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17: Pros & Cons of Using Resistance Bands
429 Plays2 years ago
Modern postural yoga utilizes bodyweight as a form of resistance, but within the context of modern postural yoga, is bodyweight sufficient load for building strength? If not, does adding resistance bands to the practice mean we can build strength? Welcome to Episode 17 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel discusses the best kept yoga prop secret—resistance bands and unpacks what she sees are both the pros and the cons of using resistance bands, both for strength training as well as for practicing yoga.
Here’s what this episode covers:
- How resistance bands lower the barrier for entry for someone to start adding external load to their movement practice.
- What research has to say about bands effectiveness for building strength and muscle mass, as well as some caveats to consider.
- What are some of the main limitations resistance bands present when looking to build strength?
- Why do some people use free weights and bands together in the same exercise? What’s the point of that?
- What constitutes a heavy weight versus a moderate weight versus a light weight and where do resistance bands and bodyweight tend to fall on this spectrum?
- The difference between resistance training and strength training and how the goals of both can be very different.
- How strength endurance and strength are different variables we can train, and why both are important.
- Why physical therapists might use resistance bands when rehabbing their patients.
- How resistance bands are like other yoga props, as well as their unique advantage.
- How resistance bands can help hypermobile yoga practitioners, people in pain, or people who are just bored with their practice and looking to change things up.
- Why resistance bands might not be necessary and why people might not like adding them to their yoga practice.
Reference links:
Chris Beardsley’s article What do you think you are doing by adding bands or chains?
Laurel’s Yoga with Resistance Bands Teacher Training
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Transcript
Introduction to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Passion for Resistance Bands
00:00:38
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast. My name is Laurel Beepersdorf and I'm here all by my lonesome. Sarah Court is doing something, probably working, not here with me today. This is a solo episode, you notice how Sarah and I
00:00:56
Speaker
kind of trade off, right? We'll do some duos, we'll interview some guests, and then we have these solo episodes. This is my September solo episode for you, and I'm talking about a topic that I'm really passionate about, which is resistance bands.
Overcoming Hip Pain with Bands
00:01:12
Speaker
And I'm going to be talking to you about the pros and the cons of using resistance bands in two of my most heavily frequented movement modalities, which are
00:01:24
Speaker
strength training and yoga. In terms of yoga, I will go as far as to refer to resistance bands as props. And I actually think they're some of the most versatile, best kept secret yoga props.
00:01:40
Speaker
You could bring to your yoga practice and I'm going to tell you why I think that is in this episode. Now I should go back and tell you how I first got started using resistance bands at all. It started around the time I started having pain.
00:01:56
Speaker
persistent pain around my hips, my SI joints. I had pain that would kind of echo back and forth between my SI joints, specifically my right one, and then kind of wrap around to the front of my right hip.
Band Techniques for Pain Relief
00:02:11
Speaker
It was really concerning. I lost sleep because I was in so much pain. And it stressed me out. I worried I had torn my labrum. And that was something that was kind of happening a lot to
00:02:25
Speaker
senior teachers in the yoga world and I thought maybe I was going to add my name to the long list of torn labrum. So it was no fun. And I know for anyone who's experienced any type of ongoing pain, there is usually some anxiety and fear around that experience and sometimes some like identity
00:02:49
Speaker
crises reckoning with whether or not you're going to be able to continue doing the things that you love or even the things that pay the bills right i was a professional yoga teacher who made all of my money from teaching yoga and suspected that yoga modern postural yoga the asanas really right we're contributing to my pain and we're ultimately going to mean that i couldn't teach yoga anymore so
00:03:13
Speaker
It was a difficult time and I had this inkling from maybe the circles that I was frequenting at the time. I was hanging around people who were strength coaches. I had this inkling that maybe what I needed to do was actually challenge my body.
00:03:31
Speaker
more and in a different way, but mostly more, like to actually challenge it with increased resistance in order to potentially alleviate this
Monster Walks and Muscle Activation
00:03:42
Speaker
pain. And so I thought, oh, hey, I'll just, I'll get some resistance bands and start doing some resistance band exercises. And I did.
00:03:50
Speaker
And one of them that I did that I found really useful in case you're interested is monster walks. So that's where you put like a mini band, a little small loop around your thighs. It can be above your knees or below your knees on your lower legs. And then you walk around. I always say it's like a zombie land crab. You just like stomping sideways. It's funny looking. But I found it very effective. It actually helped you
00:04:14
Speaker
reduce my pain that and some other exercises i was doing started challenging my hamstrings a bit more with bands and i think also it wasn't just the increased load that was helpful because of that added resistance from the resistance bands was also just doing different stuff like moving in a different way and kind of letting go of
00:04:36
Speaker
really what was sort of at the time kind of a cookie cutter practice for me. I had this idea that there was this kind of right way to align the body and then a whole bunch of wrong ways to align the body and I ended up being really repetitive in the way I was doing postures. So the bands helped change things up. They added variability and they added increased resistance so that I may have improved my strength in some regards but mostly I think it was just I was having to work a little bit harder, a little bit more of my musculature.
Integration of Bands in Teaching
00:05:01
Speaker
That ended up being really helpful for my
00:05:03
Speaker
pain, in my experience of pain, it helped me reduce my experience of pain. Years later, here I am, I'm still teaching with resistance bands in both the context of strength, strength training, as well as the yoga practice. I taught an introductory course in partnership with Yoga Journal called Resistance Bands 101 back in 2018.
00:05:28
Speaker
Then I revamped my Yoga with Resistance Man's teacher training, which I taught in Dublin in 2019, in the before times I like to call it, back when everything was always in person. I revamped it. I'm going to be teaching it. In fact, I will have already taught it, I think live in Quebec City, Canada, live in person, but also now hybridized.
