By Shane Robert
Bands are one of the simplest pieces of equipment in strength training. They are inexpensive, portable, versatile, and capable of doing everything from warming up a shoulder to adding hundreds of pounds of resistance to a barbell. They are also one of the most misunderstood.
To some lifters, bands are synonymous with Westside Barbell and dynamic-effort training. To others, they are rehabilitation tools, mobility aids, or a convenient way to train when there is no gym around. Long before modern powerlifters were doubling bands around a barbell, strength enthusiasts were stretching cords and springs in an attempt to build bigger, stronger bodies. The story of bands is therefore much older, and much more interesting, than their association with powerlifting might suggest.
From Chest Expanders to Resistance Bands
The basic idea behind an exercise band is extraordinarily simple: stretch something, and it pushes back. Decades before today's latex resistance bands existed, physical culturists experimented with spring-loaded devices, cords, and "chest expanders." These devices generally consisted of handles connected by several springs or elastic elements. The user pulled the handles apart against the resistance, performing movements intended to develop the chest, shoulders, arms, and upper back. One of the most famous advocates of this style of training was Eugen Sandow. His ‘Developer’, for example, combined a rubber exerciser, chest expander, and dumbbells. His 1901 book Strength and How to Obtain It described rubber exercises alongside more conventional resistance training.
Chest expanders weren't merely a novelty. They were the beginning of an important idea: resistance did not have to come from a fixed weight.
A dumbbell is governed primarily by gravity. A spring or elastic device produces resistance according to how far it is stretched, regardless of gravity (a distinction that would become enormously important many decades later). The early chest expander was also inherently portable. It could be used at home, required very little space, and provided resistance in multiple directions. In an era before commercial gyms were commonplace, these qualities made it an attractive form of physical training. There was, however, a major difference between the old chest expander and the modern band. A chest expander generally relied on springs or relatively short elastic elements. Modern bands are typically long continuous loops or heavy-duty flat bands made from layered elastic material. The underlying principle is similar, but the applications are dramatically different.
The Rise of Elastic Resistance
The next major step in the story belongs to coach and strength-training innovator Dick Hartzell. Hartzell founded Jump Stretch in 1980 and developed the FlexBand system. His bands were designed not simply as a replacement for weights, but as a versatile athletic-training tool. They could be used for stretching, flexibility work, rehabilitation, general conditioning, explosive movements, and strength training. Contemporary accounts describe Hartzell's bands being used by athletes across football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and other sports. Hartzell's contribution was not simply making a stronger rubber band, it was creating a system of athletic training with bands.
His FlexBands could be used to resist movements in virtually any direction and could be anchored to virtually anything, from the floor, a rack, a post, or even the athlete's body. Bands could provide resistance during movements that were difficult to load conventionally, and they could be used to assist movements as well as resist them.
Accommodating Resistance: Bands Meet the Barbell
Hartzell's work eventually crossed paths with another influential figure in strength training: Louie Simmons. It was Simmons who helped establish their place in modern strength training when, as the founder of Westside Barbell, he began incorporating bands into barbell training and developed methods for using them with a variety of lifts. This was a major conceptual leap. Instead of simply performing exercises with a band, Louie used the band to change the resistance profile of a barbell exercise. That idea became known as accommodating resistance.
*A QUICK ASIDE ON ACCOMMODATING RESISTANCE*
Accommodating resistance is the method of making the resistance change (increase, typically) throughout an exercise's range of motion. With a conventional barbell, the weight on the bar remains the same throughout the lift. A 400-pound barbell is still 400 pounds at the bottom, in the middle, and at lockout. However, the amount of muscle force required to move that 400 pounds differs at different joint angles, with more force required at greater angles. Consider the squat: getting out of the bottom is generally more difficult than standing up the final few inches. Similarly, in the bench press, many lifters struggle more around the chest or through the initial portion of the press than at lockout.
When a band is attached to the bar and anchored below the lifter, it is relatively loose near the bottom of the movement. As the bar rises, the band stretches farther and produces progressively more tension. The result is a resistance curve that looks roughly like this:
Less to no band resistance at the bottom >> progressively more resistance as the bar rises >> greatest band tension near lockout. That is accommodating resistance.
Why use accommodating resistance? There are several potential reasons to use bands on a barbell.
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- More resistance where you are strongest
- Teaches an emphasis on acceleration throughout a range of motion
- Increased lockout demands
- Changing the training stimulus
*BACK TO THE ARTICLE*
Bands became a defining feature of Westside Barbell's approach during the 1990s and afterward. The result was a system in which the same basic lift could be manipulated in many ways. but this wasn't simply about making exercises harder; it was about changing where and how the exercise was difficult. Westside's use of bands helped turn accommodating resistance from an obscure training concept into something that became widely recognized throughout the strength-training world. Louie wrote extensively about bands (and chains), and the success of Westside's lifters gave the method enormous visibility.
Why Bands Still Matter
Of course, bands aren't just for accommodating resistance. A band can be a complete resistance-training tool by itself, as Dick Hartzel believed. The advantage is that it can provide resistance without requiring a rack full of weights because a single band can be used for dozens of movements, and a small collection of bands can provide a surprisingly comprehensive training system.
Below are some of the simplest and most useful band exercises:
- Band rows
- Band pulldowns
- Band presses
- Band curls
- Band triceps extensions
- Band pull-aparts
- Face pulls
- Band good mornings
- Banded squats
- Banded deadlifts
- Band-assisted pull-ups
The biggest benefit of bands is not that they are magically better than weights; it’s that they are different. Weights and bands produce different resistance profiles. A barbell gives you a relatively predictable gravitational load. A band gives you elastic resistance that changes with stretch. Bands are also exceptionally scalable. A light band can be appropriate for shoulder work or rehabilitation-style movements, while heavy bands can create enormous resistance when used with major barbell lifts. They are valuable because they give the coach and athlete another variable to manipulate.
Bands' versatility explains why a simple piece of elastic material has survived more than a century of changes in physical culture and strength training, and why Verse sells the high-quality and affordable bands that they do (Verse Resistance Bands). Whether it is for adding accommodating resistance to a barbell, building out a light weight travel gym, or expanding the exercises that can be performed in a garage gym, Verse bands are a low-cost, high-impact addition to any training regimen.
From the spring-loaded chest expanders of the physical-culture era, through to Dick Hartzell's FlexBands, to Louie Simmons and the dynamic training methods of Westside Barbell, bands have continually evolved from a simple resistance device into one of the most adaptable tools in strength training.
