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Shoulder isolation · Bodyweight

Band pull-apart

One long band, held out in front of you and pulled apart to your chest. It trains the back of your shoulders and the muscles between your blades, and it needs no anchor and no gym. It is a small lift, and it asks for a lot of careful reps.

Arms straight, pull to your chest.

The cue Reckoner shows you mid set.
Pattern
Shoulder isolation
Trains
Rear delts, upper back
Kit
Band
Loading
A band
Reckoner prescribes
3 sets of 15 to 25 reps at RPE 8
Progression step
A heavier band once the top of the range is clean
Skill
Simple to learn
Recovery cost
Very low

Muscles worked

Primary
Rear delts · Upper back
Secondary
Traps

How to do it

  1. Check the band and hold it firmly

    Look for small nicks and tears, and retire a band that shows wear1. Band injuries to the eye usually start with a loose grip that lets the band snap back2, so hold on with both hands and keep it away from your face.

  2. Set your arms

    Arms straight at shoulder height, hands about shoulder width, palms down, with the slack gone from the band. Keep your ribs down.

  3. Pull the band to your chest

    Move your hands out and back with your arms straight, until the band touches your chest. Squeeze your shoulder blades together at the end.

  4. Return slowly

    Let your hands come back together under control, with the band tight the whole way.

What goes wrong

How Reckoner progresses this lift

Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.

Band pull-apart, six weeks
WeekPrescribedWhat it did
13 x 22More reps 22 → 23 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
23 x 23More reps 23 → 24 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
33 x 24More reps 24 → 25 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
43 x 25Next band Heavier bandEvery set reached the top of the range with good form, so you move to a heavier band. More pull, same reps.
53 x 25Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue.
62 x 25Holding steady Same bandThe lighter week was for recovery, not a test, so nothing logged in it counts against this exercise. It stays where it was before the lighter week. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets.

Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.

The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.

Questions people ask

Does hand position change the band pull-apart?

It changes which muscles work hardest. In ten healthy men at a moderate effort, the back of the shoulder was most active with palms down3. Pulling on an upward diagonal raised activity across the shoulder muscles measured3. That is muscle activity and not growth, so pick the version you can do cleanly and keep it.

Can a band really train my shoulders?

Yes, with limits. Pooled trials found no significant difference in strength gained on elastic and on conventional resistance4, and muscle growth has been reached across a wide spread of loads5. Heavy loads still win for a one rep max5, and those trials covered varied groups, not trained lifters alone. A light band has to be worked hard to count.

How does Reckoner progress this lift?

It reads your reps and which band you logged. When every working set was on one band, at the top of your rep range, and you rated the lift Clean or Fair, it suggests the next heavier band on your list. You can always choose a different one. There is never a weight on the band.

Similar movements

There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.

Face pullIncline reverse flyMachine rear delt flyProne Y raiseReverse cable crossoverSeated reverse dumbbell fly

Sources

  1. Rebecca Moore, Performance Health Academy, 2024. How to safely use elastic resistance in the clinic and at home clinical guidance to check a band before each use for small nicks and tears and to discard one that shows wear; the page carries no date of its own and 2024 is its site copyright
  2. Wyatt Myers, quoting Kara Cavuoto, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, UMiami Health News, 2021. Protect your eyes from resistance bands an ophthalmologist's account that band eye injuries usually come from losing a firm grip so the band snaps back, with a recommendation to strongly consider eye protection
  3. Fukunaga and colleagues, International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, 2022. Band pull-apart exercise: effects of movement direction and hand position on shoulder muscle activity ten healthy men at moderate effort, with posterior deltoid activity highest palm down, and the diagonal up direction giving the highest activity in the infraspinatus, the upper and lower trapezius and the posterior deltoid
  4. Lopes and colleagues, SAGE Open Medicine, 2019. Effects of training with elastic resistance versus conventional resistance on muscular strength: a systematic review and meta-analysis eight studies finding no significant difference in upper or lower limb strength between elastic and conventional resistance, in varied populations and protocols
  5. Schoenfeld and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2017. Strength and hypertrophy adaptations between low- vs. high-load resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis twenty-one studies, with muscle growth achieved across a spectrum of loads and one rep max gains favoring heavy loads