Band Wisdom
Bands are extremely commonly utilized to add resistance to an exercise. As useful as they can be, there are a few poorly understood characteristics of bands that need to be understood to make bands safe, effective and efficient.
proerties of elastomers
altering amount of resistance/when to change bands
strength profile considerations and why setup is more important with bands
range of motion
band safety
#1 - Properties of bands
Bands are often touted as offering “constant tension.” This is highly fallible and misleading.
Bands resistances are ranked in terms of pounds of resistance, like 5lbs, 10lbs, 20lbs, etc. This system of ranking is false, and you should only use it to know which ones generally offer more resistance than others.
When you take something elastic like a resistance band from slack to fully stretched, it provides increasing amounts of resistance, and the change in resistance is not linear.
At the beginning of being stretched, a band will go from offering no resistance while slack to a whole bunch more than none, right away.
Once the distortion (stretching) of the band has begun, and it went from none to a bunch, it slowly increases in the resistance offered as you distort it more and more.
At the very end of the distortion, as the band approaches its maximum length before snapping, the resistance it offers increases DRAMATICALLY.
A “5lb” resistance band can most likely offer anywhere from 2-25lbs of resistance when taken through its full range of distortion.
This is important to know insofar as when you choose to use a band for an exercise, how far away from the band attachment you choose to do the exercise and/or how much the band distorts throughout the range performed in the exercise will cause the resistance to vary highly.
So make sure you are conscious of (at least roughly) how distorted the band is when beginning and performing an exercise, and try to make sure that remains relatively consistent every time you do that exercise. Unless, of course, you want to intentionally change the resistance offered because you aren’t feeling as strong that day (want to reduce resistance) or are trying to progress because your normal spot is consistently becoming too easy (want to increase resistance).
If you are doing three sets of a band hip flexion exercise, for example, and you get up and move around in between sets, take note of your position in the room before moving. Otherwise, you may have found a tension with the band on that last set that was appropriate, and unintentionally do the next set with way more or way less tension than the previous set that was perfect.
We recommend keeping notes on at least roughly where you have found to be a good resistance. That can be done in a couple ways:
If you consistently do the same exercise in the same place in a certain room, which is preferable, use a landmark like where your shoulder is when lying down, or where your chair placed in the room relative to a carpet or something like that. This is the preferred method.
If you tend to change settings often, keep track of (roughly) how far the band is stretched at a certain point in the exercise (can be beginning or end) and try to replicate that each time when you don’t have a consistent setting to reference.
#2 - Altering resistance and when to change bands
This follows the last point nicely.
As you get stronger over time by slowly increasing the resistance with the same band (by scooting further away and distorting the band more so if offers more resistance), there will come a point where it is the right time to choose a thicker band.
Referencing the last point, when you get close to hitting the maximum distortion capability of a band, the resistance it offers will go up dramatically. At this point, using the same band with that much distortion will likely be too big of a jump in resistance. Not to mention it is safer to go up in resistance than overstretch and overuse the same band.
Your best option will be to use the next level up, and perform the exercise barely distorting the band by scooting significantly closer to the band attachment. You may find that scooting as close as possible while still having some resistance offered (band not slack) feels like less resistance with the “heavier” band than when you were distorting the “lighter band” close to its maximum.
Stepping up from one band to the next band will just require a little bit of troubleshooting to find the new beginning distortion amount; once you find that, you will follow the same principles of gradually distorting it more and more as you get stronger, then rinse and repeat.
#3 - pay attention to setup please
We have covered resistance considerations with bands quite thoroughly, but there is one detail that can completely change that. It’s a bit complicated and some basic physics are important to understand, but we will try to make it as simple as possible.
You know how when you’re carrying grocery bags in from the store, if you have to hold it out in front of you rather than by your side, it feels significantly heavier? The true weight of the bag hasn’t changed, but something important has.
Resistance applied to you has to components:
The magnitude of the resistance, meaning how much force the tool applies to you (how much the grocery bag weighs).
The moment arm of the resistance, or where the resistance is applied relative to the joints and muscles responsible for fighting the resistance (holding it out in front of your shoulder vs by your side).
The magnitude is easier to understand: it is the thickness of the band, and how far it is distorted. That is the resistance provided.
But the effective resistance applied to YOU is an equation consisting of the magnitude of the resistance MULTIPLIED by the distance from the joint it is resisting.
So if you have the band distorted as far as physically possible, but it is applied really close to or even at the joint(s), the fact that the band is providing loads of resistance is almost completely negated by the fact that is is multiplied by zero or thereabouts. That’s the same as carrying a grocery bag full of bricks under your shoulder, and it feeling lighter than a grocery bag full of sourdough out in front of your shoulder, full zombie pose.
Now, applying that is pretty complicated, and you might feel more confused now than helped.
But we have taken care of making sure the moment arms and the magnitude of the resistance are set up in the appropriate way for you.
All that this section is trying to get across is that the setup of the band exercises is EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY important. Extremely. Important.
So please don’t be lackadaisical in setting the exercise up, thinking that you’ve gotten it close enough and it’s fine, it’s good enough. Especially with the properties of bands that we covered further up the page, and how the resistance changes the more or less it is distorted, the angles of your setup being just a little bit off can take the exercise we designed from really helpful to borderline useless. So pay attention.
#4 - Range of motion and tempo
In the isometric section, we are not moving when doing the exercise. Now, we are.
This brings some new considerations into play.
In isos, we touched on the ends of the range of motion being the more risky areas to travel.
Moving into those ends of the range is riskier, but that risk can be negated when performing movement based exercises by moving with control. And that starts with a slow tempo.
It is remarkably easier to do an exercise when moving faster. But we aren’t out for easier. We are trying to challenge to create change.
So we go slow. 95% of the time, slow is better, safer, allows attention to each part of the range, improves intention, and so on and so on.
Going slow makes things more challenging, but really the most important part about it is how much safer it is.
If you move fast, you can hit the ends of a range of motion in such a way that issues might arise. And while they may not arise, and you may get away with it for awhile, they almost certainly won’t if you just go slower.
There is a popular narrative out there that “full range of motion” is important. It can be. But full range of motion and important are not mutually inclusive concepts.
Moving through a full range of motion is cool, but only if certain requirements are met. You have to have control, proper contraction in the desired muscle, can move yourself safely into the range without allowing the resistance to force you somewhere, and not just a haphazard position you can move into only with speed and lack of control. .
In some of these exercises, it is impossible to attain a successful full range challenge, where the varying resistance the band applies at all points in the motion (resistance profile) is in line with how your body’s strength fluctuates through positions (strength profile), when using bands. So sometimes we have an exercise where we intentionally limit the range of motion for the purposes of either safety or efficiency.
Some exercises you will just want to oscillate in a small part of the range of motion, while others you might be able to get closer to a full range challenge.
Again, while difficult and unnecessary for you to know when to oscillate or move through more of the range, we have made those determinations for you.
This all goes to say, move slowly and with control, don’t attempt to move through more of the motion just for the sake of moving there (more is not better, more is just more), and pay attention to the videos in terms of what portions of the range of motion you are instructed to operate in.
