I Love Our New Circular Bands.
Adding a circular resistance band to certain exercises can help you work so much deeper and more effectively. It’s an amazing tool for building strength in the smaller, supportive muscle groups and helping you feel where the work actually lives in your body. That creates greater awareness and connection to the muscles you need to engage to strengthen and support your optimal alignment.
Circular bands are one of my favorite tools for this intention. The resistance gives you something to work against in both directions, helping you find opposition, create stability and engage more intentionally throughout the entire movement.
I’ve spent years refining how we use bands at The Dailey Method, and I want to share these exercises that have become staples in my own practice and in our studios. They’re simple, quick and incredibly effective. A perfect example of what I love about The Dailey Method: align your body, engage your muscles, then move with intention.
All 4’s with the Band
Band: Medium resistance, or whatever works best for you!
What it targets: Glutes, hamstrings and core stability
How to do it:
Start on your hands and knees with the band looped around your thighs, just above your knees. Stack your shoulders over your wrists and your hips over your knees. Keep your spine neutral and your core engaged.
Bend one knee, bringing your heel toward your seat. Press your thigh up against the resistance of the band, then tap your knee back down. Think about creating opposition in both directions: press into the band as you lift and resist it as you lower.
Repeat 20 times.
Next, straighten the working leg behind you and curl your toes under. Shift some of your weight into your back foot and the hand on the same side to create a strong, stable base.
From there, lift the straight leg up against the band, then slowly resist the band as you lower. Nothing moves except the leg. Repeat 20 times.
Why the band:
The band creates resistance throughout the movement, asking your glutes, hamstrings and opposing quadriceps to work in both directions. It’s glute toning, core strengthening and alignment training all in one. The Dailey Way.
The reward: Deep, purposeful strengthening of the glutes and hamstrings, with tremendous core and spinal stability.
I love this variation for challenging your alignment while strengthening the smaller muscles that support it.
Place the circular band around your upper arms, just above your elbows, and come into a straight arm plank. Press gently out into the band.
Upper arms: Externally rotate your upper arms, keeping your shoulders broad and away from your ears.
Lower arms: Gently hug your forearms toward one another. Keep your fingers wide, press all five fingers into the floor, and feel your hands subtly hugging toward each other.
The band gives you immediate feedback and helps create stability while strengthening the muscles all around your arms and shoulder girdle.
Straight Arm Plank with the Band Around the Forearms
Band: This is depend on your shoulder width. I use a medium. Better to have a little movement than be too tight.
What it targets: Upper-body alignment, shoulder stability and core strength
I love this one because the band gives you instant feedback on your alignment while waking up all of those smaller muscles that help support you.
How to do it:
Place the circular band around your forearms, just below your elbows, and come into a straight arm plank. Keep a gentle outward pressure against the band.
Upper arms: Externally rotate your upper arms and energize them away from your central line. Keep your shoulders broad and away from your ears.
Lower arms: Press your forearms gently out against the band while keeping your fingers wide and all five fingers grounded. At the same time, feel your hands subtly hugging toward one another.
The feel: Don’t overdo the resistance. You’re not trying to stretch the band as far as you can. It’s there to help you find and maintain your alignment. You’ll feel more stability through your shoulders, more connection through your arms and core, and a much stronger plank.
Clamshell with the Circular Band
What it targets: Gluteus medius, hip stability and oblique strength
I love playing with different band resistances here because they completely change the feel of the exercise, and both have benefits.
How to do it:
Place the circular band around your thighs, just above your knees, and lie on your side with your hips and knees at 90-degree angles. Engage your obliques to lift your bottom rib slightly away from the floor and keep your pelvis stable and stacked.
Keeping your feet together, rotate your top thigh open against the resistance of the band without letting your pelvis roll back.
Play with the resistance: A tighter band gives you a smaller range of motion and lets you work more deeply into the gluteus medius and the stabilizing muscles around the hip. A lighter band allows for a larger range of motion while still building strength and control.
The feel: Keep it controlled and intentional. Whether you choose more resistance or more range, the goal is the same: a strong, stable hip with the movement coming from the right place.
Parallel Thigh Work with the Circular Band
What it targets: Quadriceps and inner-thigh strength, hip stability and knee support
I love adding the band to parallel thigh work because you can play with both sides of the resistance. Pressing out into the band engages your outer hips, while gently drawing your inner thighs toward one another creates an entirely different connection.
How to do it:
Place the circular band around your thighs, just above your knees. Stand with your feet parallel and hip-width apart, lift your heels, bend your knees and lower into your parallel thigh-work position.
Maintain gentle outward pressure into the band, keeping your knees tracking directly over your toes. From here, use small, controlled movements while staying tall through your posture and connected through your core.
Play with the resistance: You can gently engage your thighs out into the band, or shift the intention and gently hug your inner thighs toward one another without actually letting the knees collapse in. I love alternating between the two. You’ll feel how differently the muscles around your hips and thighs engage.
The why: Strengthening both the inner and outer thighs, along with your quadriceps, helps strengthen the muscles that support and stabilize your knee joint. The band also gives you immediate feedback so you can maintain your alignment as you move.
The feel: Your quads are definitely working, but there’s more going on. You’re creating strength and stability all the way around the leg, which is what makes this simple movement so valuable.
Why Circular Bands Matter
Bands don’t just add resistance. They give you feedback. I love that you can immediately feel when you’re losing your alignment or when you could engage a little more.
These four exercises are just a starting point. Once you understand how to use the band, you can bring it into so many movements you already know, in class or at home.
For me, it always comes back to Align → Engage → Move. The band helps you find your alignment, connect more deeply to the muscles supporting it, and then move from that stronger place.
It’s not always about doing more. Sometimes a small shift in alignment or engagement completely changes an exercise. That’s where the magic is.