What is the difference between a banded bench/squat and a reverse banded bench/squat?
I understand the setup and what the exercises actually are, but I don’t understand why they differ.
If you had a reverse band bench press going with 365 on the bar, it’s say, 315 at the bottom and 365 at the top. Why would you use that as opposed to loading up with 295 (let’s say) and normal-banding it so you have 315 at the bottom (because there’s still band pull at the bottom) and 355-365 at the top?
Working against bands speeds up the acceleration of gravity, which creates more eccentric stress, which develops a greater stretch reflex. Reverse bands accommodate resistance without greater eccentric stress.
Both give you less resistance during the mechanical disadvantage (bottom) and more at the mechanical advantage (top).
Also, reverse bands are more of a confidence (and sometimes ego) booster. You can actually get competition like weight on the bar without the same amount of stress on your body. Going against bands, its more stress with less real bar weight.
Does that make sense?
[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
Working against bands speeds up the acceleration of gravity, which creates more eccentric stress, which develops a greater stretch reflex. Reverse bands accommodate resistance without greater eccentric stress.
Both give you less resistance during the mechanical disadvantage (bottom) and more at the mechanical advantage (top).
Also, reverse bands are more of a confidence (and sometimes ego) booster. You can actually get competition like weight on the bar without the same amount of stress on your body. Going against bands, its more stress with less real bar weight.
Does that make sense?[/quote]
Excellent explanation…is one better than the other in any particular way other than the confidence factor of having more weight on the bar with reverse bands???
Experimneted with my first set of bands last night…mini monsters short bands on DL…was a lot more challenging than I expected…
Driving against bands helps more with the speed component whereas rev band helps more with the strength component.
From another thread:
I actually had a bit of an epiphany about this subject the other day and I hit me why the 2 feel so different.
It’s actually an engineering stability problem. On a reverse band lift, the band force geometrically acts in a stabilizing direction. That is to say, the farther away from the vertical of the band choke point, the harder the bands work to pull you back to center.
Against band lifts, because of the geometry, work in the reverse. The farther the bar is from the vertical of the choke point the more the bands pull you away from the center.
Against bands is an unstable position were reverse bands is an inherently stable one.
It’s similar to a ships buoyancy. You always want the center of gravity below the center of buoyancy so that the ship is naturally self righting; otherwise you have a ship that is going to capsize.
It is the difference between balancing a broom on the palm of your hand and having it dangle from your grip.
Picture for reference. The guy benching has allowed the weight to drift back over his head. The reverse bands (red) will help him recover from this. The resisting bands (blue) will actually make it harder to recover.
Hope that makes sense. There is a large mechanical stability and linear inertia difference.
[quote]LiquidMercury wrote:
Driving against bands helps more with the speed component whereas rev band helps more with the strength component.[/quote]
x2, i will most frequently use against bands for DE, rev. bands for ME.
Lifting against bands beats the shit out of me. I rotate it in on ME day on rare occasions but I generally save it for DE work, when the bar weight is fairly low. The one exception is for ME deadlift work. Pulling against heavy band tension from varying heights is the best thing I’ve ever done to improve my deadlift.