Why You Should Improve Your Flexibility with One Band
There are many fitness related goals you can achieve by training with one band, as long as you can modify resistance levels. This simply requires having different levels of band resistance.
One of those goals is maintaining and improving flexibility.
As we age, maintaining and improving flexibility is critical to keeping the body’s joints feeling good and injury free. Doing this with one band is extremely effective for many reasons, including the fact that it can easily fit into a busy lifestyle centered around a family, a home and a career.
Finding convenient, effective and proven ways to keep our body mobile and flexible will be the difference between looking, feeling and moving great…OR NOT.
Three Specific Ways to Improve Flexibility with One Band
1. Improving Flexibility by How You Stretch
Band stretching requires one band and a stable structure to put your non-stretching foot against. Once you have that, it comes down to routinely performing a series of hip and shoulder related stretches that are done in a controlled, active but somewhat ballistic manner. This is much different than the traditional body weight stretching and is possible because you are using an elastic resistance band that stretches like your muscles would stretch naturally.
As a result, stretching with a band allows you to warm the muscle up by doing repeated, active muscle contractions against band resistance while incorporating a dynamic over pressure lengthening of the muscles. There is no other approach like this and no other tool except a flat, continuously looped, layered Quantum Band that can accomplish this.
Learn more by viewing the following – A Simple One Band Flow Stretching Series
2. Improving Flexibility by How You Strength Train
Strength training with bands allows you to use the elastic nature of the band to lengthen out your body on every single rep. When you consider how many reps and different directions you can move while strength training with a flat, continuously looped band, it is easy to see how your body’s soft tissues and joints can be easily mobilized.
Unfortunately, most people train with bands like they do weights and do not allow the band to passively lengthen them on every rep. Instead, they restrict themselves from lengthening by shortening up the range of motion and not taking advantage of the band’s unique ascending resistance.
Allowing your body to be taken through the full eccentric phase of the movement will allow joints and muscles to be mobilized and stretched on every rep. Also, by changing up planes of motion it allows you to impact angles that body weight and free weight strengthening can’t impact.
3. Improving Flexibility by How You Recover (using a single flat continuously looped band)
As we age, our body requires longer to recover from an aggressive strength training workout. Not allowing soft tissues and joints to adequately recover will ultimately lead to injury not to mention unnecessary muscle and joint pain.
I know what you are thinking…
You enjoy working out six days a week and you enjoy aggressive workouts. Me too!! However, working out does not have to always require performing high intensity training. Actually, as we age, our body responds better to low intensity recovery workouts strategically placed in between aggressive training days to help the body recover.
Improving flexibility by performing low resistance, high rep band, active recovery workouts allows the soft tissue to be lengthened and challenged. This is done without creating additional inflammation that leads to extensive muscle pain and joint stiffness. These recovery workouts increase blood flow which, in turn, provides muscles with the nutrients needed to recover faster.
Here is a perfect example of a single band exercise sequence you can do with a low resistance red small band while following a 45 second on 15 second off workout interval. Remember to make the resistance low and emphasize training the core and joint stabilizer while allowing the muscles to feel great quality movement.
Summary
Improving flexibility requires doing more than a little stretching before every workout. A workout should challenge the body to move out of the normal planes of motion while being maximally lengthened through a full range of motion on every rep.
Training with resistance bands allows this to happen while providing you with the tool to stretch before every workout. Fortunately it only requires using one band that can travel with you no matter where you have to go to workout.
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To get the best results stretching with bands, you need to be able to slowly progress with higher levels of elastic tension that continually keeps your muscle lengthening and adapting.
Progressive Band Stretching Package
