Hello Drs,
I have recently been reading Strength is Specific and have found it very enlightening. I just came to the discussion about bands and chains in resistance training for equipped and unequipped lifters. I found what he was saying about their utility or lackthereof interesting and it got me wondering how this could possibly represent a component of the spectrum of training sensitivity and athleticism you guys discuss. Anecdotally I have noticed in the past that I seem to get benefit from using bands and subsequently see strength improvement. So, my question is, is it likely there are some people who respond better to accommodating resistance than others due to variance in athleticism? Meaning that the neural drive adaptations in people who are less athletic are worth building to some threshold? And conversely, the people who respond less robustly may then in fact be on the right end of the athletic spectrum (more explosive etc) and have that more organically? I know you guys use bands and chains in your own training as variations of the main lifts, so i was also wondering what your experiences have been with how it translates to unequipped lifting and whether I am totally off the reservation in my hypothesis here.
Thanks!
Ryan,
I am not sure if I would jump to the training sensitivity argument right off the bat, as I think the reason why some people see improvements from them tend to fall into one of the following categories:
- Relatively untrained before or other training elements better explain strength improvement than bands or chains
- Bands and chains used in manner that improve low velocity strength specifically, e.g. heavy 1-6’s
- Improvement in strength specific to joint angle is, for whatever reason, advantageous to the individual
- Overload/higher intensity work generates strength adaptations
I don’t think that there’s much to do with athleticism here, however.
Okay great thanks! That makes a lot of sense.