Banded RDL For Glutes: A Critique

[Agustin Valdes]

Hi Joe,

The context for this question is trying to maximise glute hypertrophy as efficiently as possible. I’ve seen your videos on the hip banded RDL being a great exercise for glutes and I have a couple questions:

1) Load in the shortened position: is it significant?: since the RDL loads the glutes through their lengthened to mid range pretty well, they are only missing the short position. I believe that is the goal of adding the bands on the hips. I measured how much load a thick band is giving me in the exercise and it is about 10kgs (22 lbs). When I hip thrust I can use about 140kgs (308 lbs). I understand these two exercises are not comparable since the RDL is gonna lack stability and thus the force production is gonna be lower, but after this comparison I wondered if putting the band on the RDL is useful at all, or it would be better to do a normal RDL and compliment it with a hip thrust, where I can truly maximise force production on the shortened position. What do you think about this, even if we are hip thrusting would you still advise to incorporate the bands on the hips in the RDL? Are those 10kgs that the hip banded RDL adds to the shortened position gonna cause significant hypertrophy?

2) Moment Arm in the hip banded RDL: I heard another trainer comment that putting the band on this exercise is useless because since the band is on the hips the moment arm to the hips is zero and thus it’s not providing any load to the hip musculature. What do you think of this?

Thanks Joe!

Best,

Agustin.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Agustin Valdes.

[Joe]

[Agustin Valdes]

Fantastic answer, thank you so much Joe!

[Josh]

Hope it’s cool to jump on board here. So if we’re looking to load more contractile range, in this case the glutes, would it make sense to do a banded glute-focused reverse lunge, since it gets the glutes more lengthened than an RDL? Obviously more quad involvement, but just in terms of Glute training. Thanks.

[BryceBahm]

[Joe]

Josh wrote:

Hope it’s cool to jump on board here. So if we’re looking to load more contractile range, in this case the glutes, would it make sense to do a banded glute-focused reverse lunge, since it gets the glutes more lengthened than an RDL? Obviously more quad involvement, but just in terms of Glute training. Thanks.

[Author]

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