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Resistance bands. What’s the big deal with these oversized rubber bands? If you’ve never used resistance bands before, you could be missing out. As well toning your legs and building muscle, there’s lots of ways resistance bands can help you with your fitness and training.
Can Help to Lower Body Fat
A recent study showed that resistance band training is more effective at lowering body fat in people who are overweight than other forms of training, including free weights and bodyweight exercises.
Helps to Tone Your Legs
Want more defined, powerful, tighter leg muscles? Resistance band exercises for legs are a great way to target and tone the large muscle groups in your legs while burning fat.
As Good as Using Gym Equipment
The force it takes to stretch the bands works your muscles just like using free weights or machines in the gym. In fact, training using resistance bands provides similar strength gains to using conventional gym equipment.
Great For Core Strength
As well as helping to shift belly fat, exercising with resistance bands can strengthen your core and help improve your strength and flexibility.
Versatile and Convenient
What could be easier to transport than a bag of stretchy bands? These exercise aids are highly portable so you can take them with you to the gym or if you’re away with work. Plus, resistance bands are ideal if you have limited space for your workout.
Use your resistance bands as part of your warm-up, for example to warm up your shoulders and arms.
Resistance band pull-ups: You can also use resistance bands in the gym alongside equipment, for example with assisted pull-ups. Loop a resistance band around a pull-up bar in the gym when you’re starting out with pull-ups. Then, place your knees or feet in the band. This is a great way to help your body learn the movement and gain strength.
Check out this Healthline blog to find out more: https://www.healthline.com/health/assisted-pull-ups#resistance-band-pullups
They Come in Different Strengths
With different weights and strengths, you can vary your workout. Bands are often colour coded with greater tension offered as the band colours get darker.
Even if you have only one band, you can increase or decrease the resistance by shortening or lengthening the band. In other words, more tension is the equivalent of more weight.
How to Use Resistance Bands
There are lots of different ways to use resistance bands and the exercises you choose will depend on the area of your body you want to work. The best thing to do is use good-old Google and YouTube to find exercises.
Tips:
When finding exercises online, pay close attention to the graphic or demo to make sure you get your form, posture and the movement right.
Start low. You’ll benefit more from using good form with lower resistance, so your range of motion is smooth. Move on to a higher tension level only when you're ready.
For best results, experts advise you to aim for a resistance band workout three times a week.
The amount of reps you complete will depend on you, but 10 to 15 at a time is a good number. Work until your muscles are tired to get the most out of a session.
Not only do resistance bands help with muscle building, but they help build strength and are good for toning your legs, arms, and core. They are also great to help you when you're starting out with pull-ups, and can add variety to your routine in or out of the gym. Check out the bands in our shop if you’re interested in giving resistance bands a try
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