00:05:50
Speaker
It's all about hybridizing these trainings where it's live in person and it's also live online and it's also available to watch asynchronously for those people who can't attend live in person or online.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so yeah, it's new and improved. And so I teach whole trainings using resistance bands and yoga. And I use them to strengthen my own body in my personal strength training practice. And I also use them as tools for the programs, the strength programs that I teach as a part of my virtual studio.
00:06:24
Speaker
My cat is going bananas right now. He is lying. He just ate, but yet he's howling in the background. So apologies, that's mustard seed.
Accessibility and Benefits of Bands
00:06:36
Speaker
All right, I wanna talk first in both contexts about the pros of resistance bands. I'm gonna share some cons as well, don't worry. But I'm gonna just wanna talk first about the pros of resistance bands. And this applies to both yoga and strength training.
00:06:54
Speaker
Resistance bands are portable and resistance bands are affordable. Okay, these two qualities, they're light. You can put them in your suitcase. You can take them anywhere. Basically, you could put them in your clutch purse. They're so small, so light. And they're affordable relative to like kettlebells. I don't know if you've ever tried to buy a kettlebell. Holy bajeepers creepers. They are really expensive. And then dumbbells a little bit less so, but still expensive.
00:07:23
Speaker
And then also, of course, barbells, plates, gym memberships, these are really expensive things for some people. And so resistance vans can actually be kind of nice on the bank account. They don't cost that much.
00:07:37
Speaker
Why is this important? Why are these pros? In my opinion, they're pros because they lower the barrier to entry. As a movement teacher, I am really interested in everything I can do to lower the barrier to entry for people to do the thing, to get moving, to start strength training, to do their yoga practice.
00:07:57
Speaker
just to get up and stopping sedentary so i think the fact that resistance bands are easy to carry around they don't take up much space in people's houses or apartments and they're also easy to travel with they're also relatively affordable these are really really good qualities for this
00:08:17
Speaker
what we will discover is a very versatile tool. So those are the pros for both.
Effectiveness and Limitations of Bands
00:08:21
Speaker
Now let's just talk about, let's just drill into resistance bands and their utility when pursuing strength or their use in a strength trading practice.
00:08:33
Speaker
Typically, when I use resistance bands both in my personal practice or if I offer them to my members in my virtual studio for the programs that I teach, I usually recommend that they get jump stretch bands. That's a different type of resistance band than what you might have seen in your PT clinic that you've gone and got PT sessions in or
00:08:54
Speaker
You know, widely we maybe know about TheraBands, right? That's kind of like the dominant resistance band brand out there. Well, jump stretch bands are different than TheraBands, which typically come in like a long spool and are somewhat, you know, lighter type of rubber. Jump stretch bands are much thicker and they are
00:09:14
Speaker
one big huge loop that they're so big you could actually step into it, step on it, reach your arms up overhead, stretch your loop apart. You could attach them to an anchor point and pull on them just like a TheraBand. They have a little bit more weight to them at baseline, but you can also use them for things like assisted pull-ups, right? So you could attach a jump stretch band to a bar, step into it, and have that band kind of assist you in a pull-up or a dip. A tricep dip is another way I like to use them.
00:09:42
Speaker
So I usually recommend those is they're going to provide a little bit more resistance because they're stiffer, right? Stiffness is a quality material can have. It's really just its ability to resist.
00:09:57
Speaker
deformation, its ability to resist being deformed. And so the stiffer something is, the stiffer an elastic band is, the more tension it is going to provide, or more resistance, tension and resistance in this case are interchangeable words, the more load it's going to provide for you. And if your goal is to improve your strength,
00:10:20
Speaker
chances are you're going to want to have a stiffer band helping you do that. When we are using jump stretch bands to get stronger, I think there are a couple of pros that we should talk about here.
00:10:36
Speaker
First of all, research shows you can in fact improve your strength through the use of resistance band training. Just like body weight can be to a point and so can free weights and so can machines at the gym, cable machines, right? There's lots of different ways that we can apply resistance and resistance bands when used effectively can improve your strength.
00:11:03
Speaker
I think that when we think about all the exercises we could do to improve strength, go back and listen to another solo episode of mine on what are the best exercises for strength. I think that might be episode 10. There are two main categories of strength exercises that I
00:11:21
Speaker
talk about in that episode. One are called primary exercises, sometimes called structural exercises, squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups, I think would be, in my mind, are all primary exercises. And then we've got our accessory exercises, which are things like bicep curls, back flies, calf raises,
00:11:49
Speaker
The main difference is structural or primary exercises tend to work multiple groups of muscles, large groups of muscles, whereas accessory exercises tend to be single joint exercises. They work a much smaller mass of muscles. Here's what I'm going to say that one of the pros of resistance bands as a tool for strengthening is that they can improve force production when the load is sufficient.
00:12:17
Speaker
and they can improve muscle mass when the load is sufficient, the volume is sufficient, but they're maybe not as effective for structural or primary exercises simply because, number one,
00:12:34
Speaker
Resistance bands tend to not apply as much load. They just simply cannot apply as much load as free weights. Think barbells. I mean, you can put so much weight on a bar. Resistance bands have kind of an upper limit to how much resistance they're going to provide, how stiff they actually will be.
00:12:53
Speaker
to be able to challenge large masses of muscle, and specifically, this is the second point, your lower body. Your lower body muscles are just bigger and stronger than your upper body muscles in general. It's going to be hard to find a band that's stiff enough to really challenge you in something like a squat.
00:13:10
Speaker
Not to mention that it's maybe not as much of a no-brainer of how to squat with a jump stretch band versus how to squat with, say, a kettlebell. You just pick the kettlebell up, hold it in your hands in front of your chest, and do some squats. Getting into the jump stretch band, really figuring out how to make that jump stretch band
Changing Strength Curves with Bands
00:13:29
Speaker
work as a sensible form of resistance, it's not necessarily going to be as straightforward.
