Upgrading Your Mobility With Resistance Bands
Upgrading Your Mobility With Bands
Even those of us who are competitive athletes have mobility problems. This is because no matter how much you stretch, mobility is so much bigger, and simple stretching can’t fix joint problems, range of motion issues, tension, etc. In fact, all stretching does is lengthen (hopefully) the thinest part of the addressed musculature. Imagine a rubber band that is thick on one side and thin on the other. What happens if you stretch it out? The thin side stretches but the thick side does not. This is effectively the same thing happening when you try to stretch your muscles. Reach down and touch your toes, and you’ll feel the tension behind your knees where the muscle is the thinnest, but you won’t feel much of anything in your hip joint, where your problems really lie.
At the end of the day, our joints get the least benefit from static stretching, yet they are the cause for most of our injuries. When was the last time you heard of someone with a muscular injury that wasn’t at a joint. Every once in a while you’ll hear that someone pulled the back of their hamstring, or tore a bicep, but these are extreme cases. For the rest of us, it’s our joints that hurt: Ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, neck, elbow, wrist, etc.
So, to address joint disfunction we need to move the joint into the proper location and ingrain a new range of motion. This is where bands come in.
Band flossing is an extremely effective way for addressing joint problems. Basically, you use a resistance band to specifically stretch the tough musculature in and around your joint. If you were trying to pull your hip back into good positon, you’d wrap a resistance band around and anchor and around your thigh, and turn your body so that the band is pulling your hip back into position. Then, to floss the joint, take it through as many directions and through as much range of motion as you can given the position you are in. lunge forward and back. Lean to the left and right, etc.
You can do this as well with the shoulder, the ankle, and the wrist. Use the force of the band to create pull on the joint in a direction you can’t replicate by stretching.
Hip Band Flossing Examples:
A simple way to find exercises you can do is to just search for Joint Distraction exercises on youtube. For shoulder, type in shoulder joint distraction, etc.
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