Lindsay: Hey guys.
Welcome, welcome to Lifting Lindsay Channel.
I'm super, is this a channel?
Is that what this is?
The podcast.
Podcast channel.
Do people call it a channel?
My husband tells me all the time, like, you're, you're such a grandma with all
things technology, and it is so true.
I, I so am.
I wear that badge loudly and proudly.
I do.
It's very loud.
I think it's very obvious for everyone around me.
But anyways, okay, we're gonna be talking about something fun, but
semi controversial if you will.
Should you be banding your hip thrusts or glute bridges and, you know, I'm
just gonna throw in there squats.
Should you be banding your squats.
So let's actually talk about the why, why do people usually band?
Because I think that there are some different reasons why people do it.
Sometimes when people are learning how to squat or they're learning hip
thrust movements, what happens is the adductors can kind of take over and pull.
And what happens with that and how we know that that's happening is
because, the glutes may be weak and the knees will start caving in.
And so there are many people who will say, we can use a really,
really light band, not a heavy one.
Don't use a heavy one.
A really, really light band, just to give people an awareness.
I.
That you, maybe we don't want our knees coming in, right?
One because maybe that person didn't go to the coach saying, Hey, I, I
really want really big adductors.
So if we can just grow them, that would be great.
You know, most people when you're like, why do you squat?
They're not like adductors mo.
Most women are like, I want glutes, I want quads.
Right?
And so that's usually why.
But what happens is the adductors can kind of initiate, uh, helping you
get out of the bottom of that squat.
And so when that happens and they contract, they
kind of pull those knees in.
So that is a really good, if you are a coach and you see that, that tells you,
either the glutes are really, really weak
for the high load that we're using for the person.
Maybe they're not strong enough, their glutes aren't strong enough for that load.
Or maybe it's just an awareness thing.
Maybe they just need help.
Like, Hey, don't push out.
Like maybe push out against, don't allow your knees to cave in.
Maybe just push out a little bit against my hands.
But most people don't wanna, you know, face their client, you know, in the eyes.
Descend down with them while holding like kind of the outside of their knees,
like push out against my hands, right?
So for these coaches, they're like, yeah, I'm just gonna wrap a band around a little
bit higher than knees their knees, so that they just have this little cue of
keep your knees not out per se, but just we're trying to keep them in
line with actually trailing your toes.
We don't want them to cave in.
So some people use it for that, but that's something you graduate out of, right?
You need that maybe a few times.
And then if you're being coached correctly, you're being mindful.
You graduate out of that.
You get out of that.
And then once again, the band is very, very, very, very light.
And so that can be applied to both, uh, hip thrusts and squats.
Now, in recent years, though, the past 10 years, bands are no longer now being used
as a way for coaches to kind of cue, but what a lot of people are thinking is, hey.
I really want to build my upper glutes.
I want to build my, you know, glute mead.
I want to round out my glutes.
And so I, I've got to work maybe my glute mead a little bit more.
And they do have, an element of abduction, you
know, pushing the knees out.
There is a, an element now, not necessarily at a 90 degree, they're
not gonna be the primary mover
at 90 degrees, if you're sitting down.
Like if you kind of have those abductor machines where you sit down and you go,
just go straight out, that's actually gonna line your piriformis up more
than it will necessarily your glute me.
So if you wanna work your glute me really, really well.
Then, um, I'll actually put in the notes, some variations with both
bands and, cable work and how we can line those up really, really well.
We don't want a ton of hip flexion.
We actually want to be standing up a bit more.
But a lot of people have been thinking, well, since there is this, this
slight element of, and maybe they've exaggerated, uh, the element of abduction
for glute medias, then let's do.
Two things at one time.
Let's work the glute max with a squat, and then also if we have bands around,
then we can push out and also be that's going to help work Glute meet.
That's the general thought of why a ton of women have been using bands
is they're like, I'm gonna try to get a little glute max, and a
little glute mead at the same time.
Now in the biomechanics world, this has been debunked for
many, many, many, many years.
Uh, now some individuals have built their entire career around bands, even
selling bands, so we're probably not gonna see them preach, oh, I was wrong.
I just learned 'cause.
You know, that's kind of what's hard when people bet their entire
livelihood off of like one exercise, or one diet, or one machine, or
one band or whatever, you know.
When new information comes out that challenges it, do you think
that they're gonna be the first ones to jump on the bandwagon?
Or maybe the ones who give the most resistance to it, right?
So that's kind of hard.