00:13:34
Speaker
So that's the con. The resistance bands are potentially useful for building strength and muscle, but they're maybe not as versatile as a set of free weights, or certainly not as versatile as both bands and free weights.
00:13:50
Speaker
Pro number two of using resistance bands is if you do apply resistance bands to strength training you can actually apply resistance bands to more traditional free weight exercises. This became really popular I think like I don't know how many years ago among power lifters I guess.
00:14:10
Speaker
and has been shown to be an effective way to improve velocity-specific strength, so maybe also relevant to Olympic lifters, but basically what you'll see, and maybe you've seen this if you've ever been in a weight room before, is somebody will be doing a back squat or a bench press, and they'll be using a traditional barbell with weights on it, but then they'll also have bands attached to each side of the barbell,
00:14:33
Speaker
And so they're working against both the resistance of the weights, but also the resistance of the bands. And so what the bands end up doing is altering the strength curve. So typically in an exercise, let's just take, for example, the squat. If you're just using free weights in a squat, you go and you squat to depth.
00:14:53
Speaker
That's typically the hardest part of the exercises right there at the bottom of the squats, often called the sticking point in the episode on breathing. Sarah and I were talking about how you breathe when you strength train. Typically, you know, I mentioned you would exhale during the sticking point, then I explained what the sticking point was.
00:15:09
Speaker
The sticking point is basically just the hardest part of the exercise and it's typically toward an end-range position. In this case, the squat is when the hips, the knees, the ankles are the most flexed. Joints have not as great of a leverage over the weight in that position, but also you're having to overcome not just the weight on the barbell for example, but also the inertia of having stopped moving.
00:15:32
Speaker
So those are two different forms of resistance you'd have to overcome at the bottom of the squat. Now, when you apply bands and a barbell, we haven't talked about this yet, it's a great time to talk about it, but resistance bands, as you pull them apart, as they stretch, their tension increases.
00:15:48
Speaker
That's because they store energy. Imagine you pull it a resistance band apart a little bit and let it go. It snaps a little bit. But if you pull it apart a lot, it snaps really, really quickly because of all that stored energy. And so as you are back to the squat, right, starting to stand up in the squat and you're working against now plates.
00:16:09
Speaker
barbell plates and bands, chances are you probably took a little few of the plates off of the barbell. So you're working with a lighter barbell than you would otherwise work with because you're going to get down into the bottom of that squat, you're going to start to accelerate upward,
00:16:26
Speaker
then the bands start to get pulled apart and the resistance actually increases as you rise up through the squat. So it really changes, in other words, it's changing the strength curve, it's changing where in the arc of the movement
00:16:42
Speaker
the load is highest. So bands are a pro in this way because you can change how someone is strong in an exercise. You can change their accelerative capacity within an exercise by challenging that capacity.
00:16:59
Speaker
with something like a resistance band. You might also notice people using chains, similar concepts, similar kind of potential reasoning behind using chains or bands. Okay, so that's a pro. That's just another way to use a resistance tool, depending on what you're trying to do, what your goals are. Okay, so I consider that a pro.
00:17:19
Speaker
In the same way, resistance bands can be great, not just as a means by which to change the strength curve for the purpose of adding load or adding resistance, but they can also be assistance bands and they can take load away to make an exercise accessible or more accessible to even engage with. I'm thinking of the pull-up, okay? Also the dip.
00:17:47
Speaker
You can attach a resistance band, a jump stretch band, to a bar or to the parallel bars that you're using for dips, the pull-up bar. Step into it, stand on it.
00:17:58
Speaker
And the band will then at the bottom of a pull up when your arms are straight, right, you can imagine the band is the most stretched it's going to be. It's offering you the most amount of recoil assistance. Then as you start to pull your chest up to the bar that band is helping you that's boosting you up toward the bar but at the top of the pull up, it's offering you.
00:18:18
Speaker
less assistance, it's less stretched or maybe not stretched at all, then you're really loading your arms with your full body weight. This is okay, so this is cool because one, you might not have been able to do a body weight pull up, but now you kind of can because the band has offloaded some of your body weight, but it's also changed the strength curve, right?
00:18:38
Speaker
So, when I started doing pull ups, just body weight, I could get myself started. But then I get to about 90 degrees of elbow flexion, maybe a little bit higher than that above my elbows with my chest. My chest was like maybe six inches from the bar and I was like, I don't, I can't, I can't do it.
Assisting Pull-ups with Bands
00:18:57
Speaker
So what the band did for me in training to get my first pull up was it actually, it gave me a little bit of help in that first half of the pull up so that I had energy left to work the second half of the pull up. And so then I honed strength on the second half of the pull up.
00:19:12
Speaker
and I was able to get my chest to the bar, I was able to get my chin over the bar, and then I took the band away and I was able to kind of apply both my strength in getting the pull-up started and finishing the pull-up. So bands can be super helpful as assistants, but also in altering the strength curve. Same principle goes for the tricep dip. Typically for the tricep dip though,
00:19:33
Speaker
it's going to be, I think, universally hardest for everybody at the bottom of the tricep dip. Whereas with the pull-up, at the bottom of the pull-up, some folks find the bottom of the pull-up harder, and some folks find the top of the pull-up harder. And so then, if that's the case, the group that finds the bottom of the pull-up harder, I think would probably not benefit as much from assistance bands as the people who find the top half of the pull-up harder. In the tricep dip, it's really the bottom of the tricep dip,
00:19:58
Speaker
That's the hardest for everybody. That's the sticking point for lots of the same reasons that I mentioned with the squat, right? But then in that case, the bands are offering you the most amount of assistance at the sticking point of the dip.
