Band Training will get you quick results

I have spent over 15 years training and learning how to improve functional movement, strength, power, flexibility, agility, speed and quickness training with bands.  To say I have made a lot of mistakes, would be a total understatement but over time I have had a lot of success getting myself as well as many of my fitness enthusiast friends better using bands.

As a result I want to share with you 10 ways band training will help you as a fitness enthusiasts  get better

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1.  Start band training TODAY!!  I know this seems pretty basic but when I first saw bands I thought they were another silly fitness gimmick.  That was 1996!!   They are not a gimmick and they get results quickly.

2.  Start stretching with bands especially through the hips. Fitness success over 40 will be a direct result of maintaining your joint mobility and muscle flexibility.  The #1 reason men saw me in physical therapy was because they had lost their mobility and as a result their joints, disks and cartilage were paying the price.   You are not going to beat mother nature but you can definitely slow her down.  Start stretching with BANDS!!

3.  Eliminate shoulder pain by starting to do overhead pressing and pushing with bands and not just with weights.  Bands allow you to press without putting a high degree of pressure on the rotator cuff which is easily the most injured structure in the shoulder.  Plus you will train end range stability which is where the rotator cuff becomes weakest as we age.

4.   Adding band circuits to your deadweight training will take the pressure off your joints but still allow you to really feel the burn.  I’m not a body builder but I like to keep my body looking good as I am sure many of you do.  Unfortunately, doing deadweight muscle isolation training is not tolerable to the body as we age.  Fortunately bands are and since muscle are dumb, they won’t know the difference between band resistance and dead weight resistance but I promise your joints will.

5.   Take the load off your back and start squatting with bands.  Squatting is one of those exercises you want to be able to keep doing for a long time because of its strong carry over into function.  Unfortunately deadweight will be hard on your back.  Band front squats, RDLs and lateral lunges keep the hips strong and healthy without killing your vertebral disks in your back.

6.   Staying quick goes a long way in keep our body  injury free.  If you can maintain your agility and quick reaction you can prevent a lot of potential injury causing events like slipping, tripping or buckling that lead to ligament, cartilage, and joint trauma.  Making sure those proprioceptors do not become dormant is pretty important and can easily happen if we forget to train them.  Training slow with dead weight will make you a slow.  Training reactively with resistance bands will keep you quick and ready at all times.

7.   Drop the sit-ups and start training the abs the way they were intended to work.  Bands not only can increase the isometric stabilization exercise intensity, they can also train the abs to become reactively strong which will make your low back and other joints very happy at the same time.

8.   The key to a successful program is consistency.  You are going to have times when getting to the gym is simply not going to work.  Or there are those times when all you want to do is go by yourself some place like a park or your basement and just get after it.  Create a simple home band gym that can go where you want to go and therefore never miss a workout.  Some of my best workouts are when I go to the park or into my band gym early in the morning.

9.  Experiencing an amazing body transformation, means getting everyone around you on board.  My wife joins me 2 times per week to work out.  Having her on board with band training, makes it super easy for me to stay motivated knowing she is working hard at keeping herself in great shape.  All three of my children train with bands and I feel will always make fitness a part of their life as a result of this training. I promise once you get started, they will follow and make it easier for you to keep pushing.

10.  There is no better tool to perform partner training with then bands.  Nothing pushes you more than having a friend who is pushing as hard as you are hooked onto the other end of that band.  I train with one of my greatest friends every Wednesday and we get after it using band.  The change of pace is a weekly game change.

I hope this blog post, inspires you to give band training a try, get back using bands or start training harder with bands.  Honestly, at age 49, bands have been far more than a professional career for me.  They have helped me stay functionally young and I am pretty sure they can help you in a similar way.

Getting BETTER with BANDS

Dave

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