11 Leg Workouts With Resistance Bands
Many people train with resistance bands because they are training at home or traveling and don’t have free weights. However, some resistance band exercises have unique benefits that make them worth including in your daily routine.
The bands are an inexpensive way to great bodyweight training workouts by adding extra variety to your training and helping increase muscle endurance and growth.
Adding resistance bands to your leg workout can strengthen your quadriceps, glute, and hamstring if you don’t have access to weights.
While the workout may appear easy, resistance bands generate major leg and buttocks burn, effectively toning your legs and sculpting your booty.
There are several leg workouts with resistance bands. This article covers some of the best leg workouts with resistance bands.
#1 Banded Front Squat
A front squat is an excellent exercise that targets the quadriceps. Adding resistance bands to your front squat exercise places tension on the muscles. When performing the move, ensure your knees bend enough for maximum effect.
Focus on keeping your hips underneath as you squat rather than pushing them back to target the quads.
How to perform
- Assume a squat width stance with the heels elevated slightly to target the quads
- Place one end of the resistance band under the midfoot and the other in your hands. Put your wrists by your shoulders and the elbows up.
- Make sure the resistance band forces you to keep your elbows and torso up.
- The knees should be in the inside of the bands as you squat.
#2 Banded Romanian deadlift
This exercise strengthens your posterior chain muscles such as the glutes and hamstrings, core muscles, and hips. The heavy band resistance Romanian deadlift can also strengthen the lower and upper back muscles.
It makes this exercise great for women looking to master the hip hinge and perform more advanced deadlift variations.
How to perform
- Place a resistance band under your mid-foot and stand on it. Use both hands to grab onto the band and make sure it’s in line with the side of your legs.
- Set your feet to be about hip-width apart are facing straight ahead with a slight bend in your knees.
- Brace your core and slightly tuck your rib cage towards your hips
- Push your hips backward as far as you can while maintaining a neutral spine and not bending at the waist
- Pretend you attached a rope around your hips and are pulling you backward. You should feel the tension in your hamstrings the entire time while maintaining a neutral spine at all times.
- Once you feel a stretch in your hamstring, return to the starting position by driving through the mid-back of your feet.
- As you return to the starting position, lockout by squeezing your glutes and extend your knees by squeezing your quads and hamstring
#3 Hip Thrust with Resistance Band
Hip thrusts build strength and size in your glutes better than other exercises. Thanks to the functional strength gains, the branded hip thrusts will help you with your jumping and running.
It is an easy and effective way to target your glutes while working other muscles such as the hamstring. The exercise can also benefit core muscles and obliques.
It is an exercise that helps develop better strength and hip mobility for anyone looking at physique development.
How to perform
- Find something about knee height, such as a bench or couch.
- Place your upper back on it and place the resistance band under your feet in the middle of your foot.
- Grab both strings of the resistance band and bring them over your knees. Then place the band on your thighs close to your hips.
- When doing the exercise, make sure you move your upper body and don’t keep it stiff as it can add a lot of stress to your lower back.
- When pushing upwards, contract your glute muscles consciously.
- Hold the top position for one second before lowering your hips back down.
- Repeat for reps
#4 Banded Hamstring Curl
Hamstring curls effectively target your hamstrings and other secondary muscles such as the calves, quads, and glutes. The move can help stretch your quadriceps and relieve any quad tightness or back pain.
Adding a resistance band to the exercise increases the tension needed to build size and strength in your hamstring. It is a great accessory workout to strengthen the hamstrings, quads, and upper legs.
How to perform
- Start with a resistance band around your ankles.
- Lie flat on your stomach on a yoga mat with both legs extended behind you and toes untucked
- Inhale, exhale, then tuck the toes of your right foot and raise your heel towards your glutes
- Inhale again and lower your right foot towards the mat into the starting position
- Complete half of the specified repetitions on the same side before repeating the remaining repetitions on the other side.
#5 Overhead Squats with Resistance Bands
The overhead squat with resistance bands is an excellent leg exercise that forces your upper back to be more active. It is popular among athletes looking to improve their overhead strength, though anyone can use this squad variation to build muscle mass.
You can use this move alongside a more vertical squat and reinforce back tension and proper technique when squatting. You follow the same steps as a banded front squat when performing this move, though you extend the hands above you.
How to perform
- Wrap a resistance band around your legs get about your kneecaps
- With a snatch grip, push press it overhead 100 to get into position.
- Once the resistance band is in position overhead, take a deep breath and sit straight down by simultaneously pushing the hips back and bending the knees.
- Once your thighs are parallel with the floor, reverse the movement.
- Keep your abs braced and drive your feet through the floor.
- Finish the lift by exhaling as you fully extend the hips and knees
#6 Banded pull through
This exercise is like the Romanian deadlift with resistance bands and the banded hip thrust. It reduces the overall stress on the lower back when done properly. It targets glute and hamstring hypertrophy.
Because of the isolated nature of this exercise, you can do it in higher volumes without additional neurological fatigue or strengthen the lower back.