00:20:14
Speaker
The exercise is kind of, from a physics standpoint, going to inherently be a little easier. The band at least gets you started in that direction. However, if you just always are using a band, you're probably never going to build that strength, that sticking point. So there's an argument, of course, to just not always using bands. But I think that ultimately adding bands to a strength training protocol or practice is positive in this way because it just gives us more
00:20:40
Speaker
options. Pro number three for resistance bands is they can also be excellent tools for warming up before you strength train. One of the main goals of the warm up for strength training is to just raise your core temperature, but also to start to load some of the muscle groups that you're going to be training in your workout. So resistance bands are a great way to do that. They're great mobility tools as well. So those are my three pros for strength training.
Tracking Progress with Bands
00:21:05
Speaker
All right, a couple more cons.
00:21:08
Speaker
for resistance bands and strength training. I already mentioned that they're limited in terms of their usage for those more multi-joint primary slash structural exercises. They're not going to be probably as stimulating for your lower body especially. The other con is that it's hard to track your progress with resistance bands because you don't know exactly how much resistance you overcame, whereas you know exactly how much resistance you overcame when you're working with dumbbells and kettlebells and plates. It says right there on the weight how much resistance you overcame.
00:21:35
Speaker
So that's another con. You can't really track your progress as easily. And really tracking your progress is about knowing what you did so you know what to do in the workout you're currently in. Because I think people think of progressive overload as
00:21:52
Speaker
about the future. We're progressing. We're going forward into the future. But honestly, I think it's more about the past. Progressive overload is more about knowing what you did and what you've been doing so that you can use that as a jumping off point, as a point of departure for your current workout and go, hey, I deadlifted 150 pounds last week.
00:22:15
Speaker
it wouldn't be unreasonable to work on maybe adding five extra pounds or 10 extra pounds to the bar because I did that last week. It is unreasonable to go, I deadlifted 150 pounds last week and so now I'm going to add 50 pounds to the bar, right? But if you've been tracking your workouts, you're less likely to commit that error because you know what you did and so you know what to do.
00:22:40
Speaker
The other drawback to using resistance bands is that because of the fact that their resistance or tension increases,
Strength Building in Yoga with Bands
00:22:52
Speaker
the further apart you pull them, they tend to prioritize strength at short muscle lengths.
00:23:01
Speaker
And that can be a good thing, or it can be, you know, not as useful. It really depends on what your goal is, but that is a limiting factor with resistance bands is that you are, no matter your orientation to gravity, you're always likely going to be training strength at short muscle lengths.
00:23:19
Speaker
and not long muscle lengths. And so this could be a limitation. That's what I have to say about resistance bands and strength. I actually think that they're a great adjunct tool. We're probably not going to be able to rely solely on resistance bands for our strength training though.
00:23:39
Speaker
However, when you're in a pinch and you're on vacation and you have a small hotel room or no access to the gym, I mean, they are a great stopgap. They're a great filler. They're a great way to just keep training during those weeks where you maybe don't have access to your free weights. Okay. Now, let's talk about yoga. I don't consider yoga
00:24:02
Speaker
the yoga practice, maybe specifically the modern postural yoga practice or the asana practice, to be a very effective modality to build strength within. But maybe I just want to say this, if you're coming from a practice like yoga, you might think that in adding a resistance band to your practice, that you are inherently adding strength to your practice. This is where I'm going to say that is
00:24:32
Speaker
not necessarily the case because it's not the piece of equipment that determines whether or not you are actually building strength. It's the load that that equipment bestows upon your body that will determine whether you're actually gonna build strength with it. Here's kind of a cool distinction I think is all strength training is resistance training. It has to be by necessity.
00:25:02
Speaker
So there are many different forms of resistance training, right? There's resistance bands, can be strength tools. So can body weight, by the way. For some exercises and some people, body weight is sufficient amount of load to induce adaptations towards strength in the body. Free weights, those are probably the most common tool for strength training. Also machines, cable machines, lots of different types of machines at the gym.
00:25:31
Speaker
These are all tools for resistance training. And they're all tools that can be used to build strength.
Resistance vs. Strength Training
00:25:38
Speaker
So all strength training is resistance training, but not all resistance training is strength training. Okay, and this is where I think we can be a little bit more nuanced in our discussion of tools like resistance bands and their value and their use.
00:25:56
Speaker
When you add resistance bands to a yoga practice or a Pilates practice, you might be increasing resistance within the practice, but you're not necessarily increasing it sufficiently to result in adaptations toward strength or improved force production. Your ability to lift heavier shit, frankly, right?
00:26:14
Speaker
Hey guys, it's Sarah. Laurel and I really hope you're enjoying the new Movement Logic podcast. We are having such a good time. We both really love sharing ideas with each other and getting sparked by things that the other person has learned. Our goal for the show was to help you feel the same way so that you can feel excited and inspired by what you're learning and even maybe take some of these ideas into your teaching. That would be
00:26:37
Speaker
that would be amazing if that's what happened i'd be so happy because i know oh my god we both know what it feels like to be uninspired to be stuck in a rut desperately trying to come up with new ideas so you take another training and it just ends up you fall back into your old
00:26:55
Speaker
habits and things you already know how to do because it's too hard to change who you are as a teacher. We've all been there. The whole reason why we created the movement logic tutorials was so that you can enhance what you're already good at instead of trying to be some other different kind of a teacher. Every movement logic tutorial contains so much to help you do that. Hours and hours of anatomy, kinesiology, myth busting. Myth busting is maybe my favorite part of the whole thing.
