Full Body Home Workout - you just need booty bands

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This article is for anyone needing another full-body workout to do from home, using resistance bands. After all, there’s no such thing as having too many exercises to choose from!

I will break down each exercise that the video’s model, Jessi Kate, performed, so you can give this workout a try next time you’re feeling experimental.

What To Expect In This Full Body Workout Article

And for those of you who have access to a gym, after I provide the step-by-step for the video exercises, I will show you how to implement any one of these exercises into a regular gym routine.

Incorporating some resistance band exercises (or bodyweight exercises) is an effective way to take a working muscle beyond failure — where the real growth happens. Plus, it gets more blood pumping and that’s always a net win. But first, you need to know how to perform each exercise. As such, we’ll start there.

Full Body Home Workout — Booty Band Gainz

In and Out Jump Squats: 3 x 10-15

The in and out jump squat is a great lower body exercise for improving power and coordination. It targets the quads, hamstrings, and of course glutes. Additionally, because of the jump, this works the calves.

Integrating a resistance band into the movement adds a level of difficulty since it brings an extra component with having to control against the band when moving the legs in, and extra force when moving the legs out — somewhat like a hip abductor machine. As an added benefit, the resistance band can improve knee stability, which is optimal for those who find they have a tendency to let their knees “bow” in during traditional squats.

To start, stand with your feet about shoulder width, and place the band so that it’s looped around both legs, near the top of the knee.
Keeping your core tight, and applying stabilizing pressure against the resistance band, bend your legs slightly, jump up, and separate your feet while airborne
Land with your feet wider than shoulder width, and keeping your pressure against the resistance band, lower into a squat. To gauge the width of your stance when performing this exercise, hold your arms out to the side and bend at the elbow. Your squat stance should be almost as wide as your elbow
Powering through the heels, jump out of the squat. Bring your feet back to the starting stance while airborne, then land — feet shoulder width apart again. That’s your first rep.

Modification: don’t jump: Performing this modification won’t take much alteration. Instead of jumping at the top, come up onto the balls of your feet as if you were doing a calf raise.

Single leg Deadlifts x 10-15 (each leg)

These are one of those deceptively challenging exercises that many men and women have mistakenly scoffed at, but they’re no joke — both in difficulty level and effectiveness. In general, unilateral movements are beneficial in that you’ll target each side individually to strengthen both sides — as opposed to a “strong” side picking up slack.

On top of targeting the hamstrings, erector spinae, and glutes, they also require stability muscle recruitment to a large degree. Which is one reason why they’re great for at home, since the only witness to your potential imbalance would be that dog that refuses to let you workout in peace.

Adding the resistance band increases the level of difficulty since you’ll feel greater resistance and stretch in the bottom portion of the movement, as well dealing with a more unstable environment — fitting for 2020.

I will explain how to perform the single leg deadlift using your right leg as the support, trusting you can figure out how to apply the steps for your left.

To start, stand with your feet in-line with your hips. Loop the band underneath your right foot, and when standing upright, grip the band with an overhand grip, hands resting in front of your thighs.
Shift your weight to the right leg, which should have only a soft bend in the knee, then begin driving your left foot back, like a pendulum. At the same time, slowly start hinging at the waist, tipping forward until it’s almost parallel to the floor. You’ll want to keep your arms straight the entire time.
When in the bottom part of the movement, your body will be in a mostly straight line from head to the bottom of your left foot — not counting natural curves of course since most of us don’t want to be stick figures.
Begin pulling your left leg forward while keeping it straight — again, like a pendulum — simultaneously lifting your torso up until you’re standing upright again. That’s one rep.

Modification: Deadlifts: Apply the same concept of holding the band overhand grip in front of your thighs. The band will be looped around the soles of both feet. Keeping a slight bend in your knees, slowly bend at the torso and drive the hips back, until your body is either parallel to the floor or you can’t imagine stretching any further. Feel the stretch. Return to starting position.

