What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, Athlean-X.com.
Some people think that using bands is somehow inferior to using weights because maybe they
don’t look as formidable, right?
They're not as tough as a pair of iron dumbbells, but you have to stop thinking about using
bands only when you train and start thinking about how you can use bands with the weights
and the iron that you train with.
You see, if you understand the value of a band it's going to provide a complimentary
strength curve to what we'll never be able to see or realize with dumbbells or weights
alone.
I'm going to show you exactly how that looks in action here with a few exercises.
Okay, the first thing is like a dumbbell incline bench press.
What I've done is, I've grabbed the band and the dumbbell here together in my hand to illustrate
a point.
If I was going to take just the dumbbell alone you could see that the strength curve is going
to be hardest here at the bottom of the rep and as I get up to the top and my limb is
straight and extended I don’t really have any force being directed here to my chest
because my arm is right here now parallel with the force of gravity going straight down.
So I could stay here forever, as you guys know because we've done this.
With a band our strength curve doesn’t go like this, with a curve; it goes on an increasing
curve.
It goes up one big slope so it peaks at the end.
So if I now take this dumbbell and combine the band you could see as I press up it's
hard because the dumbbell is hard down here.
Where the dumbbell would normally get easy at the top, now I've got all the force of
this band pulling me back.
I've set it up a little bit at an angle of my shoulder here so I could also come across
my chest and have the resistance across my chest into abduction.
I've got the benefits of all worlds here using that band.
This is a superior exercise to just doing a regular bench-press alone.
The same thing can happen here with a dumbbell curl.
If I sit up here, again, we'd have a regular incline curl where we'd have the hardest part
of the movement right here in the middle and then at the top I could sit here for a very
long time because I don’t really have any resistance here.
Again, the force of gravity is going straight down through my arm, but if I attach a band
to it here, now as I curl up, yes.
The dumbbell is harder in this position, but as I get up to the top it's really hard here
too because I've got to overcome that sloping strength curve of the band as well.
Again, we've not only created a different exercise here, we've created a better version
of this exercise because of our overlapping strength curves.
Now, before you go and start getting a little crazy about throwing bands into every single
thing you do, here's an example of how it wouldn't work.
Maybe you think you're going to do exactly what Jeff did.
I like that idea, but I'm going to do what he did and apply it to every exercise.
So I'm going to do a side lateral raise.
I'm going to anchor a band down here, low, I'm going to grab a dumbbell and do a shoulder
raise to the side.
Then after about halfway through the first rep you realize "Holy shit!
I can't do that!"
It's not any easier.
That's because you didn't take complimentary strength curves.
You overlapped the same strength curve.
When you use a dumbbell it gets harder the farther you bring this thing away from your
body because at the top here is where it's maximally challenged by gravity.
We have all this arm that gravity is pushing down on so it makes it harder.
With a band you're doing the same thing, essentially.
You're taking the band and the further you stretch it the more we know that the resistance
is being developed.
So at the furthest point away from my body is going to be the same thing; the hardest.
It's going to be the easiest down here at the beginning, just like the dumbbell.
So you can't just apply the concept across the board to every single exercise that I've
shown you.
There are ways that you can alter the band though to have it assist you at different
points.
The idea is, without going into every single exercise combination, start realizing that
bands are not something to shy away from.
Dumbbells are certainly superior in some of the things that they could provide you, but
they're not the only implement that you should be using in your training.
Not if you want a complete workout because if you want the most out of every workout
you've got to start learning how to overlap and use the bands in concert with your dumbbells
to get the most out of it.
I just wanted to illustrate that point and make sure everybody sees the value of bands
and doesn't discount them because they're little, stretchy things that aren't as rugged
as the iron.
Guys, I'll be back here again in just a few days.
Make sure you let me know down in the comments below what kind of videos you want to see
me cover and I'll do my best to do that.
In the meantime, if you've found this one helpful leave your thumbs up below.
If you're looking for a training program that outlines exactly how to use bands in concert
with dumbbells, we actually have a whole phase dedicated to it in one of our Athlean-X training
programs.
You can find them all over at AthleanX.com.