Here's When 'Booty Bands' Are Actually Useful (and When They're Not)

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Resistance bands are portable, convenient, and definitely have their uses. It’s no wonder they’re popular—but why are "booty bands" the focus of so many butt-centered workouts? Let me explain what's going on here, and where these bands can actually help your workout routine.

What exactly are booty bands?

A "booty band" is a nickname for a type of resistance band that is a short loop, usually a few inches wide, and either made of rubber or a thick elasticized fabric. (The fabric ones are more comfortable to use.) The length makes them perfect for exercises that call for a band around your legs. This includes a lot of hip exercises that, yes, can build up your butt muscles.

I have a fabric set similar to this one. I don't really do "booty" workouts, but I find this type of band useful for the hip warmups that I sometimes do before squats or Olympic lifts. When I was rehabbing a knee injury I remember a lot of this type of exercise at my physical therapy appointments. So they're definitely useful for more than just booty-building.

By the way, there is a company called Booty Bands, but the term “booty bands” has also been applied to the general category of resistance bands that can go around your knees or thighs. There is no shortage of workouts that incorporate the use of these bands into squats and kickbacks and glute bridges, all while promising you major booty gains. As with many popular workouts, though, the promises are overblown.

Resistance bands come with general pros and cons

Before we delve into booty-focused bands in particular, it’s worth taking a look at the pros and cons of all resistance bands. I compared them with dumbbells here, and as you may recall, the takeaways included:

• Resistance bands can provide more total “weight” than small dumbbells.

• Resistance bands wear out over time.

• Resistance bands change in how challenging they are depending on how much you stretch them.

If your home gym items need to be small and cheap, you can get a lot further with resistance bands than with dumbbells. That's because it's easy to find upper-body exercises you can do with smaller dumbbells, but you have to go a good bit heavier to find challenging lower-body workouts. Your main options are resistance band exercises, and single-leg bodyweight exercises (without a resistance band) like lunges and split squats.

Easy exercises don’t do you any favors

If you are trying to build a butt, you’re trying to build muscle. And the most efficient way to build muscle is to lift heavy—not a million reps of light work (although that can work, if you are very patient).

So how do you know if you’re working hard or “heavy” enough? As I’ve mentioned before, you want to be doing smallish numbers of reps (12 or less, most of the time) that are hard enough that the last few reps feel truly challenging. If you’ve been using the same band or weight for a while, try a more challenging one from time to time to find out if you’re stronger than you think. If you are, it’s time to move up.

I mention this here because the banded portion of a “booty” workout is usually fairly easy and light. If you’re doing banded exercises and they fit my definition of heavy and they feel genuinely challenging to you, then they may well be doing what they promise. Stick with the bands for now.

But bands may not be enough for your whole workout. For many of us, actual heavy weights will be necessary to give your butt (or any body part) an appropriate workout. Champion deadlifters need a lot of strength in their butt, but you won’t see powerlifters eschewing the barbell to focus on banded YouTube workouts, you know? They will often use bands in addition to the barbell, though.

Bands are great for warmups and accessories

Put all of this together, and it’s clear that bands make the most sense as a side dish to your workout—or an appetizer, or a dessert. To build muscle, the main course should still probably be a heavier workout with weights, if you can swing that. If not, you need to make sure your banded exercises are heavy enough.

If you bring your bands to the gym, you can do banded kickbacks as part of your warmup, or as a high-rep finisher after leg day. You can use them for “activation” exercises, which is more or less a newfangled word for warmup. And then you can move on to your squats, deadlifts, weighted lunges, or hip thrusts. Which brings me to another point about using booty bands at the gym: if you’re doing squats with a band around your knees, the squats are doing the real work, with the band offering—to continue our food metaphor—perhaps a small garnish.

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