This time last year I wrote ‘Recommended Routine – Resistance Bands Version’, which got a lot of positive feedback (thanks everyone!). Since then, a lot of people have asked me about how to move on to a different routine once they progress past the beginner level. I think everybody should develop their own intermediate+ workouts, and given that I have done quite a bit of research on this myself I thought I would share some resources I find helpful.
Hypertrophy Training Guide Central Hub
Notes:
The Best Workout Split for MAXIMUM Muscle Gains
My preference would be for either a 3x/week full body routine, a 4x/week push/pull split, or a hybrid with 2x full body, 1 push or upper and 1 pull or lower workout. Personally, I don’t think push/pull/legs ends is optimal for most people since you have to train 6x/week to see growth, but if you enjoy short daily workouts this approach is fine. Jeff’s ‘modified bro split’ is interesting but it seems like it would be difficult to programme correctly, and you still have to train most days. Also, I think upper/lower splits could result in the wrong balance between upper and lower size for non-athletes, but if you are at maintenance level on either your upper or lower body then this might work well.
I really like the flexibility of the hybrid approach. It allows you to hit the important movement patterns with compound exercises in the two full body workouts earlier in the week, then do some more targeted isolation work later in the week, whilst keeping your workout length reasonable. It’s also easier to transition to maintenance level:
Everything you need to know about supersets for hypertrophy
Making sense of supersets
Another good way to decompress the spine during your workout is to hang from a pull-up bar for 30 seconds between sets. With band supersets you also need to consider whether you will need to anchor any of the bands. Ideally you want to avoid having to attach a band to a door anchor and remove it again in the middle of your superset, since this can throw off the timing.
I wanted to include some articles on aesthetics here since I think everyone would like to look good even if that isn’t your only training goal, but we can have the wrong idea about what an ‘optimal’ amount of muscle looks like from an attractiveness standpoint. The point of sharing these articles isn’t to make you feel like you are doing something wrong if you don’t fit these ‘ideals’ (that is often subjective anyway). Rather, I wanted to highlight the fact that men tend to think they have to keep working to get more lean/muscular than they need to be, and women tend to think they should avoid heavy resistance training altogether.
Male aesthetics
The ideal male physique survey
How big should men build their legs?
A realistic Hollywood male physique
Female aesthetics
How to attain a slender look like Jessica Alba and Zoe Saldana
What does it mean to be fit
How Do Resistance Bands Compare to Weights
Building Muscle with Resistance Bands
Formula for Building Muscle
Mass building for the natural lifter and bodybuilder
There are two guys I trust for exercises:
Both of these guys train professional athletes and stick to exercises that are functional, effective and safe.
Every workout programme should include these movement patterns. I have listed some recommended exercises next to each movement pattern.
Vertical pull – Chin-up (or pull-up), lat pulldown
Vertical push – Lying single-arm overhead press (or squat hold OHP for a harder version!), push press pull-apart
Horizontal pull – Bent-over row, wrap-around row
Horizontal push – Push-up, wrap-around press
Squat – Front squat, quad-dominant deadlift
Hinge – Romanian deadlift, hip thrust (you can also do them like this, but maybe close your curtains first!)
Lunge – Bulgarian split squat, single-leg RDL into lunge, split squat, split-stance RDL
In my opinion everyone can benefit from including these into their training programme.
Face pulls – If you have watched any Athlean-X videos you are probably already doing these!
Side lying hip raise and hip band rotation – See here or here for more variations.
Sprinter pullover – Great overall exercise. See here for more variations.
These should be tailored to your specific training goals.
