I have never won a Team Championship but this weekend I had a chance to watch a team win a championship and guess what…. They train with bands.
Now before you send all you comments my way about being a band wagon jumper, or saying “Right Dave I am sure it was the band”, hear me out. I know it wasn’t the band training and I know it wasn’t anything I did but I did get a chance this spring to work with for the second straight year the 2009 NCAA Division III Football champions Wisconsin - Whitewater Warhawks.
So yes I am proud and yes I am very excited for them….. NOT ME!!
Congratuations to all the Coaches and Players at UW-Whitewater. Thanks for letting me be a very small part of your success.
Band Training for Rotational Strength… Tapping into our power center
Your body loves to rotate and by now you know that this is your body’s power center. What is funny to me is that very few people every work rotational running or rotational pulling. It’s always in the same old straight plane. This has alot to do with our medical profession and the old fitness approach we got growing up. Machines were the best.. Wrong.
As for the medical field, they would rather we just avoid the issue by not rotating. Well try avoid rotating all day. Good luck…. It will not happen.
But I am not suppose to “twist”!! Thats right.. Twisting is rotation without using your whole body.. especially your hips. Twisting will crush your low back and knees. Rotation will not. Most people twist.
It has never made sense to me knowing that our power comes from our ability to rotate. If you don’t use it you lose it. Interestingly, I think this also is why we lose our balance and why falling is a big problem, especially in our senior population.
So it’s time to start looking at how you are going to start training the rotational plane.
Let me get you started.
Reactive Training.. Powerful Results
Dave Schmitz
PS… With the Total Fitness package you get my 4 week Beginner workout which has several rotational based workouts. Keep that in mind if you struggle figuring out how to use your bands to train rotation
Band Training for Shuffle strength… do you work on it??
Our body was designed to primarily to move forward which is why we can run the fastest in a forward direction. Ok now that I have enlightened you with that wisdom… Did you know that in order to be powerful forward we must be incredibly stable side to side.
Yep, we lose power forward when we have to spend time working so hard on stabilizing in the frontal plane. It’s called having a frontal plane force leak.
How do you correct it??
Start strength training and running sideways as well as forward.
Have you ever done a high speed shuffle workout?? or all your strength training in a sideways direction??
I have and continue to do this often with bands. It’s the easiest way to get cardio in and work on dynamic lateral stabilization at the same time. Now add a little pulling or pushing action with this and you can really rock your frontal plane stabilizers.
As promised a frontal plane cardio-strength workout. I hope you get a little laugh from the screen shot.
It’s no secret that our body is a tri-plane integrated creature that ultimately needs to have full mobility with stability in all planes, at all joint and in all muscles to, optimize function and performance. This vary philosophy has been the emphasis behind all of my personal resistance band workouts as well as my performance and adult fitness boot camps for the past 15 years. I never thought much about it until recently but after seeing how people lose their mobility and how so many individuals lack stability in the transverse and frontal planes, I think it has been a god sent for me to have stayed with this training approach.
With this tri-plane thought in mind, I recently went back into the band workout achieves and dug up one of my favorite cardio - strength workouts. These are workouts where I use a locomotion exercise in conjunction with a strength exercise to maximize metabolic effort while challenging myself in all planes of motion using our most complex movement skill of locomotion.
You know I always have you do it before I share it. So like always, I put myself through this workout to see if it was still the butt kicker I remembered it being. It did not disappoint. Matter a fact it was so challenging I decided to break it into 3 separate workouts picking a new locomotion plane on each workout. So let’s kick off this awesome tri-plane - 2 band workout series with the sagital plane first.
What is really cool about this workout is you can plug it into any interval workout sequence you wish.
20:10 - 4 exercise circuit x 4 rounds with a 1 minute break between rounds
30:30 - 4 exercise circuit x 5 rounds with no break
40:20 - 5 exercise circuit with the 5th exercise being a core exercise
Or for you that want to really go for it…
50:10 - 5 exercise circuit where you add a lunge variation as the 5th exercise
Your call…
Here is the final bonus of this workout… you need about a 5 foot x 5 foot area. No more space excuses! Get after it.
PS.. If you are looking for a great christmas fitness gift the Total Fitness Package is a great option. Order today and I will ship on Monday. Don’t wait because shipping gets crazy by Wedneday.
I have never won a Team Championship but this weekend I had a chance to watch a team win a championship and guess what…. They train with bands.
