How to use resistance bands

For effective progress in any sport, there must be an element of progression and adjustment to any training and nutrition program. Your body is always in a search for homeostasis (constantly looking to remain the same), it does not want to change. So to make sure this doesn’t happen you need to have a plan in place in order to keep further stimulus pushing your results in the right direction. If you’re not growing, you’re dying (both figuratively and literally). Resistance bands should be incorporated into any training program because if understood properly, they can become a very effective training tool in order to bring in the progression your body needs.

Activation and Emphasis on Shortened Range

The first way that resistance bands become very effective and in a much more passive way than people may think, is through activation. Focusing on activating muscle that you are about to train will increase the effectiveness of your workout, allows you to feel the muscle and make a much better neural connection with what you are about to train. This is important for any area you may be looking to improve from fat loss, strength, hypertrophy or even sports specific as it enables you to wake up the muscle that may be causing you a lack of range/control or even just tightness. Where bands become effective for activation is predominately in extension or pulling movements as there will be no real tension until you reach the shortened range. The shortened range is where the muscle is fully contracted (or shortened), for example for a quad it would be in a leg extension with a fully extended leg. This same technique can be used to really emphasize a certain range but this is a more advanced technique that needs to be light relative to the load.

Rehabilitation

Another overlooked way bands can be used is in rehabilitation work. Being able to take away load in the extremes of the range in pressing movements such as squats, bench press, leg press can become very useful. Make sure that the bands are attached in a way that takes load away from bar/machine rather than the other way round (Examples of this can be found on my YouTube Channel. When you are faced with an injury such as a sore knee that does not allow you free squat or place heavy load in a fully stretched position, resistance bands become very useful. By adding bands to a machine such as a hack squat or leg press as shown on my channel, you are able to change this movement to allow for less resistance at the bottom. This is effective whether you have injuries or not but as it takes away some of the weight at the bottom, it matches your bodies strength curve (which I will discuss further in future emails) and allows you to keep a much higher percentage of the load on the muscle and off the knee joint. How much weight you take away obviously depends on the size of the band; essentially it varies depending on how much resistance you want to take away from the lengthened range.

Matching body’s natural strength pattern

Whether you’re using bands to accommodate an injury, or to ultimately make your training harder – you can alternate the direction the bands are pulling to either add resistance or increase it. Essentially they are still doing the same thing by altering the strength curve, however having bands pulling down on you compared to assisting you will be harder on your joints but does allow for a completely different stimulus. All these examples are on my YouTube channel and if not feel free to ask! So when you are putting together your next program or are looking to make your existing program more effective by adding further progression, add resistance bands to your tool kit. Pair them with some drop sets, strip sets, iso holds etc. and your opportunities to progress are endless. Once you understand how bands accommodate your body’s own natural strength curve, when it comes to certain movements you are opened up to a whole level of training. You are able to add bands to machine chest presses or bar curls to get a rock hard contraction, or add them movements such as a pull over or deadlift to allow for a greater range of motion under tension. They are guaranteed to work your body in a whole new way.

Now before you run off and throw bands on every movement to see what new invention you can come up with, remember that progression cannot be linear. Allowing your body to recover after a phase of continual breakdown and increased volume is essential to keep your body moving in the right direction.

Hope you enjoyed this resistance band guide and that it’s given you a simple tool that can take your training to the next level. I love seeing people spend time expanding their training knowledge, it’s important to learn how to train smarter not harder in order to get you to where you want to be. I am on a mission to get your there in the most intelligent way possible, so if there is any questions or material you want to me to cover flick me a message.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Olly