Load Requirements for Strength Gains
00:27:22
Speaker
But most importantly, dozens of exercises that help you with strength or flexibility or functional movement, whatever you and your clients want to do in their life. Because we're so grateful that you are listening to our podcast, we have a podcast exclusive
00:27:39
Speaker
discount. To say thank you for supporting our efforts with your years, what you can do is you enter the coupon code podcast at checkout to receive 10% off of your entire purchase. You heard that right. You go to movementlogictutorials.com, take a little scroll through all of our different tutorials, stick some of them in your cart, the ones that you're like,
00:28:00
Speaker
pelvic floor, ooh, shoulders, and then enter the code podcast at checkout and you'll receive 10% off your entire purchase because we appreciate you. So thank you and go forth and save. But how do we know if a load is sufficient to induce adaptations towards strength? Well, I think it's really useful to think of it in terms of rep ranges.
00:28:29
Speaker
And according to science, I've learned a lot from Chris Beardsley, who's an exercise scientist, strength science expert, writes prolifically on strength. Check him out. I've learned that when looking at whether or not a weight is heavy versus moderate versus light, by the way, we need heavy and moderate loads to build strength, light loads,
00:28:56
Speaker
are not sufficient for building strength. They might be sufficient for building muscle mass. That's a different conversation. Basically, you can build muscle mass with heavy, moderate, and light loads if you're training close enough to failure with those lighter loads. But the heavy and the moderate loads are really what we're after if we're looking to improve force production, which so many of us are. So what does this mean? Here's what it means. If you can lift a weight
00:29:22
Speaker
more than 12 times in a row, it's a lightweight. That's pretty simple, right? That's a good boundary, I think that's just a really useful boundary. If you can lift a weight more than six times, but not more than 12 times, it's a moderate load. And if you can't lift a weight more than six times, it's a heavy load. Okay, and this is six times in a row, then you rest,
00:29:48
Speaker
longer if it was heavy, shorter if it was light, you recover, right? Temporarily, the fatigue sensations go away and then you can pick it up again and do another bout, right? Do another set. Resistance bands often, in any given exercise, fall into the category of light loads. Just try. Try to do more than 12. And if you could do more than 12 of the thing you're trying to do with a resistance band, it's not heavy and it's not moderate, it's light.
00:30:16
Speaker
This is not always the case. This is not always the case. Sometimes I can't even do one rep with a resistance band because it's a damn stiff band and I'm not strong enough and that would be a heavy load, right? But for the most part, especially when bands are used in the context of yoga and in the context of Pilates,
00:30:36
Speaker
They are not moderate or heavy loads. They're light loads.
Mobility Benefits of Resistance Bands
00:30:39
Speaker
Do they still have value? Absolutely. Absolutely they do. But I just wanted to clear up this distinction between resistance training and strength training. They're not the same thing. The bigger category is resistance training. All strength training exercises are resistance exercises. Not all resistance exercises are strength exercises. So here's why I think using resistance
00:31:05
Speaker
has value even if it doesn't result in strength gains. Well, it's because strength is one of many positive outcomes we could see from resistance training. One of many. Here are some other ones.
00:31:25
Speaker
strength endurance. So strength endurance is the ability to overcome resistance over many repetitions over a long period of time. This is an incredibly valuable capacity to have, to work on, and to train right alongside strength. I think a lot of times I get the feeling that we're turning our nose up
00:31:49
Speaker
at strength endurance, like it's just not as cool as strength, but it's absolutely as cool. And in fact, it may be even in the beginning, a more important variable to look at. This is why, perhaps, athletic programs start their athletic training with strength endurance training predominantly, then they shift into hypertrophy, they shift into muscle building, then they shift into strength,
00:32:18
Speaker
and gradually they shift into lower volume, lower reps, heavier load, and then maybe even sport specific strength, which could involve velocity specific strength, explosive strength, things like that, depending on the sport. Strength endurance is super important. And we should train it right alongside strength and resistance bands in both the context of strength and yoga and Pilates can be very effective for increasing strength endurance.
00:32:47
Speaker
They can also be effective for improving mobility. We know that yoga asana is incredible for improving mobility and body weight as a form of resistance. We'll add bands to that and potentially you've got an even greater stimulus toward increased control and end ranges of motion aka mobility.
00:33:05
Speaker
Speed is another training variable, athletic strength coaches would focus on. You would resistance train very differently for the purpose of increasing speed than you would for increasing maximum force production, although they're related, they're not the same thing. And then agility is another one, right? So the ability to change directions quickly to respond to sensory cognitive input and change direction, stop, start quickly, right?
00:33:31
Speaker
So resistance training is a broad subject. Strength training is a narrower subject, comparatively speaking. Strength is the foundation for many of the other positive outcomes I just named, though. I don't want it to sound like these are separate variables. They're not, they're all related. They all kind of rely on each other. Strength being one really important one. But I also don't want us to start turning our nose up at something like, for example, strength endurance, as though it just doesn't matter. It does matter. It's as important.
00:34:01
Speaker
as strength and they could be and should be trained together.
Physical Therapy Applications
00:34:04
Speaker
So if we're training strength for the ability to produce force, maximum force, which is really truly the definition of strength is the ability to produce maximum force, we need to be training with heavy and moderate loads. Resistance bands frequently fall into the category of light loads. Aside from maybe some performance goals, where else might we see resistance training applied? And I think this is in the context of rehabilitation.
00:34:27
Speaker
physical therapist use resistance training multiple modes of it to rehab their patients resistance bands being really almost like quintessential physical therapy tool right.
00:34:39
Speaker
And so why? Why are physical therapists using resistance bands? Well, I'm not a physical therapist, and I won't speak for physical therapists. I do have some physical therapy friends. And a term I've heard, and I follow people on social media who are physical therapists, a term I hear them using a lot, or a phrase I hear them using a lot is improving load tolerance, helping somebody decrease their sensitivity or their pain in certain contexts or positions or movements.
