How to Use Microbands
You may be familiar with the typical strong, average, light, monster mini and mini-bands, but now Westside also offers a micro band.
Micro bands are useful for a few reasons, notably their ease of storage and setup.
Most gym bags are already short on real estate, so the compact size of the micro bands makes it easy to transport your bands without worrying about sacrificing space or getting the other items in your gym bag tangled up with resistance bands. Micro bands are easy to set up, so you can benefit from band training regardless of your gym setup.
Why Bands Are Essential
If you wish to become as strong as possible, it is vital to keep an open mind and leave no stone unturned in terms of methodology and training equipment. For decades, Louie always looked for ways to improve the strength, speed, and conditioning of the athlete training at Westside Barbell.
One of the most important pieces of training equipment he discovered over the years was resistance bands. While resistance bands had been made popular with their application to plyometric training, Louie recognized the value these bands could have if applied to the training of strength athletes.
Band training is effective because bands make the athlete produce constant force throughout the movement, resulting in more significant improvements in strength-speed or speed-strength depending on the combination of bar and band weight. Additionally, bands can be utilized for max effort work, forcing the athlete to produce tremendous amounts of force through all joint angles throughout the lift.
Here are a few tips and tricks to get the most out of your Westside Barbell Micro Bands:
How to Use Micro Resistance Bands
With microbands being reduced in size, it takes less elaborate setups to apply even band resistance to a barbell. For instance, if you want to bench or squat against bands but can't create a base to hook bands up to, you can anchor micro bands to squat rack safety bars and attach them to a barbell while matching the pressure applied by a mini or monster mini band hooked up typically.
Micro bands also allow a lifter to modify many accessory exercises, given the size of the bands. With the bands being short, a lifter can perform tricep, bicep, shoulder, and other accessory exercises with adequate band tension being applied throughout the entire range of motion.
Less band length allows for more exercise creativity without worrying about anchoring your bands and removing slack.
Types of Microband Warmups
Another thing to note is the different warmups and band tension exercises possible with the Westside Barbell Micro Bands. For instance, you can attach the band to a squat rack to perform adduction or abduction movements for the hips, or you can focus on the arms and shoulders using the microband to perform exercises such as pull-aparts, tricep extensions, and bicep curls.
Microbands vs. Full-Size Resistance Bands
The Westside Micro Band is useful because it fulfills a need that other full-size bands leave unfulfilled; the need for a shortened band that is easy to hook up without excess slack and can be applied to many different accessory exercises.
Whether you are training max effort, dynamic effort, or repeated effort method, these bands will give you a valuable tool in your arsenal to introduce new exercise variations into your training and further allow you to avoid accommodation. Everyone can benefit from using the Westside Micro Band; it doesn't matter if you are a powerlifter, strongman, CrossFitter, bodybuilder, or athlete. Bands work for everyone.
Don't underestimate this band because of its size. The Westside Micro Band offers as much tension as a mini or monster mini-band, depending on how you hook it up while being less than half the size of either of those bands. If you want to increase your strength and speed, avoid accommodation, and open up a variety of new exercise variations to try, check out our Westside Barbell Micro Bands.
