building up maximum muscle from scratch and up close to the genetic limit in advanced bodybuilders.
If you have casual fitness goals, and or if you train at home without free weights, then band training only or band training combined with bodyweight training is a perfectly valid option that can produce some very nice results if you make it a point to train hard and train progressively.
If someone enjoys band training, and they’re getting all the results they want by using them, that’s great. It’s when trainers and fitness influencers make claims of superiority for their favorite method that they also happen to sell that you might want to be a little skeptical.
So what’s the real scoop? How effective is band training, based on science as well as real-world results?
A good place to start is to confirm that you can absolutely build muscle with resistance band training. It does work. Muscle is built through resistance training where tension is placed on a muscle and then the amount of tension is increased over time. This is known as progressive overload. Bands are a form of resistance just like free weights and you can overload with bands just like you can with weights.
Your body weight can be a form of resistance as well. Exercises like push-ups, dips and pull-ups can be extremely effective at building muscle. In, fact, bags of cat littler or hardback books in a backpack are resistance. Machines are a form of resistance too. Your muscles don’t know the difference between the types of resistance, they only know tension.
Doing exercises with any form of resistance can build muscle, and muscle growth can continue with any type of resistance as long as you can apply progressive overload over time.
However, to understand the benefits as well as limitations of band training, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons before making a decision about using resistance bands. As you’ll see, many of the benefits of bands are practical ones, not necessarily better muscle-building benefits.
Pros And Cons Of Elastic Resistance Band Training
Maybe the biggest advantage of bands is they are light, portable and convenient. They can be tossed in a gym bag or backpack or packed in a suitcase. Even a whole set of bands is still compact and lightweight. That makes bands fantastic for training while you are traveling. And even if training with free weights is your primary type of workout, and even if you feel you get the best results from free weights, you may be able to at least maintain your gains with band training while you’re on the road.
Plus, interspersing band workouts with heavier free weight workouts can take some stress off your joints so they feel better when you go back to free weights.
Bands are a great tool for people who want to train at home and don’t want to join a gym. Whether that’s to save driving time, to have solitude instead of crowds, or to save on gym membership dues, these are all valid reasons to train at home. (And more recently, add covid-19 to the list of reasons that more people are training at home).
It’s ideal to have a home gym with some weights like a set of dumbbells and adjustable bench at the minimum. Even better with a power rack and barbell set as well. But whether do have free weights at home or not, bands are a great tool to include in any home gym, especially when you don’t have much room. Bands are exceptionally good for pulling exercises when you don’t have a cable pulley machine at home (and many don’t).
Versatility is another benefit of resistance bands. This is especially true if you compare bands to weight machines because many exercise machines only allow you to perform one exercise or just a few exercises. There’s huge number of exercises you can do with a single set of elastic bands. There are so many, it’s almost limited only by your imagination.
However, dumbbells and barbells are also highly versatile, so I wouldn’t say variety is a unique advantage of elastic bands over free weights. There are hundreds, even thousands of exercises you can do with dumbbells and barbells.
On a similar note, bands are unique in the way they offer resistance through various angles and planes of motion that can’t be duplicated by free weights. That’s because the bands don’t depend on gravity to provide the resistance. With one band, you can do pushing and pulling exercises through countless different angles that would require multiple machines costing thousands of dollars each to duplicate. In addition, many of these angles can’t be duplicated at all with free weights because gravity only pulls weight one way – down.
Many studies on band training were performed with elderly people as subjects. When you look at the results of this research you see that not only were they able to gain muscle and strength, but also the ease of use and safety of bands made them a good choice for that demographic, even people with osteoarthritis (fibromyalgia too). However, in the pro free weights column, with proper exercise instruction, and very gradual progression, even older men and women can benefit from free weight training if they don’t have special limitations.
Bands are generally considered very safe, but they can break, resulting in an accident as minor (but painful) as a giant rubber band snap, or as serious as losing an eyeball. The quality of bands can vary and some may be more susceptible to breakage than others. If you overstretch a lighter band, when instead you should have moved up to a heavier band, that also increases the risk.