Side delts – see here
Upper chest – Upper chest pullover, decline push-up, Cavaliere crossover, UCV raise
Lower chest – Dips, bridge press, D2 flexion crossover
Biceps – see here and here
Triceps – see here and here and here
Glutes/hips – Glute pull-through, kickback/hip abduction, toe raises, band hip rotations , these exercises, good morning
Core – 10-minute abs, 6-minute abs, loaded carries
Calves – Standing calf raise, seated calf raise (you can also use incidental training, e.g. calf raises while waiting for a cup of tea to brew)
Neck – Neck curl, neck extension, ear to shoulder, chin to shoulder (you can also use overcoming isometrics with incidental training)
Lats – Single-arm straight arm pushdown, 2-for-1 row, lat pullover
Traps – Zeus row (mid traps), shrug (upper traps)
Pistol squats, Yoga (!), these exercises
If you read through the renaissance periodization guides you will see that certain muscles thrive when using techniques like pre-exhaust supersets or drop sets. I’ll summarise a few tactics I have used below, but I strongly encourage you to read through the guides yourself.
Programming
Volume and tips on rep structures
Hypertrophy Training Guide Central Hub
Notes:
- It’s helpful to know what reasonable rep ranges are, but I have found that it’s better to focus on quality reps rather than worrying about hitting the required number; the most important factor is time under tension. You also might need to adjust the rep ranges listed with bands/bodyweight exercises, particularly for leg training.
- There are lots of suggested exercises, but some of them are dangerous (e.g. upright row). Stick to the recommendations later in this post.
- Even though glutes don’t need any direct work to make gains you will probably want to include some if you are a woman, and everyone can benefit from corrective exercises that target the glute medius (more on that later). The same can be said for abs if you are a man.
- The guide doesn’t include neck training, but it might be a good idea to add some in.
Workout splits
The Best Workout Split for MAXIMUM Muscle Gains
My preference would be for either a 3x/week full body routine, a 4x/week push/pull split, or a hybrid with 2x full body, 1 push or upper and 1 pull or lower workout. Personally, I don’t think push/pull/legs ends is optimal for most people since you have to train 6x/week to see growth, but if you enjoy short daily workouts this approach is fine. Jeff’s ‘modified bro split’ is interesting but it seems like it would be difficult to programme correctly, and you still have to train most days. Also, I think upper/lower splits could result in the wrong balance between upper and lower size for non-athletes, but if you are at maintenance level on either your upper or lower body then this might work well.
I really like the flexibility of the hybrid approach. It allows you to hit the important movement patterns with compound exercises in the two full body workouts earlier in the week, then do some more targeted isolation work later in the week, whilst keeping your workout length reasonable. It’s also easier to transition to maintenance level:
- Beginner: 3x full body workouts focusing on foundational movement patterns and compound exercises.
- Intermediate (growth): 4 workouts – 2x full body plus either a push/pull or upper/lower split.
- Intermediate (maintenance): 2-3x full body workouts. If these are well designed it will be easy to include isolation work for arms, side delts etc.
Supersets
Everything you need to know about supersets for hypertrophy
Making sense of supersets
Another good way to decompress the spine during your workout is to hang from a pull-up bar for 30 seconds between sets. With band supersets you also need to consider whether you will need to anchor any of the bands. Ideally you want to avoid having to attach a band to a door anchor and remove it again in the middle of your superset, since this can throw off the timing.
Aesthetics
I wanted to include some articles on aesthetics here since I think everyone would like to look good even if that isn’t your only training goal, but we can have the wrong idea about what an ‘optimal’ amount of muscle looks like from an attractiveness standpoint. The point of sharing these articles isn’t to make you feel like you are doing something wrong if you don’t fit these ‘ideals’ (that is often subjective anyway). Rather, I wanted to highlight the fact that men tend to think they have to keep working to get more lean/muscular than they need to be, and women tend to think they should avoid heavy resistance training altogether.
Male aesthetics
The ideal male physique survey
How big should men build their legs?
A realistic Hollywood male physique
Female aesthetics
How to attain a slender look like Jessica Alba and Zoe Saldana
What does it mean to be fit
Building muscle with bands
How Do Resistance Bands Compare to Weights
Building Muscle with Resistance Bands
Formula for Building Muscle
Mass building for the natural lifter and bodybuilder
Exercises
There are two guys I trust for exercises:
Both of these guys train professional athletes and stick to exercises that are functional, effective and safe.