00:35:04
Speaker
And resistance training, specifically with resistance bands, which as we know are portable, affordable, very versatile tool, can be one way that physical therapists help their patients improve load tolerance. Load tolerance can be improved through working with the body's
00:35:20
Speaker
sense of proprioception, altering how the brain maps the body via movement and via all the different input that the brain gets from movement and gets from muscles, really, muscle contraction. There's just so many sensory neurons in your muscles. The thing that gets me really super excited about resistance bands is not only are resistance bands
00:35:44
Speaker
improving potentially muscle activation, therefore sensory input to the brain helping to map the body better, improve load tolerance, decrease pain. But if you wear the resistance bands, like you actually hook them onto your hands and then like wrap them around your body in some particular way, the band, the center of the band is touching skin on your body as well.
00:36:08
Speaker
And skin, if you think muscles are loaded with sensory neurons, skin is super duper loaded with sensory neurons. As soon as we start touching skin, we start affecting proprioception in a massive, massive
Proprioception and Body Awareness
00:36:21
Speaker
way. Try closing your eyes and standing on one foot.
00:36:24
Speaker
see how long you last then put your pinky finger on the wall close your eyes stand on one foot and see how long you last and just the touch of the tip of your pinky against the wall will have such a significant impact on your ability to balance because of the way it's playing with your proprioception uh it's profound so touch is profound so this brings me to the topic of yoga okay and some of the pros and cons of using resistance bands in the yoga practice already
00:36:54
Speaker
kind of alluded to the fact that I don't consider the yoga practice to be the most effective modality for building strength. A couple of reasons. One is that body weight ends up being a light load. A lot of times we're not even doing reps anyway in the yoga practice. Additionally, when we take a yoga class, I think some of the fun of taking yoga classes is to take one class that's totally different and the next day take another class that's totally different and then a couple days later another class that's totally different and like to maybe never repeat those same classes ever again.
00:37:21
Speaker
Some people like to go back and do the same practice day after day after day. I've never been that kind of person. I like doing different stuff day after day after day with my yoga practice. And so if you're always doing different stuff day after day after day, you're never going to be able to progressively overload any particular movement within that practice, not to mention that we're not doing reps and body weight ends up being a fairly light load.
00:37:45
Speaker
a lot of the times. Let me just give you an example of body weight as light load. Reach your arm, whichever arm, up over your head. You just lifted the weight of your arm over your head. I bet you could do that 700 times and not really be that tired. Please don't try that. Well, go ahead if you're really, really curious to find out.
00:38:05
Speaker
Now, pick up a weight. I mean, any weight. Really, like, pick up a 10-pound weight, a 20-pound weight. I don't know how strong you are. Pick up a weight that seems kind of moderately heavy to you and see how many times you can push that over your head. See, this is what I mean by body weight is a light load. In fact, in that case, just the weight of your arm is probably a very light load, which is also a separate category from light load. You know what I mean?
00:38:26
Speaker
Yoga asana has some limitations in terms of just the magnitude of load you're going to ever be working against in any given scenario. Not to say that there aren't postures where body weight is meaningful, for sure. Chaturanga, handstand, a lot of the arm balances. It's meaningful for a while, at least for a while.
00:38:44
Speaker
But that's not a well-rounded whole body strength training workout by any means. So if yoga isn't the best way to improve strength, why do we do yoga? I mean, what an insulting question to ask. Personally, I find it kind of insulting because it's like, wait, what? Why would we even need yoga to be our one-stop shop for every single thing that we associate with health and wellness and
00:39:13
Speaker
physical fitness. It absolutely shouldn't have to be that. And I don't know where the idea came that it should be. I have a separate strength training practice from my yoga practice. I don't use yoga for strength training. However, I do find benefit in using resistance bands in my yoga
Bands as Versatile Yoga Props
00:39:29
Speaker
practice. So here's why I want to tell you why I think resistance bands are props. They are amazingly versatile, useful props. And it's this.
00:39:37
Speaker
A long time ago, on a land far, far away, do you remember when we used to think of props as, I don't know, I can't think of a better word, crutches, like this thing that we apply to our practice when we're just not good enough.
00:39:54
Speaker
Even the way yoga teachers would talk about it was like, okay, if you can put your hand on the floor and triangle without a prop, go for it. If you aren't flexible enough, put a block under your hand. It was always like, if you aren't enough in some way, if you are, I don't know, somehow just a sad sack loser, you need to sit on a blanket in Upavishta.
00:40:19
Speaker
but all you advanced people. You know what, thankfully, fast forward to today, we have moved beyond such a, well, frankly, rudimentary kind of boring way of thinking about props. And now I think we've all just gone completely prop loco. Like we, and I say we because I'm in a bubble with like a bunch of like super creative, innovative yogis in my sphere are all
00:40:47
Speaker
finding a million amazing, useful and creative, these two things can go together, ways of using props to make postures, sure, more accessible, but also harder, different, interesting to work on certain skills over others to prioritize certain goals over others. And so props have just become one
00:41:09
Speaker
way to do lots of different things or one prop can be used to accomplish lots of different things. If you go on my website you'll see lots of pictures of me pressing a block into the side of my head. For example, if you want to feel a little bit more of your neck and your neck activation in certain poses should be super helpful.
00:41:30
Speaker
for lots of reasons, and so many other things like sliding around on blankets, right? Like Trina Altman, who we interviewed about her experience with Para Menopause, I think it's episode eight, is like the queen of sliding around on blankets. I feel like she might have invented that, I don't know, but she did a lot with it. There's just so many amazing ways that we can increase
00:41:53
Speaker
the challenge as well as decrease the challenge with props. And I think we're really into it and guess what? I think resistance bands are that as well.
Connecting and Activating Muscles
00:42:02
Speaker
Resistance bands are the best kept yoga prop secret in the yoga community. Here's my top three pros for adding resistance bands to the yoga practice. One is that, so if we don't do yoga for strength and we're really into props,
00:42:20
Speaker
Okay, these are kind of our premises that we're starting from here.
