This was a difficult decision, which route to take. Part of me wanted to power-lift through winter to increase base strength, the other half of me realised that I have old fighting injuries to consider.
A torn right elbow tendon, a left shoulder rotator cuff injury. I had to come up with a different approach.
Resistance bands. Well, turns out you can work your entire body – with full range of natural motion under tension. Weight training uses gravity. ie. how much weight you can lift up away from the earth. Thats no small feat. Your arm is lifting 5kgs of metal away from the gravitational pull of an entire planet. Like the whole earth.
But that also means the movement is restricted to a single angle. Up or down. Its not a natural motion. If you have long term injuries – the resistance band is ideal as it moves as your joints were designed to move. (And is why light resistance bands are used in physio therapy rehabs).
Resistance bands use stored kinetic energy (elastics) instead of gravity. So you can put tension on the movement in ANY direction, from any angle. You could literally swing upside down from a bar and do bicep curls down towards the ground – if you felt so inclined.
But how much can a band really make you work? Was my first question. I think best answered by my set that arrived today. The Green band exherts 50kgs of tension. Thats a 50kgs dumbell – if it were free weight. You can do ALOT with 50kgs of tension. Thats 100kgs free weight bench pess if you know what you’re doing (even if you look like a dork with a band – I rarely benched over 120kgs in my prime, now Im older and dont care what it looks like)
I’ll keep you updated.
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