Dave’s Resistance Band Training Story
How a Big Ass BAND Helped A 35 Year Old Iron Pumping Physical Therapist Stay Fit & Athletic into his 60's while helping 1000’s of others do the same.
Farm Boy to Physical Therapist
As a boy growing up on a Central Wisconsin Dairy Farm, 25 miles from any civilization (in my 15 year old opinion), hanging out and playing a little pickup basketball or working out at the high school weight room with my high school teammate wasn’t going to happen.
Instead my weight room was a garage (in the summer) and an unfinished basement (in the winter). My strength equipment was old plastic weights with a 20 pound barbell, homemade squat rack, some tractor tires, hay bales, a clothes lines for pullups, a sledgehammer, elastic straps my dad used as bungee cords and my body. As for cardio that involved jumping up on hay bales, agility runs through cornfields, resisted barn hill runs and continuous gravel road runs.
Yes my parents, as well as several neighbors, thought I was nuts. Especially when I would do it after a fresh snow or on the hottest days of the year, but this added to the overall training effect which provides you with a little incite to how my teenage mind perceived training.
But it wasn’t just the game I enjoyed, I absolutely loved watching athletes be athletes and found myself trying to mimic their athleticism. I also loved to workout and see how I could impacted my ability to be more athletic by simply moving fast at everything I did. I also realized that I was going to really have to outwork my opponent to have success which ironically fueled my passion for training and fitness.
I understood why people thought I was a little crazy. However this craziness would be the driving force behind my career as a PT and Business Owner. Keep reading… You will see what I am talking about. There was definitely a method behind my madness.
Knowing the farm wasn’t for me, I opted out at 18 and became the first member of my family to attend college. I chose the University of La Crosse-Wisconsin a very exercise oriented school. My plan was to major in something that allowed me to learn more about how the body worked and would provide me an opportunity to help people get better with exercise.
Having suffered a few injuries in high school, Athletic Training and Physical Therapy seemed to be a good fit…. If nothing else, I would learn how to fix myself. However getting into PT School would require a lot of discipline and commitment to studying. No worries the farm workouts had me ready to do what I needed to do to get into PT School.
Time to Get People Better
I left the University of La Crosse in 1986 with a BS in Physical Therapy, a minor in Athletic Training and 4 years of working out. Needless to say I was fired up to fix people’s back, knees, ankles, hips, and shoulders. For the next 7 years, I dialed in and learned all I could rehabilitating injuries while keeping myself as “jacked” as possible
However, there was something that continued to bug me.
It’s hard to explain but as a 30-year-old guy who worked out lifting weights every day and considered himself pretty athletic, why was I waking up moving like my 80+ year old grandpa every morning and continually struggling with nagging injuries. I was a PT for goodness sake.
Interestingly I was also noticing how much my rehab patients were struggling regaining their movement quality following traditional strength training principles using weights. Obviously just getting stronger lifting weights wasn’t translating into quicker recovery, regaining quality functional movement and returning back to activities of life that had been lost with injury.
Could it Be that… MOVEMENT was MORE IMPORTANT than MUSCLE???
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Thank Goodness for a High Energy Therapist named Gary and a Crazy Band Guy named Dick
In 1994, I started on a journey to figure out why just getting stronger lifting weights wasn’t making my patients and myself better movers. I came across a physical therapist named Gary Gray. This guy was high energy and a little crazy but what he taught me about how the body moved provide me with so many answers.
Gary taught me the body was a quick reacting, multi-plane machine that was designed to work together as complete integrated unit over come the drivers of movement… Gravity, Momentum and Ground Contact forces.
A traditional free weight strength training approach was slow, used single plane, focused on training muscles versus movements, only addressed gravity and trained the body as individual parts.
No wonder my iron pumping approach was making me feel stiff and non-athletic. Needless to say Gary was a “Game Changer” and I followed him around for 2 years learning and implementing everything he taught me about human movement. The more I learned the better results I got with my patients and with my personal workouts.
The next big momentum came in 1996 while attending a football coaches clinic at the University of Notre Dame with friend. Bored with all the X’s and O’s talk. I strolled into a huge indoor training facility and sat down to watch this short little high energy guy named Dick demonstrate all kinds of crazy drills using these big industrial size rubber bands.
As I watched Dick do his thing with these bands, I started thinking about what Gary had taught me about how the body functionally moves as a total kinetic chain and how the body was driven by gravity, momentum and ground contact forces. Needless to say a huge light bulb went off in my head. 2 hours later I bought a couple of bands and set out to see if my vision about training with elastic bands could make my patients and myself move, feel and perform better.
First off, I redesigned all my workouts to include resistance band training. I used them to train mobility, strength, speed and power. It was awesome. My body started moving and feeling more athletic again. So much so that at age 38 I started doing track workouts again, something I never thought I would ever do again after high school. Plus I was getting up in morning after workouts feeling great.
Secondly, I started rehabbing all my patients by combining Dick’s big bands and Gary’s functional movement approach. IT WAS AMAZING… Patients started recovering faster, moving better and having fun doing it. Plus many of them were getting hooked on fitness because they could train at home with the bands.
