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[h=2]What are Jump Stretch Bands?[/h] Chances are you’ve heard of people using bands in the gym, but may not know what the benefits are or how to use them (and no, we’re not talking about music).
Popularized by Westside Barbell legend Louie Simmons, bands have been helping powerlifters get bigger and stronger for years, but until recently, very few bodybuilders have experienced what bands can do for them. This article will show you how to use them to your advantage.
But first, what the heck is a jump stretch band, anyway?
Quite simply, they’re giant rubber bands.
They’re most commonly used in strength training by securing one end to a stationary object and the other end to the collar of a standard barbell. The beauty is in their simplicity. Just like the smaller rubber bands you use in daily life, the more the jump stretch bands are stretched, the more resistance they provide. This increasing resistance, when used in combination with strength training, is known as accommodating resistance. What the bands do is transform a barbell into something akin to cam-based resistance training machines (think Nautilus® machines).
[h=2]A Quick History Lesson[/h] Arthur Jones, the creator of the Nautilus® training machines, was essentially the first man to incorporate the concept of variable resistance into strength training. He did this by running a chain over a cam which was shaped like a nautilus shell (hence the company’s name).
Legend Mike Mentzer on the Nautilus Pullover machine
The chain was secured to a variable weight stack on one end and a movement arm on the other. When the trainee lifted the weight by pressing or pulling the movement arm, the chain traveled over the rotating cam.The changing diameter of the cam altered the movement, thus altering the torque and resistance provided by a given load. The primary function of the cam as Jones designed it was to increase the load when the working muscles were in their strongest position and decrease it in the weakest, thus eliminating the inherent flaw of barbells known as the “sticking point” (the point in the movement where the perceived load is the greatest based upon the pull of gravity and/or musculoskeletal leverage). This allowed for maximal stress to the muscle.
Like Jones, Dr. Fred Hatfield (a record-setting powerlifter) looked for a way around the limitations of barbell training and championed a concept known as “compensatory acceleration”.
His idea was to have the lifter literally push harder on the barbell as the exercise got easier in an attempt to overcome the leverage-induced decrease in resistance. Theoretically, this made the exercise more effective in achieving muscular overload, which is crucial to gaining muscle.
Dr. Fred Hatfield hitting a big 1,003lbs Squat
The idea was good, but was limited in practice by the fact that the lifter pushing harder throughout the range of motion still did not eliminate the sticking point. He had the right idea, but not the tools to execute it.
[h=2]Enter the Band[/h] Bands work similarly to a cam in that they both vary the resistance and increase it when the lifter is in the strongest position. Think of a barbell squat: after getting out of the bottom position (the “hole”), the lifter encounters a brief sticking point. When he moves past the sticking point—thanks to leverage—the perceived load gets lighter (anyone who’s ever done a squat before knows that you can partial-squat a whole lot more than you can full squat, since the sticking point is eliminated).However, when bands are added to the squat, they increase the resistance as they are stretched. This forces the lifter to push hard against an ever-increasing load through the entire range of motion (ROM), thus dramatically increasing the overload effect.
While bands do not eliminate the sticking point, they do very little to increase the load until after the lifter has pushed through it.
[h=2]A Short Story of What’s Possible[/h] By now, the benefit of bands relative to bodybuilding should be obvious. Bands allow the lifter to fully work the involved muscles in nearly all barbell movements. The increase in size and strength when using bands can be dramatic.
My personal experience with their use plainly illustrates this fact.
I recently began to incorporate bands into my leg training. I did so primarily by using them with box squats to varying heights (normally parallel or below). The bands my training partners and I most commonly used provided 200+ pounds of resistance at the top of the squat. Because of the way they were secured, they provided little resistance at the bottom of the movement when we were on or near the box. Starting a few inches above parallel, the bands began to “kick-in,” providing progressively greater resistance as we neared lockout.
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The difference the bands made in our training was staggering. For instance, when un-racking the barbell and walking out with the weight, the pull of the bands forced us to use tremendous effort just to control our movement, much more so than with just a barbell on our backs. In addition, when we worked up to a fair amount of barbell weight (450 pounds +), the load on our backs in a standing position was nearing or exceeding 700 pounds. Getting used to this load made our return to squats without bands incredibly easy in that 400-500 pounds of pure barbell weight now felt like nothing on our backs.
The use of bands for just a couple of months forced my upper legs to grow over 2 inches. I literally grew out of my work slacks and added nearly 20 pounds of body weight during the same period. The growth was explosive, as was my increase in strength. During my stint with band training, I also experienced the most amazing pumping of my quads that I have ever felt! This pump was the result of a superset of leg extensions and regular (not box) squats with bands. The combination was lethal, with the bands increasing the intensity exponentially. In truth, the pump was so ridiculous–and painful–that we could only get through the superset once.[h=2]Bands and Bodybuilding: How to Use Them![/h] One of the basic tenets of muscular hypertrophy is time under tension (TUT). Meaningful TUT involves both time and stress. In other words, in order to optimally stimulate hypertrophy, the musculature must be stressed with a relatively heavy load over a period of time. Bands increase the TUT with all barbell exercises by maximizing the stress to the involved musculature over a greater portion of the ROM on each and every rep. Therefore, a given number of reps with bands equates to more work done by the muscles. Bands increase both efficiency and intensity, which are two of the most important factors in increasing muscular size.
If you’ve never used bands, the idea of adding them can be a bit intimidating. The first question most lifters have is how to secure the bands. I think the best way to become comfortable with using bands is to begin with simple exercises, like squats and bench presses.
