Elastic Resistance Bands: Taking Your Exercise Outside the Gym.

Whether you are a beginner, just starting to get familiar with exercise, or an avid gym go-er looking for a new way to change up your daily exercise regimen, resistance bands are often overlooked. This tool can offer the kind of variety, flexibility and “real-world” functionality that is not found in larger pieces of weight equipment such as weight machines.  As a stay at home mom of twins a lot of my exercise is done at home or outside so I count on these tools to help me reach my goals.  Here are some of the advantages to using bands in your workout routine:

Advantages:

Resistance bands are lightweight elastic strips that come in a variety of colors; each color represents a different level of resistance. These bands can be used alone, with special accessories such as door attachments or handles to give you a wide variety of exercises to choose from. Being lightweight and the having ability to fold up the bands and pack into your luggage makes transportation of resistance bands easy.

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Another big advantage is cost. With individual bands priced as low as $3, and bulk rolls costing under $20, these are quite easily some of the least expensive, yet versatile exercise items you can find. Bands can be used for just about every exercise that can be performed with free weights. Additionally, the special accessories, such as door attachments and handles, make them even more diverse.1

A critical benefit of elastic resistance is that it prevents the user from “cheating” on the exercise being performed. This is a common practice, especially for beginners, when using free weights. Cheating involves the use of momentum to get the weight moving. Once the weight has built up momentum, the muscle fibers do not need to be maximally activated to continue moving the weight throughout the rest of the range of motion of the exercise. This is due to the fact that the physics of momentum have taken over to move the weight. The physical properties of elastic resistance devices do not allow the user to cheat by using momentum. This is because the resistance from the elastic equipment comes from the stretching of the elastic material and not the mass of the elastic equipment. The only way to continue a movement while performing an exercise with elastic resistance is to utilize more muscle fibers in the exercising muscle to continue stretching the elastic material.2

In conclusion, a program that uses elastic tubing resistance can also provide benefits that are not offered by free-weight resistance programs. Follow up next week to compare the disadvantages of resistance bands.

References

1. Cook, LaRue. (2013, December 18). Resistance Band Vs. Free Weights. Retrieved September 21, 2015 from http://www.livestrong.com/article/87499-resistance-bands-vs.-weights/

2. Stoppani, Jim. Elastic Resistance Bands Vs. Free Weights. Retrieved September 21, 2015 from http://www.bodylastics.com/pages/elastic-resistance-vs-free-weights-by-jim-stoppani-phd.