A Band Functions Just Like a Muscle. You Load it and it Explodes.
I Will Never Forget TOM
One day while in the clinic working with Tom, it hit me…. my “patients” were really active minded people that were exercising to get more athletic so they could maximize life outside the clinic. It was the same reason I exercised. I wanted to use the gym to help me enjoy life more outside the gym.
That day, Thanks to Tom, I started training, not rehabilitating, my patients to become great movers. It was this mind-shift that took me into the next phase of my Resistance Band Training Journey.
From Rehab to Performance to Fitness
Why was I waiting for people to get hurt before they could see me. If my Resistance Band Training (RBT) approach could helped people recover from injury faster, why couldn’t RBT help get athletes eliminate injury while getting faster and stronger on the field or court. Also why wouldn’t RBT provide active minded fitness adults a more sustainable joint friendly fitness solution that could help them look, feel and move more athletically. Based on my training RBT could be the sustainable exercise solution that could to help athletes and general fitness people “physically get better and stay better” but I needed to test my theory.
HERE WE GO!!
With these pilot training programs combined with the my day job as a physical therapist and my personal fitness routine, I was now training individuals from seniors to high performance athletes using the same Resistance Band Training Approach.
To test out my RBT theory, in 2000, I launched a pilot performance enhancement program we call G’town Fast n Fit along with a weekly adult workout program called the G’town Band Bootcamp. The goal was to help young athletes and fitness minded adults learn how to train with resistance bands while allowing me to research and develop the best band training methods. If I was right about RBT these pilot programs would prove that RBT was the secret weapon to helping young athletes get faster, stronger and more injury resilient in their sport. Meanwhile it would also help my fitness mind adults build useable strength, power and mobility by following a joint friendly convenient training approach that emphasized “Movement Before Muscle”.
Resistancebandtraining.com is Launched
10 Years after discovering Gary and Dick, in 2004, I launched the first Resistancebandtraining.com website. The goal was to start sharing information on what I was learning about an unheard of training system using large continuous looped rubber bands with physical therapy patients, athletes and active minded fitness adults from ages 13 to 80+ years old.
Once the site was live, I started writing weekly blog articles, publishing videos on YouTube, doing high school athlete training workshops everywhere and speaking at any event I could get invited to.
Within 2 years I had written 100’s of blog posts, created 400+ YouTube videos and had done 30+ workshops or public speaking events.
It was awesome but a little crazy back then. I was building Resistancebandtraining.com, running adult training session 4 days per week, coaching young athletes 5 day a week in an after-school athlete performance training program, rehabbing orthopedic patients 30 hours per week, getting in my own workouts at 5 am and trying to chase after 3 healthy toddlers. All of it was very exciting because everyday I was helping someone get better with bands.
Fortunately, I had an awesome teammate in my wife Karen who made sure I knew where I was going every day.
Decision Time
I wanted to help as many people as possible get better with RBT and with the growth of the internet Resistancebandtraining.com was going to be the best platform to achieve that mission. So in 2008, Karen and I launched Resistance Band Training Systems, LLC and together we became full fledged small business owners.
Quantum Bands, the exclusive band of RBT, soon followed along with several band training accessories, the RBT Certification and tons of other educational resources, all designed to help people of all ages and performance levels start learning how to “Get Better and Stay Better Training with Bands”
Now It's Time to Get YOU Better with Bands
I won’t say it’s been easy running the only online website exclusively devoted to teaching and training people on how to train with bands. However it’s continues to be a very rewarding and exciting ride. Pioneering a new training approach that was initially looked upon as 1 or 2 year fad, has allowed us to help 1000’s of fitness enthusiasts, athletes, trainers and coaches discover that lifting weights “Only” is not the most sustainable way to get the body stronger, healthier and performing at a high level.
Who would have ever thought that all those afternoons running around in the backyard as a farm boy training and mimicking his favored athletes would today, have grown into a Resistance Band Training System being used by 1000’s of fitness minded adults, seniors and athletes from the high school to the professionals level.
Resistancebandtraining.com always was and will continue to be all about sharing and helping people better by discovering the power of RBT. Yes we sell bands, accessories and programs but I hope at the end of the day ” Changing Lives with Bands” will be our True Legacy.
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This isn’t your ordinary boring Newsletter. 4 times per week (since November of 2009) I share training, teaching and workouts on how to use Quantum Resistance Bands to get your body looking, feeling and moving better so you can maximize life outside the gym.
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IT’S A FACT
When we first launched Resistancebandtraining.com bands were look upon as a rehabilitation tool and band training was last alternative to strength training.
Fast forward 20+ years…. RBT is now being used in every college and high school weight room, by every professional sport organization , in 95% of all fitness gyms and training facilities across the country and by millions of people in their home gyms.
No we are not responsible for all of that but I would like to feel we have been a big influence in helping resistance band training grow.
We look forward to helping you learn how RBT can help make your fitness a sustainable fun lifelong journey that leads to greater longevity.
Get Better – Stay Better with Bands.
~ Dave ~