In addition, if a band is not properly secured to an anchor, it can snap back and strike you even though it didn’t break. This can easily happen when you’re standing on a band to anchor it and it slips out from underneath your foot. Bands are considered a joint-friendly form of training, but as you can see, injuries can arrive in other forms than exercise-induced joint pain.
A large high-quality single band could easily run more than $40, but compared to machines and free weights, they are inexpensive and that’s another advantage.
There are also clinical and rehabilitative applications for elastic resistance, as well as sports and athletic training uses. These are beyond the scope of this short article, but chalk them up as yet more benefits for bands.
Are Resistance Bands Better Than Free Weights? Are Free Weights Bad Or Injury-Causing?
There’s no question bands are are an effective training tool. But the problem is when fitness personalities start claiming bands are better than free weights, or even make controversial statements like insisting free weights are bad for you and will only get you injured. This is when we need to acknowledge the cons of band training not just the pros, and also look at what the science says.
The subject of band training has been studied, though we still need more research because the studies that have been done had very little standardization. The types of workout programs used have varied so much it’s hard to make comparisons or come to definitive conclusions. In addition, while some studies show similar muscle activation between free weight and resistance band exercises (according to EMG), there’s very little research that actually measures muscle hypertrophy over time.
In 2019, the first systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on band training was published in Sage Open Medicine. A total of 23 studies were analyzed. What this research found is that band training can produce similar results in muscle size and strength and provide similar benefits for maintaining muscle as well, at least in the populations that were studied. The authors concluded:
“Evidence from this study suggests that resistance training with elastic devices provides similar strength gains when compared to resistance training performed from conventional devices. These findings allow coaches, physiotherapists, and even patients to opt to use devices with low costs, ease of handling, and which can be used in different places, for maintenance and gain in muscular strength.”
This research review acknowledged many of the band benefits I mentioned above, in addition to suggesting that results in muscle growth could be similar with what you’d achieve using free weights. But it also explicitly pointed out that band training was not superior to free weights.
While we need to see more well-controlled research on muscle growth, and I hope we do, I’m skeptical that any new studies will ever demonstrate that resistance band training is better, especially among advanced strength athletes or physique athletes.
The Progressive Overload Problem
Bands may sound good, but it’s not all upsides. In my view, one of the major drawbacks of elastic resistance is that it’s more difficult to apply progressive overload over time with any kind of precision.
You can apply progressive overload with band training – you just put more stretch (choke up) on the same band or move up to a heavier band – but it’s harder to quantify. It’s much easier to track your progress and see the load increases with free weight training. You can count it right down to the pound by tracking volume load.
With weight training, you can use a 200 pound barbell on workout one, and then 205 on workout two, 210 on workout three and so on, or whatever exact amount of resistance you need. Multiply the weight by the sets and reps and you have your total volume load and you can confirm if it went up or not. That number is sometimes called “tonnage.”
There are bands that provide different levels of resistance, and they are usually even advertised with a poundage number, but this still doesn’t provide the precision of free weights.Plus, the more a band is stretched, the more resistance it provides, so one band does not equate to one specific number of pounds of resistance. One band provides a range of resistance and you can’t quantify it with an exact number.
Resistance Curve – Mechanical Tension Problems
Another drawback of bands – and this may be the primary reason bands are less effective than free weights – is that you begin the exercise with the band providing the least resistance and then when you execute the movement and stretch the band, you end the range of motion with high resistance. This doesn’t match the strength and force curve of every exercise.
Consider the free weight squat versus the band squat. We know that results are optimal if we do a full squat or at least squat down to parallel compared to doing a partial squat. That’s the full range of motion and in the bottom position there’s a good stretch and high tension on your quads, and it’s the hardest part of the lift (the sticking point).
If you squat with a resistance band alone, it gets harder at the top when the band is stretched, but at the bottom, there’s very little resistance or the band may even go on slack. This is not an optimal resistance curve. If you’re training at home without free weights, you’d almost be better off doing a Bulgarian split squat with some added weight in a backpack or with a one-legged pistol squat with a full range of motion.
Now think about the push up. This is a pretty tough exercise with a resistance band – you can make it feel really hard at the top – enough to challenge the strongest bench presser. But it’s much easier at the bottom. If you want maximum chest development, you want to make sure there’s optimal tension in the bottom stretched position, but with the banded pushup, it’s the opposite. On the bright side, the triceps do a lot more work more to lock out, but it’s hard to argue that banded push ups are better than barbell or dumbbell bench presses for chest hypertrophy.
