HST routine with resistance bands

D

dohste

New Member
I'm really eager to get back to a gym and start a normal free weights routine again. But it's going to be another month or two yet before I can manage that. So in the mean time I'm going to see if I can try using the HST principles to put together a somewhat effective hypertrophy routine using only resistance bands.

I've tried searching, and while there's a good bit of information discussing the effectiveness of bands vs. free weights in general, I haven't found much relating to someone trying to put together an entire HST routine using only resistance bands. As I see it there are two major differences between bands and free weights:

1) It's more difficult to establish exact weights using bands.
2) The tension provided by the bands is not linear; so there's very little resistance at the beginning of a movement and the resistance then increases as you stretch the band.

The 1st point is little more than a small inconvenience, as you can just go by colour and still accomplish progressive load. So then the real question is how much you're missing out on by not having the resistance from the very start of the exercise as you do with free weights.

I'm going to try a fairly vanilla HST routine and would appreciate any feedback, all exercises performed using resistance bands. I would especially be interested in knowing if anyone thinks a different exercise would be better for a specific body part. For example, I'm not all too sure about the chest exercise:

Squats (http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...ats-with-bands)
Stiff Legged Deadlifts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q09jQsBB0fQ)
Seated Two Arm Chest Press (http://www.bodylastics.com/chest/)
Seated Band Row (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz29bq7gVbg)
Shoulder Press (http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercise...ess-with-bands)
Bicep Curls
Tricep Extensions
Standing Calf Raises

Thanks for any feedback!!
 
There is one other factor to consider with bands and that is that they enhance the eccentric part of the lift which means that they will likely cause more trauma to your muscle fibers meaning more chance for growth and greater time to repair the damage, just something else to think about when things start getting heavy.
 
Thanks for the feedback!

@QuantumPositron2; I did actually think about dips, but couldn't find anything to properly use for it, especially when you go trying to fix bands in to it as well. In the end I decided the best chest exercise I could do would be Pushups with bands looped across my back for extra resistance.

I've tried one week of it so far, although I've made one or two small changes since the first post:

Pushups with bands
Squats
Stiff Legged Deadlifts
Pushups with bands
Pull-ups
Shoulder Press
Bicep Curls
Tricep Extensions

So basically I opted for Pushups with added resistance over the Chest Press and for Pullups over the Seated Band Rows. I'm going to try alternating grips every 2 weeks to provide a degree of progression with the Pullups.

Another change I decided on was to use myo-reps. I decided on this primarily due to the difficulty in pinning down exact weights with the bands. There's just a few extra variables that can change each time. So I started last week with bands that I could manage between 15 to 20 reps with. Did the exercise till one before failure and then after a 7 deep breath pause I repeated multiple mini-sets of 5 reps until I could only manage 4.

It's only one week in, but so far it at least feels good for all the upper body exercises. I've still to manage to find the knack for the Squat and Stiff Legged Deadlifts with bands. I think I just started too light with them, but been increasing the resistance each time, so hopefully this week I'll get them right!


@grunt11: Thanks for that bit of info. I honestly never thought about them enhancing the eccentric part of the lift before. From your comment I'm taking that as an advantage over free weights for the purpose of hypertrophy. But I'll definitely keep it in mind also when I'm down at the 5's.



 
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