00:42:25
Speaker
What do we do yoga for and what can props help us achieve? And then how do resistance bands become solutions for some of the obstacles of our practice? So I do yoga because it feels good. And I do yoga because I love the playful creativity of the different shapes that I get to create with my body, which feel very expressive and emotive and beautiful and challenging. I get to work on things like balance and flexibility and mobility.
00:42:54
Speaker
I get to go upside down. I get to, you know, dance with my breath. I get to achieve really profound states of relaxation, probably from all the stretching I'm doing as well as the stillness I'm finding. And I get to interocept. I get to pay attention to what I'm feeling on the inside of my body and notice things from a relative kind of
00:43:22
Speaker
physical energy level of quietude and softness and slowness. These are profoundly beneficial things that happen to me while I practice yoga. They make me a kinder person when I step off the mat.
00:43:43
Speaker
Yoga increases my self-awareness. It increases then also my awareness of others. It makes me a better listener. It makes me a more patient person. And so if these are some of the reasons I do yoga, and you do yoga for your reasons, right? And you get your own benefits out of it.
00:44:00
Speaker
But if these are the reasons I do yoga, how are resistance bands like other props as a tool to make the practice a little bit more challenging, a little bit easier, or just different? As my mother would say, change the emphasis on the syllable. How can they make it different? How can they add variability? Well, here are three. One, resistance bands help to connect disparate parts of the body that
00:44:29
Speaker
are connected, but that connection might not be so obvious. So let me give you an example. I use resistance bands. And when I use resistance bands in yoga, I'm using TheraBands. That's my brand of choice.
00:44:40
Speaker
There's so many different resistances on the market, but I'm actually not using what I named earlier jump stretch bands. No, I'm using TheraBands. They're just much more, they're less stiff. They're easier to pull apart. They're easier to move inside of, right? What I'll do is I'll tie two little loops under the end of a longer TheraBand. I call this stirrup band, right? And then I'll put one
00:45:02
Speaker
loop around my hand. For example, there's so many ways that you could wear the stirrup band and move against. I'll put one on my hand, one on my foot. Let's say it's right hand to left foot.
00:45:14
Speaker
Okay, so now I've got this diagonal connection between my right hand and my left foot. Is my right hand connected to my left foot? Oh, it absolutely is, right? Via many different segments and joints in my body, muscles and everything else. But now the connection between my right hand and left foot is felt through the touch of my skin and it's being challenged through the band's resistance.
00:45:40
Speaker
This is going to reorient me in my body in a very novel way. It's going to ask me to think about relationships very different while I'm moving or while I'm holding a pose. And this is going to bring me into my body. It does bring me into my body in a more profound way sometimes because it's different, because it's novel, because it's new.
00:46:05
Speaker
So that's one pro is that resistance bands change the emphasis on the syllable. They make the practice novel. They challenge relationships in the body in novel ways. This can be a tool for becoming more present. It can be a focusing device. It can also be a tool for increasing load tolerance. I mentioned at the top of the episode how just moving in different ways with
00:46:31
Speaker
Resistance bands as an example helped me get out of persistent pain. This can be, you know, example of that. Pro number two, resistance bands invite higher levels of muscle activation frequently in the practice.
00:46:50
Speaker
So whether or not you're actually gonna be moving from what would otherwise be maybe a practice that's more conducive to building strength endurance to a practice that's now conducive to building strength, I don't know. I think that's probably not, okay? But when we increase muscle activation, when we actually are now, say, for example, working a little harder in
00:47:15
Speaker
let's say tricky cat. I call it tricky cat. You know where you come onto your hands and knees and you reach your right arm forward alongside you and you reach your left leg back and then you put your hand and your knee down and you switch sides, right? Tricky cat. Well, what if you had a resistance band connecting one foot to one hand and as you reach them apart, okay, you have this connection between right foot, left hand, as I mentioned, you know,
00:47:40
Speaker
earlier but i'm actually having to overcome more resistance not just more resistance in one direction of movement but more resistance in terms of yes gravity is pulling my leg down is pulling my arm down but also the band is pulling my leg and arm down in a different direction in a different vector right so i'm overcoming multiple
00:48:06
Speaker
vectors of resistance, not just gravity, and more total resistance. Why is this a good thing? Well, potentially it's a good thing for increasing muscle endurance. It's potentially also an increase in proprioception, the relationship of movement away from gravity. It refines the movement without bands later when you go to take the bands off.
00:48:29
Speaker
It is potentially going to enhance proprioception because there's simply more information from more neurons in my muscles informing my brain of where my body is in space and this could be among many things pain reducing. Too long didn't listen aka just feels cool, feels cool, right? It's kind of fun. Pro number three.
00:48:58
Speaker
Resistance bands often require that you slow down, that you slow down your movement. You simply cannot move as quickly. And in moving a little slower, you might buy yourself a little time to pay a little bit more attention to how you're moving and what that feels like.
00:49:20
Speaker
which can enhance your proprioception. You can also enhance your feelings of just well-being because you suddenly started to focus more on your body and what you're doing and less on your to-do list and what you have to do in the future.
00:49:36
Speaker
Incidentally, all three of these pros for using resistance bands could benefit anyone depending what their obstacle is.
Assisting Hypermobility and Challenges
00:49:46
Speaker
Maybe somebody just has a little bit of aches and pains and persistent pain from their yoga practice because it's kind of repetitive. Well, this is going to create some variability within the practice.
00:49:58
Speaker
Um, maybe somebody is having a hard time feeling where they are in space, but all they really need is a little bit more resistance to have to move against, to really be able to locate where they are in space. And maybe somebody's just in their head so much they can't really focus on what they're doing with their body. They're moving quickly. They're kind of driving by and blowing past and driving through a bunch of postures, just kind of getting to the next posture. All the bands are going to slow that person down, right? That could be anybody.
