did you know that the earliest
recognition of resistance bans came in
1896 when a swiss man by the name of
gustav goswaila requested a patent for
an elastic exercising device to be used
as a gymnastic apparatus to replace
other apparatuses gustav's invention
laid the foundation for other patents to
follow up to this day and yes these
rubbery to be portable things has become
pretty popular over the years question
is do they actually build muscle let's
get one thing out of the way first if
you're a beginner absolutely positively
you will see results using bands
beginners you guys are lucky you'll
pretty much respond to any type of
exercise including band exercises let's
also get a few more other things out of
the way bands are great for people going
through physical therapy rehab and the
elderly since it's lower impact easier
to control for the most part and
something easy to do at home and yes
bands are extremely portable you can get
all different colors of the rainbow with
very different resistances that can do a
bunch of very different exercises
awesome but now let's get to the good
stuff can it give you all of them
beautiful gains we know the research
definitely show a whole bunch of muscle
growth and strength benefits when it
comes to beginners but as you get out of
the phase athletes call newbie gains
making sure to use progressive overload
and providing proper stimulus to your
muscles is mutual importante for growth
so what does that mean for bands well
let's talk a little bit about the
physiology of muscle contraction first
warning boring science ahead
contraction occurs within a sacromere
via the sliding filament theory where
cross bridges are formed by a reaction
between the elements of contraction
actin and myosin the head of a myosin
filament attaches to an adjacent actin
filament and forms the so-called bridge
and then pulls the sucker towards the
center of the sacromere the more it
pulls the shorter the muscle fiber
becomes such as when you go from
straight missiles to gun show now based
on different lengths of the muscle fiber
the amount of force you can produce
changes at its longest force production
is lowest due to the low contact between
the contractile elements in the mid
force is the highest with the most
contact occurring and then weak again at
its shortest length due to overlapping
here take this funky scenario for
example a guy is pulling a storm towards
him attached to a rope as he creates
slack on the rope another guy decides to
join in and help producing more pull
power the more they pull the more and
more people help out and produce more
power eventually they run out of rope
space and start stepping back instead
but little did they know that there was
another group pulling another stone
right behind them the two groups get in
each other's way forcing some people out
and force production dwindles now apply
this to muscle force production and
you'll see a charge like this weakest in
the beginning strongest in the middle
and weak again at the end i'm not sure
if that made any sense anyway you're
probably wondering how the heck does
this have anything to do with resistance
bands well i'll tell you after i explain
what that means for your traditional
dumbbells now if i were to take a weight
where i can lift pretty confidently at
the middle range of motion where i'm the
strongest the weight is probably still
no good because i can't lift it for reps
at the weakest part of the range that
means i had to go lighter of course but
now the weight is too light in the
middle of the range and i'm not getting
the maximal stimulus i need for growth
and as far as the bicep curl i'm not
getting much of a stimulus at the end
neither i know i know i said that you're
weaker at the end of the movement too
but in this case something in
biomechanics known as the moment arm is
very short meaning the line of
resistance is very close to the axis or
your joint or elbow in this case the
shorter the moment arm the less force
needed to move an object thus in the
bicep curl not a lot of force is
produced at the end i probably confused
you even more than before but let's
continue
okay now let's finally look at
resistance bands the resistance applied
from elastic bands are different from
that of traditional weight duh the way
it is different is that it applies a
growing level of resistance the more you
pull through the range of motion at the
very start the amount of tension and
resistance is at its lowest and then at
its highest at the end of the movement
that's good though in this case with the
bicep curl because that's what you want
a growing resistance since your weakest
in the beginning strongest in the middle
and weak but low moment arm at the end
but it's not great for all exercises
take the side raises for example where
you're super struggling towards the top
of the movement because the moment arm
is much greater and some bands
especially loop bands that are stronger
has an extremely wide range of
resistance like this one where it goes
from 50 to 125 pounds of force almost
three times as much from start to finish
so this is a huge disadvantage to
resistance bands along with the fact
that you'll grow out of the very light
bands really quickly and then using the
heavier bands will be tough because
it'll start pulling you instead of you
pulling it as far as gains it looks
feasible but only up to a certain point
hold on a minute
we know weights have a constant load
which can be good but it also means not
enough resistance for the middle range
of motion to create an optimal stimulus
and we know bands are good because of a
continuous load but is too low in the
beginning and too tough at the end
so why not combine them together
that's right adding bands onto your
weights is probably the best way to go
to compensate for the differences in
muscle force production that means
greater stimuli greater volume and
greater gains in fact the studies back
this up where one even found as far as
strength subjects improved their one rep
max's twice as much with bands and
weights than using weights alone results
may vary so the smart way to use bands
is to simply use them with your
exercises now but if you do choose to
use bands alone maybe you can use it as
a warm-up set before jumping into
weights some people even find it useful
to supplement a workout with band
exercises at the end to push volume up a
bit more and creating a heavier pump and
you probably even have some awesome
ideas to use with your bands and if you
do share it in the comments anyway i
hope this video was more helpful than
confusing and if you enjoyed it please
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you for watching