AGAIN, PEOPLE CLUELESS IN LIFE!!! BANDS VS WEIGHTS

 

Found this article on SELF.com. PEOPLE that should know this information GIVING bad advice! THESE are PEOPLE that NEVER POWER TRAINED!

(The Muscle doesn't know the difference between a 50lb weight, a 50lb bag of potatoes or a 50lb bucket of water, IT'S a MUSCLE, that want's to lift a weight)

Let’s face it: It’s a whole lot easier to pick up a resistance band than it is to lug a set of dumbbells or kettlebells back to your bench. These exercise tools are incredibly lightweight—part of what makes them a convenient way to work out at home or while traveling—but given their lack of heft, it’s only natural to wonder: Do resistance bands “count” as strength training? Can you, for example, swap out your free weights for a pack of bands and get the same exact perks? After all, you can do a bunch of the same exercises with both, like deadlifts, squats, and rows, to name a few. Or should they be considered more of an accessory tool?

We tapped fitness experts to understand what resistance bands can—and can’t—do for your strength goals, plus tips for incorporating these bendy devices in your gym routine. Resistance bands can build strength…up to a point. Before we dig into whether resistance bands qualify as strength training, let’s get clear on what we mean by that term. Basically, strength training is anything that applies tension to your muscles so that they can adapt and get stronger over time, Susie Reiner, PhD, CSCS, certified exercise physiologist and post doctoral researcher at the University of Kentucky’s Sports Medicine Research Institute, tells SELF.

By that criteria, resistance bands can certainly meet the mark, Dr. Reiner says.

As exercise physiologist Heather Hart, CSCS, explains it, the whole way we progress with strength training is through the principle of overload. That basically means that in order to see continued gains, “we have to provide our muscle with a resistance greater than what it is already adapted to,” she tells SELF. And for some people—especially beginner exercisers, folks who don’t strength train often, or those who have weaknesses in certain areas—using resistance bands can “absolutely” qualify as overload, helping you build bigger and stronger muscles, she explains. In fact, a 2019 meta-analysis of eight studies concluded that using resistance bands provided similar strength gains compared to weight machines and dumbbells.

But there’s an asterisk. These benefits, Dr. Reiner says, only last “up to a point.” That’s because once you gain a certain level of fitness, resistance bands won’t make the cut.

“You’re going to get to a point where the resistance band can only offer so much resistance against your muscles, and you’ve already adapted to that amount,” Hart explains. And for most people who regularly strength train, “you’re gonna hit at the top end of what you’re able to do with resistance bands probably pretty quickly,” Hart says. Though you absolutely can level up the challenge of resistance bands by choosing a thicker one—just like you can trade your 15-pound dumbbells for a pair of 20-pounders—there are fewer options for progression bands compared to free weights, so you’ll hit the ceiling at some point (unlike with free weights, where the options are pretty much endless.) Simply put, before long, the bands will no longer provide the challenge your muscles need to grow bigger and stronger. But resistance bands do offer some advantages over traditional free weights. Bands use a specific type of load called variable resistance, or accommodating resistance, Dr. Reiner explains. This means that the tension applied to your muscles changes throughout the range of motion. “It’s a different stimulus than traditional weight training, which is a constant load across the range of motion,” she says. The shifting resistance of bands provides a “new challenge” to your neuromuscular system, Dr. Reiner explains, which can offer some pretty great perks. In some banded exercises, the resistance is heaviest when your muscles are at their strongest range of motion, and lightest when your muscles are at their weakest, Dr. Reiner explains. Take the squat, for example: The band is the most taut at the top of the squat—the portion of the move where people tend to be the strongest—and, vice versa, has the most slack at the bottom, where people are most likely to struggle, Dr. Reiner says. Same goes for the bench press: The band is loosest at the bottom of the move, which is typically the most difficult for people, and becomes tight as you reach the top of the exercise, where people tend to have the most strength. This match-up can be “very helpful” psychologically, Dr. Reiner explains, since you won’t be challenged as much at your weakest points. And it can help boost your power, too, she adds.