As an additional modification, should you still want to perform the single leg movement, but haven’t built up to the necessary stability, you can place one hand on a post or anything of the sort — significant others can work nicely — and perform the exercise using them as balance (i.e. effective codependency)

Curl to press x 10-15

The curl to press exercise is a functional exercise used to improve strength in both biceps and deltoids. This is especially good for those who find they have trouble with dumbbell presses because they can’t effectively get the dumbbells into the starting position (e.g. in a dumbbell military press, the weights start off on the thighs and need to be powered up to the starting point).

They’re also a useful tool when wanting to hit more muscle groups in a short period of time. The resistance band is effective for recruiting more stability in those small muscles around the deltoids (e.g. rotator cuff) that so few of us directly train. To perform them is simple:

Start by grabbing your band, and looping it around both wrists — it should rest partly on the bottom of your hand, under your thumb as well. You will begin with your arms nearly straight, and palms facing inward in a neutral position.
Maintain pressure against the bands throughout the movement. Keeping your elbows from floating forward, curl until your pinky is level with your chest.
Your elbows will start to drift forward once here and that’s fine, as this is the portion of the curl where your deltoids naturally get recruited. Continue curling until the resistance band is just in front of your chin.
Apply pressure to separate the band a little further to better activate your deltoids, then press up. From here, slowly lower the band. That’s one rep.

Modification: Curl To Press without a band: Do this primarily to warm up and get familiar with the movement. Alternatively, if you just want to switch it up while still utilizing the band, do: 8 curls followed by 8 presses, then ending with 8 curl to presses.

For those with access to dumbbells and whose goals are hypertrophy (muscle growth), do the military press and curl in a super set fashion, starting with military press, going to failure, then switching to curls (can be done with barbell or dumbbell.

Alternating Plank Rows 3×10-15

I know. The video calls them bridge rows. They’re actually alternating plank rows (or commando rows), I’m just passive aggressive…and it was already loaded onto Youtube, so yeah. There’s that. Anyway, the alternating plank row is one personal trainers commonly have their clients do because it’s a way to improve core stability while also developing some back strength.

The benefit of using a resistance band instead of kettlebells or dumbbells is, for one, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you don’t currently have access to either of those pieces of equipment. The other benefit is that when using kettle or dumbbells you will either have to balance on the equipment or pick them up each time. Although both of those practices can be effective (either for wrist stability or agility), they can prove too difficult for some. Here’s how to perform the alternating plank row, using a resistance band.

To start, loop the booty band around both hands and get into your standard plank/push-up position, with hands a little wider than shoulder width apart. The band will be resting on the back of your hand.
Spread your legs slightly wider than hip width apart with your toes supporting your weight.
Keeping your core tight, push down through the palm of one hand and at the same time “row” the opposite one upwards by retracting your shoulder and bending the elbow. When you do this with a band, it might want to slide so make sure to keep your hand parallel with the floor.
Hold the contraction for one second, focusing on flexing your core and squeezing your lat.
Slowly lower your hand to the floor and without pause repeat the movement with your other arm. This is one rep. Repeat until you’ve hit your desired rep count, or until you can’t do anymore (I suggest the latter option)

Modification: Alternating Plank Rows (off the knees): This doesn’t need an explanation.

Same Exercises Applied As Supersets In The Gym

Some of you have access to a gym or at least some weights. Congratulations. Here’s a way to increase the difficulty and intensity of your current workout using the above listed exercises. In table format, because Google likes those, and they allow me to believe I learned how to use Excel Spreadsheets.

When multiple exercises are listed within a single “cell” of the table it means those exercises are meant to be supersetted. A superset is when two exercises are performed back to back without rest.

Traditional Squats In and Out Jump Squats	3 x 10-15 3 x 10-15	Rest time (between superset): 60-90 seconds
Single Leg Deadlifts Single Leg Lying Leg Curls	3 x 10-153 x 10-15	Rest time (between superset): 60-90 seconds
Seated Overhead Press Seated Hammer Curls Standing DB Curl to Press Band Curl to Press	3 x 10-15 3 x 10-15 3 x 10-15 3 x 10-15	Rest time (between superset): 60-90 seconds
Single Arm DB Row Bent Over Alternating DB Row Alternating Plank Rows (Band)	3 x 10-15 3 x 10-15 3 x 10-15	Rest time (between superset): 60-90 seconds

Full Body Home Workout – you just need booty bands