But anyway, I don't wanna speak badly of anybody or throw anybody under the
bus there, but I'm just letting you know that of course, the person who has built
their entire life, livelihood, their entire income on banding everything
is probably not gonna be on board.
Of course, the individual who's written all of the books again, like pro and
teaching all of the benefits for fill in the blank diet, when research comes out
saying actually just a calorie deficit is all as needed for all of these things.
Actually, any calorie deficit will give you the benefits
that you listed in your book.
Yet they're not gonna be like, oh, okay.
They're usually going to.
Fight it the most, right?
Because this is their livelihood.
So that's just a really good thing to just kind of keep in the back
of your head as you're scanning through information on social media.
But anyways, there was a study that, uh, put this whole ban's idea to the
test before I di dive into this study.
Let me just say this one other thing.
There are a a lot of people who have taken the bands around the the knees for hip
thrusts, for squats, and they've really kind of thought, well, if I always have
bands around my knees, then my glute need upper glutes will always be working.
So I all see people literally it's glute day and they'll post on
social media glute day and they wear
the band for every single exercise.
Even like calf phrases.
And so I think, you know, this study, if not ignored by the masses, I, I am excited
for people to kind of be excited that now we have more data on this and maybe
we're gonna choose a, a different method.
That's actually going to line up better with our goals.
So a recent study put this whole bands around the, knees
thing to the test, and they were applying it to hip thrusts, okay?
And what they found was that the EMG reading failed to show any increase
in activity in the glute mead.
Isn't that interesting?
But, but even more important because high low A MG, we're kind of
seeing over time that that doesn't necessarily mean maybe it's pro or
cons or you're gonna grow or not.
MG is just, it's kind like the scale, one tool, one tool of many, right?
But that was one tool saying, Hey, we're not seeing it.
Any increase in activation.
The biggest and most important part of actually all of this study was that band
usage actually decreased performance.
Okay, well now performance is directly correlated to growth to hypertrophy.
So yeah, like listen up, this is actually really important.
When bands were used, it decreased the load around 45 pounds or, or
about 10 point a half to 12.5%.
So load, your ability to load actually dropped, so performance dropped.
Why does that matter?
Well, when we're trying to build muscle, we need to create tension on
the muscle we are trying to build.
Decreasing the load decreases that.
Okay.
That's not a good thing.
Okay.
So that is really, really important.
And then the, the conclusion of the study, and we're gonna talk
about maybe some pros and cons of the study here in a minute, but the
conclusion of the study by researchers.
Was actually that, you know, they conclude, okay, this is may not
produce expected results and cannot recommend using bands around these.
And I completely agree with that.
Uh, like I mentioned, this is something that even within like going to
biomechanics courses over the past, six years, all of the leaders in that
industry have come to the same conclusion.
So now we're seeing, okay, now there's studies saying the same thing.
N one Education did some in-house testing, on females, they saw the same exact thing.
This is clearly just not a good tool, and if anything can actually,
decrease the likelihood of the overall optimization of the exercise.
So you could take a quality, good exercise like, you know, glute
bridge, like the hip thrust.
And you've now actually lowered the quality of it by banding it.
So it's not that like, well, but it's not gonna hurt.
It's like, oh, but no, no, that's actually like exactly what the study said.
It, like, it hurts it, like it, it makes the actual exercise not as effective,
so therefore, like we shouldn't do it.
Like there's really no reason to do it.
yeah, I agreed with the author's conclusion.
If you want to build glute media, then it's best to do separate exercises
that work abduction specifically.
And like I said, I'm, I am going to, uh, add in notes, some links to some Instagram
posts that I've done on glut mead.
Now oftentimes, so there's, there's two other things that
I wanna talk about with this.
Some people read that study and they're like, but this study was done on men,
so therefore it doesn't apply to women.
And I do agree that we need to see more women studies being done.
There are some types of studies that the, that the sex is going
to influence things far more.
Uh, nutrition studies when we're looking at hormones.
I like different things like that.
Like that is real.
Yes, 100%.
We need to see that.
But a study like this, I, once again, N one education did do in-house only
on women and saw the exact same thing.
A reduction in output, uh, no glute mead activation, really like, so this has been
actually, I don't wanna say replicated 'cause it wasn't the exact same study,
but it was relatively similar and done on women and it showed the same thing.
But it's really important when we're looking at things like biomechanics, it's
actually not necessarily sex that makes the huge difference, but actually kind of
the mechanics of the individual, right?