00:50:24
Speaker
But bands can be really especially helpful for people who are hypermobile, right? Because people who are hypermobile tend to struggle with things like not having a real clear feeling of where their body is in space, maybe kind of just flop and fold, moving really quickly through postures, relying on their flexibility and less on their muscle control. So that's a kind of select population of people that could also really benefit from the bands.
00:50:52
Speaker
I really also want to mention this last pro of resistance bands is that they can, just like the jump stretch band with pull-ups and tricep dips, they can decrease resistance. They can become assistance bands and they can make some poses that are just extremely difficult.
00:51:09
Speaker
because of body weight and the range of motion involved, more accessible. For example, banded crow pose could change your life. Banded leg lifts. Banded chaturanga. These are all postures that can be made actually more accessible by wearing a resistance band or resistance bands in certain ways. Just the bands kind of actually become like muscles in some scenarios.
00:51:38
Speaker
some orientations to gravity, some ways of wearing the bands make them less like external resistance and more like helpers or synergists with the muscles that you're challenging. So those are my pros for resistance bands. What about my cons for bringing resistance bands into the yoga practice?
Drawbacks of Resistance Bands
00:51:55
Speaker
Well,
00:51:57
Speaker
It could be like the con for bringing any prop into the yoga practice, right? Maybe the prop is just not necessary, right? Maybe your practice felt good better without it. Maybe you don't need the added layer of complexity that a band will, by necessity, introduce.
00:52:19
Speaker
especially if you're really into more passive forms of yoga, like gentle yoga and yin yoga and restorative yoga. Like, yeah, I don't really think that bands are all that useful tools for those practices, honestly. And then also if you are
00:52:41
Speaker
Potentially just like not on board with rubber. Okay, so you just don't like the feeling of the bands against your body You don't want to have to you know Pull anything or wear anything on your body. You really don't like that feeling that could be a possibility What I'll say about these two things is that oftentimes these are cons when the way that the bands are presented is Too much too soon
00:53:11
Speaker
overly complicated or lacking in purpose. Like the teacher hasn't introduced the bands in a digestible way. They've maybe chosen a band arrangement that's just already a little too complicated for, you know, beginning with. And or they haven't really thought through and clearly articulated why
00:53:33
Speaker
they're introducing bands at all to begin with. And you can have a lot of drop off. A lot of people just kind of get turned off by resistance bands because of the way they're presented. I'm not saying that it's always because of that. Sometimes people are just like, yeah, I'm not really into bands. I think ultimately a lot of yoga practitioners are minimalist, minimalist or minimalist wannabes. They kind of like the idea that they can
00:53:57
Speaker
get their physical activity in with just their body in a mat. I think that's kind of a romantic aspect of yoga. I can do yoga on the beach, right? I can do yoga in the woods after my run, right? And it's cool. It's super cool. Thing about yoga. This is another reason why people might just look at bands and go like, but why? But why though, you know? But yeah, those can definitely be cons. And look, I'm not, I'm not definitely not like a band evangelist. Like I'm not trying to convince people who just are kind of not into bands.
00:54:27
Speaker
to get into bands but what I would like to do is kind of plant the seed that if you've ever wondered about bands and or if you've had some experiences that didn't go as well and you're wondering if it could be better about bands that the answer in my opinion is yes it can and that bands have a ton to offer
00:54:49
Speaker
similar to how blankets and blocks and belts have a ton to offer, bands have a ton to offer, that blankets, belts, and blocks cannot offer actually because of their elasticity, their elastic nature.
00:54:59
Speaker
And that if you are interested in exploring resistance bands, you could definitely, definitely check out my Yoga with Resistance Bands teacher training, which I'm going to be presenting in more places. The next one is in New Jersey with a dear friend of mine that I've known for many years, her studio. So you can check that out. It's going to be another, I believe, hybrid training where it'll be in person and online.
00:55:27
Speaker
And then if you'd ever like to host a yoga with resistance bands teacher training, I am now back in that mode of traveling around and teaching and most importantly seeing live people in person, which I've been just so hungry for. So hit me up, connect with me via my website is fine.
00:55:46
Speaker
If you're just looking for a little taste test of resistance bands and you don't want to invest in a full training, that's probably smart. You probably should at least take a class before you invest in the training. My virtual studio, I have somewhere upwards of 20 some yoga with resistance bands classes that you can check out for as little as $40 a month.
00:56:08
Speaker
Okay, thank you so much for tuning in and listening to me today. Go on and on and on about resistance bands and the pros and cons of resistance bands. Hopefully the content of this episode went a little deeper than you expected it to. That tends to be, for better or for worse, where I usually end up is a little deeper than I expected to.
00:56:33
Speaker
whether that be in trouble or in my studies or in content creation. But thank you for staying with me, especially if you're still listening now. Wow. Good on you. Thank you. And if you would like to visit the show notes for more resources on resistance bands and
00:56:55
Speaker
my offerings involving resistance bands or get on our mailing list the movement logic mailing list to know about upcoming sales on our tutorials where there are frequently resistance bands applied to certain exercises. You can also watch the video version of this episode. I'm wearing a beautiful
00:57:17
Speaker
emerald green v-neck, long-sleeved. What were these called? I don't know. It reminds me of what kids would wear in third grade when I was little, but it's a velvet. It's like fake velvet that I found at Goodwill for $4. I'm totally in love with it. If you want to see that shirt that I'm wearing. Or watch me stare at the camera and then occasionally check my notes and talk to myself.
00:57:52
Speaker
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00:58:12
Speaker
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00:58:19
Speaker
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00:58:47
Speaker
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