Foundational movement patterns
Every workout programme should include these movement patterns. I have listed some recommended exercises next to each movement pattern.
Vertical pull – Chin-up (or pull-up), lat pulldown
Vertical push – Lying single-arm overhead press (or squat hold OHP for a harder version!), push press pull-apart
Horizontal pull – Bent-over row, wrap-around row
Horizontal push – Push-up, wrap-around press
Squat – Front squat, quad-dominant deadlift
Hinge – Romanian deadlift, hip thrust (you can also do them like this, but maybe close your curtains first!)
Lunge – Bulgarian split squat, single-leg RDL into lunge, split squat, split-stance RDL
Important corrective exercises
In my opinion everyone can benefit from including these into their training programme.
Face pulls – If you have watched any Athlean-X videos you are probably already doing these!
Side lying hip raise and hip band rotation – See here or here for more variations.
Sprinter pullover – Great overall exercise. See here for more variations.
Isolating specific muscles
These should be tailored to your specific training goals.
Side delts – see here
Upper chest – Upper chest pullover, decline push-up, Cavaliere crossover, UCV raise
Lower chest – Dips, bridge press, D2 flexion crossover
Biceps – see here and here
Triceps – see here and here and here
Glutes/hips – Glute pull-through, kickback/hip abduction, toe raises, band hip rotations , these exercises, good morning
Core – 10-minute abs, 6-minute abs, loaded carries
Calves – Standing calf raise, seated calf raise (you can also use incidental training, e.g. calf raises while waiting for a cup of tea to brew)
Neck – Neck curl, neck extension, ear to shoulder, chin to shoulder (you can also use overcoming isometrics with incidental training)
Lats – Single-arm straight arm pushdown, 2-for-1 row, lat pullover
Traps – Zeus row (mid traps), shrug (upper traps)
Some exercises to avoid
Pistol squats, Yoga (!), these exercises
Upper body training tips
If you read through the renaissance periodization guides you will see that certain muscles thrive when using techniques like pre-exhaust supersets or drop sets. I’ll summarise a few tactics I have used below, but I strongly encourage you to read through the guides yourself.
- It’s convenient to pair back and biceps exercises in a drop set, e.g chin-ups into peak-contraction chin-ups or bent-over rows into bicep curls. There are also some biceps exercises that can flow nicely into a side-delt exercise, e.g. drag curls into hip huggers.
- Side delts and triceps do well in pre-exhaust supersets, e.g side lateral raises into overhead presses or triceps pushdowns into upright dips.
- Drop setting a chest compound with an adduction exercise ensures you take the chest through its full range of motion, e.g. push-ups into crossover push-ups.
Lower body training tips
- With a conventional deadlift using a barbell the weight is coming off the floor in front of you. However, when you deadlift with bands the weight will be anchored directly below you under your feet, which changes the exercise and shifts focus away from the hamstrings onto the quads (see here for a demonstration). This is great as an alternative to squats, but if you want to focus more on hamstrings/glutes I have found it better to restrict the range of motion as you would do with a Romanian deadlift.
- You could structure the squat/hinge in a pyramid set like this, with 1-2x5-10, 1x10-15, 1x20-25 (sets x reps) for squats and the reverse for the hinge. The downside here is that cardiovascular fitness might be more of a limiting factor on the squats than quads, for example.
- Eccentric isometrics really help to increase the difficulty and effectiveness of band/bodyweight leg exercises, particularly lunge variations. I consider this to be an essential training tactic.
- You can combine your leg exercises with a plyometric exercise, e.g. jump squats, to take advantage of post activation potentiation.
- You could incorporate sprinting into your training routine.
- You could use a 1.5 rep cadence or a ‘never-ending’ squat.
- You could add extra leg training into your push-ups with the glute/ham raise push-up and the TKE push-up, or get even more creative with these squat and hip thrust press variations. RDLs and rows pair nicely, and you can even combine legs and arm or side delt exercises!
Think it just used a pic from one of the linked articles, since I forgot to change it! Oops