And as long as we can make sure that the readings are in the correct place.
So when they're, when they are setting everything up for EMG to
be able to read, is there higher activation, like all of that?
Well, we need to make sure that the most important thing is,
is this on the right muscle.
And what's hilarious is I have literally seen studies where they're like, well,
we're looking at different divisions of the chest, but then they had the it all on
the wrong divisions and not even reading like accurately the different divisions.
So I've seen them do it, poorly, but in this, the fact that
it's like lowering output.
This type of study where we're really just looking at the biomechanics and
hypertrophy, there's not going to be these differences between the two
sexes that would actually make this irrelevant because it was done on men.
Okay.
So when we're looking at more exercise selection type of, studies, that's
not going to really influence it.
Okay?
So saying that this was done on men, so therefore you should
keep doing bands is not accurate.
So another thing is women will say, but I feel it more if I have bands on.
I feel it more.
So unfortunately feelings don't equate to truth nor hypertrophy.
Right.
So a another thing that people will say is, but so and so does it.
And she has amazing glutes.
one, a lot of those who rise to the top on social media have incredible genetics.
Now, I don't want to demean anybody's hard work.
I'm not saying that they haven't worked hard.
I'm not saying that they haven't built out their glutes, but it's
really, really important to understand that correlation is not causation.
Okay?
And most women don't just walk in and do hip thrusts with bands around their knees,
and that's the only exercise that they do.
And then for Glute day walk out of the gym, am I right?
They're doing way more exercises.
In fact, sometimes I'm like, I think what's hurting you is
actually you're doing too much.
Are you able to, like, every day you're doing glute stuff
that's not helping you, right?
So you gotta let your, your muscles recover.
So it's really, really important to understand that if they have
done some really quality changes to their glute need, then it, it's not
necessarily because they banded their hip thrust and that's the only way.
It guaranteed they're doing a lot of other exercises too.
So that is one thing that sometimes I get slightly like, uh, okay,
well we've gotta teach this better because just because somebody out
there has a really, really nice body.
And they do a really, really poor exercise like frog pumps.
Remember when frog pumps were big?
Every single time I talk about frog pumps, I have physical therapists
writing me saying, thank you.
Please tell people, please keep telling people.
Stop it.
Stop doing the frog pumps.
So just because they do that one exercise, remember that it's not in,
you're not looking at it in isolation.
They're doing a ton of other exercises as well, so we cannot say that it was
that one exercise that got them there.
Unless we cut out, we detrained them and we cut out all movements.
Except for that one.
Except for that one, right.
That's, that's the only way we can say that.
It was that one movement, that one exercise, that one band
that did something like that.
There's just too many other variables that we have to
consider when we're looking at it.
So am I anti band?
I don't like, I love you guys.
I just wanna put information out there.
You take it, you apply it to you.
Is it helping?
No.
Is it hurting?
It seems to be.
Um.
Is it a tool that trainers can use maybe to help a newbie kind of learn for Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I do actually think it is, and it can be used wisely, but it appears in, um.
Things like, you know, hip, hip thrusts and squats.
Like, we're really not doing these two things at once.
Like we think we are, we're just really not.
Um, and so it's better to just to choose one exercise to really nail
the glutes and then, I mean, not one exercise, but here, wait, scratch that.
It's better to choose exercises of like, okay, this is glute max.
Choose exercise where you want to build the glute meat.
Okay, this one.
It's primarily Glu Mead.
I swear whenever in life we're like, I'm gonna do 2, 3, 4 things at once.
It's like, uh, but you don't do any of them as well.
You just don't.
And this study kind of shows the same thing if we're trying to do
it all, it's like, uh, but you're trying to do hip extension and
abduction at the exact same time.
Like they're fighting motions.
You're trying, like that's just not going to be optimal.
So just choose hip extension and work that and abduction
and really work and nail that.
So thank you so much for joining me today on the Lifting Lindsay podcast.
You know, if you are interested in optimized training, banded work is
something that you're just not gonna find, you're not gonna find in my programming
because, this is just something that we've known for a, a really long time
and now we're kind of seeing a little bit more studies rolling out, showing this.
So if you're interested in optimized training programs, you can always go
to, uh, be strong lifting Lindsey.
Dot com.
I'll put a link in the notes as well.
Join us.
You don't just get training, you get meal plans, you get community, you
get lives every other week with me.
I'm really here to help give you the support that you need,
to help you hit your goals.
You guys have a wonderful week.