Today's video, we are going through how to choose the
right theraband. Keep watching to clarify your
understanding on which band to use for your exercise routine. My name's
Claire. I'm a Physiotherapist from Physiofit
Health. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you can keep updated when we
publish our videos. If you've seen people using
stretchy bands or resistance bands like this one but you don't know where
to start with what they are, which ones to use and
how to go forward in bringing them into your exercise
routine then we'll take you through how to figure it all out. This video we
will take you through the different strengths of bands, the
fact that you can make an exercise easier or harder, a few questions to
consider whilst you're thinking about which bands
might be useful for you and lastly we'll go through an example
exercise. The first thing to know and be aware
about with these bands is they come in different strengths.
Traditionally speaking, the different colors equals a different
strength. I've got three bands here. I've got a
red one, a blue one and a grey one. With the color system, the red
one is one of the lighter versions,
the blue one is slightly stronger and the gray one is stronger still. There are
a few other colors to be aware of, there's some yellows and greens, there's
some blacks and they're all signifying just a
different strength of band. More recently depending where
you buy your bands, they might not conform to this color
scheme. In which case, have a look at the band it
should indicate on the packaging whether that
band is a lighter band or if it's heavier
or stronger. The next thing to be aware of is the bands
can either help you out with an exercise, they can assist you, they can make things
easier depending on the strength of the bands.
They can also make things just a little bit harder for you create a little bit
more resistance. A few questions to consider
before you are choosing the band for your exercise,
the first one is Have I done this exercise before? If I haven't done the
exercise before, you're wanting to make it easier rather
than harder just so that you can get the basics out of the exercise before you
can then start increasing the difficulty. Another question to ask yourself is How
challenging do I want this exercise to be?
If you're having an off day or you're just wanting a little bit more
support then it might change the strength of the band that you're using
for that exercise. The third question to ask yourself is
What is the focus of that exercise you're intending to do?
With that meaning, Are you wanting to target the endurance
of the muscles or are you wanting to target more the
strength of the muscles? We've created a couple of videos I'm talking you through
endurance and strength exercises and how many repetitions to target
and what kind of weight that you're looking for so you can
check those out if you want to delve a little bit deeper into the endurance and
the strength. Broadly speaking, if it's endurance you
want a lighter weight and you want to do a lot of
repetitions and if you're wanting more of a strength exercise, you want a
heavier more challenging resistance and you're not
going to do that many repetitions. So our example exercise is a
shoulder one and it's one where the arm is just going
to come all the way out and up to the side. We can go through
the questions that we suggested earlier, Have I done this before? Yes, I have. How
challenging do I want this? Well, in this instance to answer this
question, I also need to answer the endurance or
strength question that we mentioned so I want to actually target the
endurance of the muscles so the challenge I
actually want like a lighter band so that I can do as many repetitions as
I want to or can do so then for this exercise.
I'm choosing to use a red band because it's one of the
lighter bands, it's gonna give me a little bit of a challenge but it's gonna
mean that I can do a number of repetitions
into the exercise which will help me target these smaller endurance muscles.
With this example exercise, you're in standing, you have the band under your
left foot and you're holding the other end of the band with your right hand
and you're starting with that right hand over in front of your
left hip. You're imagining you've got a sword
so you are going to draw your hand out to the side,
turn your thumb up towards the ceiling and this is going to increase tension on
the band so it's as if you're drawing that sword
all the way out, raising it all the way up and then you can return that hand
back to your start position. That is your exercise. You're just
checking when you do this exercise that that right shoulder doesn't start to
lift up as you're starting to raise the arm up you don't want it to be
hitching up. If you're finding it's doing the shoulder hitch, it takes
you back to that question on How challenging do you want it to be?
You want your movements to be of more quality rather than quantity
so you've probably chosen a band that's a little bit too strong if you're
starting to hitch. In which case, you just want to take the
band down a strength or two and then repeat the
exercise and see if that is better with this
shoulder. So those are the things to consider when you're wondering how to
choose the right theraband. Be aware that they come in different
strengths, they can either help you or make it harder for you
and a few questions to consider when you are choosing the band and that's Have
you done the exercise before? Do you want to make it just a little bit easier so
you get the quality first and then increase the resistance?
and Are you really wanting to work on the endurance or the strength around
that exercise and the muscles in the body? What we've just gone through
doesn't cover all scenarios for all exercises but it should give you
a good foundation of knowledge. Subscribe to
our YouTube channel and we'll see you soon!