When it comes to back training with pulling exercises, we again see the shortcoming of bands. You’ve probably noticed how the row is easier at the bottom and harder at the top. It’s easy to start the rep at the bottom, but harder to touch the bar to your stomach when rowing. When doing pull-ups, again, it’s easy to start the rep, but hard to finish and get your chin over the bar. If we wanted a better strength curve, we’d want an exercise where the resistance makes the easy part of the rep harder. But when you row with a band, the bottom stays the easiest, with the least amount of tension on the muscle.
And think about the barbell curl. In a standing curl, you have the least resistance at the bottom, the most resistance in the middle, and then again less resistance at the top. In a band curl, you have the least resistance at the bottom, with the resistance increasing the higher you curl the weight and the most resistance at the top. Similar to our squat analogy, we could argue that this is almost like doing a partial curl, which would be considered cheating in free weight training. The bottom part of the movement simply doesn’t receive much tension.
You can choke up on the band so there is already tension at the bottom, and to some degree you can control how much tension. But there will always be less tension at the bottom and more at the top. And if you start with the band too stretched at the bottom, it’s nearly impossible to finish the rep at the top. Some band exercises feel really good and have a pretty smooth resistance curve, but the resistance curves on a lot of band exercises can feel kind of funky.
These examples all reveal the limitation of doing band training exclusively – you’ll always have more resistance and tension at the top and less at the bottom, leaving the bottom range of motion where the muscles are at longer lengths not as well-trained when using bands. And here’s why this may translate into less muscle development:
When you apply more resistance and tension when the muscle is at a longer length (the stretch part of the exercise), this stimulates more muscle growth, according to numerous research studies. The reason for the greater muscle growth with free weights is because free weights can produce more mechanical tension when the muscle is at longer lengths, and mechanical tension is the primary driver of muscle hypertrophy.
It’s not that you can’t use a full range of motion with bands – you can move your joints through the complete range. But in that bottom range, there’s less tension, and the way a lot of people use bands incorrectly, there’s no tension. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen a certified trainer demonstrating a band exercise on video where the band actually goes completely on slack at the bottom. With bands, we only get the maximum tension when we stretch the band, which is in the top range of motion. So basically, missing out on maximum tension at the bottom of the exercise is kind of a big deal.
When using bands correctly (making sure there is already tension on the band at the bottom), you get the most benefit out of them, but it’s impossible to fully load the muscle at the bottom using bands compared to free weights. This alone is the strongest argument that bands are at least slightly less effective than free weights and may be substantially inferior depending on the exercises we are comparing.
Looking At Real World Results…
Anecdote and testimony are considered the types of evidence that carry the least weight, but sometimes simple observations lead to conclusions that are hard to deny. If we look at how the best physique athletes in the world train, it brings us to the almost undeniable conclusion that band training alone isn’t as effective increasing muscle size as free weights.
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a bodybuilding champion created from scratch exclusively with band training. Maybe someone has done it, and I’m sure some nice physiques have been built with bands alone, just as fine physiques have been built with bodyweight exercise alone. But I’ve personally never met or seen a bodybuilder at the competitive level who used only bands.
Also, studies looking at the methods of competitive bodybuilders show that all of them train with a variety of free weight and machine exercises on body part split routines. Sometimes they add band exercises to their weight training routines, but they don’t train with bands alone.
How do we reconcile this with the research I cited which said equal results can be achieved with either modality? Well, there’s little if any scientific research on band training in experienced physique athletes who are pushing to maximize gains, yet there’s decades of anecdotal evidence showing that free weights maximize gains in that population. It wouldn’t surprise me if more studies showed that rank beginners or older men and women got similar gains with band training as free weight training, but I doubt we’ll ever see greater gains in bodybuilders or people wanting to maximize strength.
Speaking of strength, one argument used by band training advocates is that resistance bands are used by some of the best powerlifters. In fact, advertisements for one of the popular elastic resistance devices on the market today cited a study about this to “prove” their point that bands are superior. However, this was a study about powerlifters attaching bands (or chains) onto the barbells. This is known as accommodating resistance. The lifters didn’t do band exercises alone.
