wondering about Ironmind's fabled cables: http://www6.mailordercentral.com/ironmind/prodinfo.asp?number=1240 What kinds of workouts/routines can you use these for?
I have brookfield's book on them, and I've played with some I made out of surgical tubing I got from the hardware store. They're different, but I really don't think they're the great secret to strength they're marketed as. There's some exercises you can'd do with many other methods (chest expansion for example, or bow pulls) but there's little to no way to train your lower body and as far as being good to travel with and maintain strength, I think you'd be better off with bodyweight exercises for the most part.
Urban What do you think of this guys, in terms of how they are marketing bands as one of the best things for fighters?? www.intocombat.com
the argument always seems to be that old wrestlers of yore used to use bands almost exclusively with good result... But really I don't think you'll ever know the routines of anyone from a century ago for sure. Best to start with what works well for most people and expand on it from there. To be honest, I don't have a lot of experience with bands, just cables. From what I hear, bands may be very useful, but myself, I'd like to lift something heavy and quanitfiable.
People harp on about how much better sportspeople of the past were, but it's by and large bullshit. Records have been improving consistently over time due to better training techniques etc, in all sports, so it's not just improvement in bench shirts for PLing, or faster pools for swimming etc Back in the day people would train for a 1 mile run by doing lots of 1 mile runs. I think you'd be better off making sure you're educated and up to date, rather than looking for ancient secrets of training. Disclaimer: this post is directed not at Urban - it's more intended to back up what you said - but rather at anyone overly taken by these legends
I've used practically every training implement available and cables are very up there on the list. Barbells and dumbells are great for building overall strength and cables are great for building fucked up strength in certain positions that barbells would never allow you to do. If you're training with cables like would with a barbell or dumbell, don't waste your time because you won't get the same effect. You have to get creative with cables use them to develop strengths that barbells can't address, like specific moves for your sport and in every conceivable angle possible.
the force produced by heavy cables/bands are very quantifiable. if you're given the spring rate (technically they are springs) you could easily figure out the initial load and final load just by using Hooke's law.
yeah, but that's more calculating than I'm willing to put in when I'm lifting. Right now it's about iron. maybe in a year or so I'll check out bands. It's a different world, I think. For heavy lifting using weights in combination with bands on an exercise you would want to measure the iron based on abilities at the lowest part of the lift and adjust the resistance caused by the bands based on what you could do close to the top. It's just not something I think I need to concern myself with right now. does that makes sense? thereby adding increasing resistance (at an increasing rate) as the range of motion of the movment (effectively) decreases. It's a headache I'm not ready to give myself.
I do use bands to assist with my explosiveness for my throws or my shots, but they are by no means a replacement for a) throwing a real partner, b) lifting heavy
