wieght training?

[punk000]

have any of you had any experience with wieght bands??? i wanna try a training session with them on, but im not to sure if its a good idea... any imput?

[Builderofmuscle]

I don;t really know much on weight bands. There are lots videos and books on them though. I can help you weight training, or plyometrics, and things like that. But I'm not really into training with weight bands.

[terry]

Band training is a standard part of weight training methods. It is something you should look into. I would recommend an article by Louis Simmons from the Westside club. If you're not into powerlifting you may not know this guy. If you look at the top 30 elite men an women powerlifters in the U.S. they would all probably mention Louis Simmons or Dave Tate as a primary influence.

http://www.deepsquatter.com/strength/archives/ls15.htm

In my experience, bands don't represent a risk. They tend to pull you into the groove where you want to be anyway.

T

P.S.: While I'm on the subject of Dave Tate, check out this article from him on the B.S. of health clubs. Sums up my sentiments exactly: http://www.elitefts.com/documents/sick-of-your-gym.htm

[Builderofmuscle]

I don't go to the gym, because A) all the jocks in my school hog the equipment and B) they do it all wrong

I also like privacy of setting my own hours, and doing my own thing. I buy weights when I have the money, so I really can't get all that much resistance. I also have the total gym (infact I don't have a bench, I use the bench on the total gym) That stuff works great

I guess resistance bands would also be a good thing to add to my quota of equipment. Tell me more terry

[terry]

More on band training? There's lots. Um, let me zoom in on one exercise. Bench press:

Advice on how to set up a curriculum:

1. Bands and lockout will thrash your shoulder joints. No more than 3 weeks on heavy before rotating. Don't overtrain one exercise or you'll get injured.

2. No more than 3 max bench days before rotating off.

3. Give yourself sufficient recovery time before training bench again. It actually depends on how hard you're pushing yourself. If you're going pretty hard you will eventually wind up doing one bench workout per week but rotating the specific exercises along a multi-week schedule to keep your joints from getting fried.

4. Get a bench with a standard bar and setup bands anchored from a 100 lb dumbell. I use the bands from www.elitefitnesssystems.com, but decent supplier should do. Each band can be looped for single or stretched out for double, varying the resistance. Start with just the bar, then add one single on each side. By the time you get to four bands doubled you should be lifting like 100 lbs at your chest but 350 lbs at your lockout extension. This will greatly help you to focus on your straining ability near the lockouts and assist you in engaging your triceps. For a typical powerlifting workout try a slow careful warmup in which you add one band at a time until you have 3 or 4 sets of 1 at or near your max (w/ a spotter). Try to produce failure. Then drop down and doing speed work at 50-60% max. You'll develop explosiveness from speed work that will help you with both boxing and max attempts.

5. Get a professional to help you setup your curriculum. This does not mean some 105 lb kineseology graduate that can't lift their own body weight and won't push you even to the point of being challenged let alone failure. Don't let those guys waste your time. Get a successful competition level lifter who understands how to do it themselves and also has the experience to avoid overtraining-related injuries. Also, try to stay away from steroid users--or anybody that uses drugs for that matter.

As your workouts progress you can add weight to the bar. If you can do 4 bands doubled with 135 lbs on the bar you are doing the equivalent of a 450 lb lockout. The 100 lb. dumbell anchors will eventually be lifted off the ground. Anchor these top and bottom with 45 lb plates leaned against them. That should take you up to near 500 lbs.

Note that bench bands work the triceps. Make sure to do some work to focus on the low and mid-range of the motions when you rotate the exercises. It's hard for me to give curriculum advice to somebody without seeing their lift to find out where their weaknesses are.

Rotational exercises would be stuff such as:

- Straight bench regular grip. (This exercise you should spend a lot of time on because it is the basis of all max attempts. In addition, you'll learn all the technical parts of bench pressing from this exercise: leg drive, shoulder tension, shoulder blade placement, back arch, foot placement, finding the groove, engaging the triceps for the lockout and building explosiveness and speed off the bottom.)
- Straight bench wide grip
- Straight bench, close grip
- Bench lockouts
- Incline bench press
- Incline dumbell press
- Decline press press
- Decline dumbell press
- Incline bench press
- Chain pushups narrow grip
- Chain pushups wide grip
- 2, 3, 4, 5 board bench press
- JM press (more tricep than bench)

Now, it's easy to list out the above exercises. What takes more work is to know what benefit each exercise brings you. Also very important is to know when to stop doing it or rotate to another exercise to avoid an over- or de-training effect. I would really like to emphasize getting the help of a good guy, aka, 450 lb bench or better (or a woman with a 200 lb bench or better) to do this stuff. Don't be the blind-leading-the-blind guys lifting so badly in the club that--the're a shoulder injury just waiting to happen.

T

P.S.: Oh, yeah. I almost forgot to mention that you can do pushups with bands. You'll need a thick one. Once you can do 10 reps with your feet on the floor try elevating your feet by three feet and moving to a thicker band. Remember to produce total failure in the muscle. If you haven't pushed yourself to failure then you should stay with the health club weenies on the nautilus machines who talk constantly on their cell phones.

[Builderofmuscle]

for agility, power, and flexibility?

I've been working a lot on strength and endurance. But now I neeed to focus on getting faster, and turning that strength into power, and explosive endurance. Will bands help me with that? Or are they just good for strength?

[terry]

Re: for agility, power, and flexibility?

Originally posted by Builderofmuscle
I've been working a lot on strength and endurance. But now I neeed to focus on getting faster, and turning that strength into power, and explosive endurance. Will bands help me with that? Or are they just good for strength?

A lot of athletic attributes, unfortunately, can be quite sports specific. So, even though you may have a good bench press, for example, it does not follow that you'll have a good jab-cross combination. So, with that disclaimer, let me take a stab at this.

I would say that if you want to focus on power you need to look at full body motions rather than exercises that isolate a specific muscle. Full body exercises, such as dragging a sled, pushing a football sled, etc. will help you coordinate the explosion of multiple muscle groups simultaneously into one massive blast.

In the case of bands, they increase resistance based on how far they are stretched. They usually isn't much resistance at the start of a motion. Therefore, they won't help you build the explosion that you need right at the bottom of a max lift. Don't get me wrong, bands are a great tool, just not one optimized for building explosive speed at the bottom end.

Conventional wisdom for building speed from a strength coach would be to do speed reps: 10 sets of 3 at 50-60% of your max. Have a buddy time you and write down your times. When you can lift a weight 3 times within 3 seconds then you go up 10 lbs and the process starts over again. So, if your max bench is, say, 250, then you could put 135 on the bench. To get the speed you want you'll have to pull the weight down into your chest and, about 4 inches from your chest explode in the opposite direction for the blast upward. At the top of your lift jerk it back down again. This is standard powerlifting training for bench, deadlift and squats. In the case of squats, they'll usually put a low box or chair 8-10" tall for you to come down to. This forces you to squat deep and really get the power.

T

[Builderofmuscle]

Thanks, I've done some of that before. I did that with power cleans. And that's about it. I was just experimenting

I had my belt test today, It was 2 hours of pure pain.