So it doesn’t appear that either top physique athletes or strength athletes are succeeding by using resistance band training alone. What we have seen, and readily so because of the modern social media landscape and especially in the covid and post-covid era, is recreational bodybuilders are sometimes including band training in combination with their weight lifting.
And yes, it’s true, every so often you see a former lifter or bodybuilder who stopped using free weights completely and now only does band exercises. Just remember, they built the muscle with weights and now they are maintaining with bands. There’s still not much real-world evidence that you can build as much mass from scratch with bands as you can with weights.
Concluding Thoughts And Recommendations
In wrapping up, I want to emphasize that I didn’t write this post to knock band training. Resistance bands can be a great tool. I was very happy to have them during the lockdown and I used them for many months along with my dumbbells. There are some band exercises I really like. Others I think are less effective and there are some I would go as far as calling novelties.
I’m also not suggesting you can’t build muscle with resistance bands. You can build muscle with resistance bands. My goal here was to answer the question, are resistance bands better than free weights for building muscle, a claim that has been made by people promoting band training products and programs. The combined weight of both scientific and anecdotal evidence says the answer is no.
If your goal is to build the most muscle possible or to be a successful physique athlete, it’s short-sighted to think that bands alone will do it. If on the other hand, if you’re a retired physique athlete, or an older lifter now struggling with joint pain, it may be possible to maintain most or even all of your muscle with bands alone. It looks like a number of people are successfully doing that. Also combining band exercises with free weights instead of using one or the other alone is a potentially useful strategy.
If we’re going to consider anecdotes, be cautious about looking at only one (especially a “social media influencer”). Instead look collectively at a whole group or population and see what the majority of them are doing. A single person who looks incredibly muscular and says band training alone is what created that look may not be a reliable example. He may have built his physique entirely on heavy free weight lifting and it’s not as hard to maintain what you already have than it is to build in the first place. Furthermore, he may be a genetic outlier and also may be using performance-enhancing drugs
If your goal is general fitness and an athletically-muscular physique, there’s little doubt you can achieve that with bands alone, or bands combined with bodyweight and or free weight exercises. If you train at home, bands are a great tool to have. If you travel a lot, they are incredibly useful. I’d also recommend you learn how to do some bodyweight exercises as well.
If you’re in the older age demographic and intimidated by free weights or suffering from osteoarthritis, bands can be an excellent tool. If you’re working around joint pain or injuries, bands are a good choice for rehabilitation at any age. Bands can be useful to almost everyone for occasional variety or convenience.
But if you are young, have healthy joints and your goal is building the absolute most muscle and strength as you can, then I don’t think it makes sense to use elastic resistance instead of conventional free weights, especially if you’re doing it hoping for better results. There’s little evidence other than a few people’s controversial claims that band training alone can build more muscle than free weights, let alone a competition-worthy physique. If someone does it, I’ll be the first to congratulate them.
Ultimately, when it comes to maximum gains for the advanced trainee, there’s nothing better than barbells and dumbbells and many free weight-loading, weight stack and cable-pulley machines are pretty darn good too.
-Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss expert. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking. Tom is a former competitive bodybuilder and today works as a full-time fitness coach, writer, blogger, and author. In his spare time, he is an avid outdoor enthusiast and backpacker. His book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and now as a hardcover and audiobook. The Body Fat Solution, Tom’s book about emotional eating and long-term weight maintenance, was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom is also the founder of Burn The Fat Inner Circle – a fitness support community with over 52,000 members worldwide since 2006. Click here for membership details
Scientific References:
Anderson C et al, The effects of combining elastic and free weight resistance on strength and power in athletes, J Strength Cond Res, 22(2):567-74. 2008
Hackett, D et al, J Strength Cond Res. 27(6):1609-17. Training practices used by male bodybuilders. 2013.
Lopes D, Effects of training with elastic resistance versus conventional resistance on muscular strength: A systematic review and meta- analysis, Sage Open Medicine, 7, 1-7, 2019
Oranchuk DJ, Isometric training and long-term adaptations: Effects of muscle length, intensity, and intent: A systematic review, Scand J Med Sci Sports, 29(4):484-503, 2019
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