The move can also reinforce your hip hinge and increase muscle activation of the posterior chain.
How to perform the branded pull through exercise
- Attach a resistance band to an anchor point on the floor like a post or beam
- Grab the end that’s not attached to the anchor point and walk forward with your back to the anchor
- Place your feet hip-width apart and have the resistance band running between the legs underneath you.
- Hinge down as if you’re doing a deadlift and keep the back flat
- Allow your hand to get pulled through the legs towards the anchor point without letting the chest collapse, the knees bend, or the shoulders hunch forward.
#7 Bulgarian Split Squat with Resistance Bands
The benefits of a Bulgarian split squat are many, including strengthening the muscles of the legs. This is a single-leg exercise that forces your core to work in overdrive to maintain your balance.
It works a large area of muscle mass, essentially all the major muscles in the lower body. When performing a Bulgarian split squat with resistance bands, you will feel it in the quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings.
How to perform
- Hold the ends of a loop resistance band in each hand.
- Place the band on the floor in front of you and step on top. Ensure the center of your foot clings down the band.
- Drop into a lunge position in the foot’s ball of your back leg in contact with the ground. Create a 90-degree angle in both knees.
- Adjust the resistance of the band by choking until you slightly stretched it
- Keep your chest up, your back straight, and an upright posture with your shoulders in line with your hips.
- Stand up to the top position, keeping your front leg just slightly unlocked to maintain tension.
- Drop back down to the bottom position, focusing on lowering your back knee down towards the floor. Concentrate on the quad contraction in your front thigh
- Repeat the pulsing up and down motion for several reps, then switch legs
#8 Glute Bridge with Resistance Band
Glute Bridge exercises can test your lower abs and stability. It works the hamstrings, lower back, abs, and glutes, with many benefits similar to a squat.
If you include a resistance band in your glute bridge exercises, you make your glutes work harder, strengthening them. This is also a great exercise for people who cannot squat due to back or knee pain.
How to perform
- Place a resistance band around your thighs just above your knees.
- Lie faceup on a yoga mat with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
- Tighten your glutes and pelvic muscles by pressing your hips up towards the ceiling
- Keep your hips lifted and drive your knees out against the band’s resistance.
- Keep your left foot out before you and place it back down on the ground.
- Press your right foot firmly on the ground to keep your body stable
- Kick your right foot out and place it back down to the ground, resting your left foot firmly on the ground
- Continue alternating side for 15 to 20 reps
#9 Resistance Band Squats
Squatting with resistance bands targets your glutes, quadriceps, and hip adductor muscles. The move can also work secondary muscles such as the core, which the body needs for balance and stabilization.
Therefore, the resistance band squats can build muscles by recruiting stabilizing muscle groups. They can provide extra intensity to bodyweight exercises. Remember to engage your core to keep your chest lifted as well.
How to perform
- Place the resistance band around your thighs just above your knees
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart and extend your arms out in front of you
- Tighten your glutes, and core sit into a squat and push your butt back and down
- Work against the resistance of the band to drive your knees out
- While keeping your weight in your heels, press them down firmly on the ground to stand back up
- Keep this one repetition
#10 Resistance Band Leg Lift
Hip abduction is a great way to target the smaller muscles in your body. If you do resistance bands leg lifts, you actively squeeze your thighs out to the side.
Lifting one leg at a time with a resistance band around your thighs makes the glutes work harder to keep them listed on the ground.
The leg lifts can help you lose weight from the legs and strengthen muscles in your abdomen. You can make this exercise challenging by putting your hands on your hips to feel the muscles working.
How to perform
- Place the resistance band around your ankles and stand with your feet hip-distance apart
- Tighten your glutes and thighs and balance your weight on the right leg
- Lift your left leg out to the side, tightening the band as much as you can without shifting your hips
- Bring your left foot back to the starting position without letting your foot hit the ground
- Continue for 10 reps before switching sides.
#11 Lateral Band Walk
This exercise may seem simple, but it works your inner and outer thighs, which will feel the burn. It can improve your hip mobility by strengthening your hip abductor muscles, such as the gluteus medius and quads.
Make sure you step your feet out wide enough so that the band stays taut throughout the entire time.
How to perform
- Place a resistance band around your ankles and stand with your feet hip-distance apart and a slight bend in your knees
- Engage your outer thighs and slightly hinge at the hips
- Step your left foot to the side, so your feet are now a shoulder-distance apart
- Then step your right foot to the left, bringing your feet hip-distance apart and keeping the band tight
- Alternate stepping your feet out and in for about 10 reps on each side
Conclusion
The resistance band leg exercises are perfect for people who want to add some new training stimulus to their low leg training. They can improve your exercise quality, stabilize muscles, and help focus your control.
Resistance bands are useful for lower body workouts such as legs and glutes because they force you to move with better form and produce power from the right muscles.
The major limitation is the inability to place enough mechanical loading and stress on your muscles if you’re strong.
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