Resistance bands are cost-effective alternatives to weight machines and other expensive training equipment. Resistance band workouts can be equally and sometimes even more beneficial than weight exercises for muscle strength and endurance building.
These bands are elastic strings, bands, or loops that provide resistance against stretching, hence the name resistance bands. The resistance can be provided by anything from an elastic fabric to metallic springs.
Resistance band workouts are great, but they are not without their shortcomings and areas where you can improve with a bit of innovation.
Resistance Bands - Great but not Perfect
The first trouble with resistance bands is that they are not interactive. They provide a good way of working out but cannot give you any stats or measures of your workout. Secondly, they can only help you train for strength and endurance and nothing more. There is nothing like cognitive training, reaction time drills, or anything you can do with a resistance band exercise. That leads us to question how to use resistance bands more effectively?
The answer is to use something to supplement your resistance band workout routine to overcome the shortcomings of this simple piece of training equipment.
That can be done with Blazepod Light Pods.
Blazepod Light Pods - Add Cognitive Training to your Resistance Training
Blazepod light pods are small illuminated pods that respond to your touch. They can be controlled by their mobile app to light up in any sequence or at random. Each pod is wireless and has an RGB light that can produce eight distinct colors.
Blazepods and Resistance Band Workouts
These pods can augment your exercise band workouts via a three-step process. You set up the pods to light up according to the workout you have devised and place them at the designated places. Next, you carry on your stretch band workouts, as usual, just touching the pods according to the workout setup. Then, when you are done, you retrieve the data from the app to track your performance.
Using the light pods can give you the following benefits:
- Accurate timing and data collection of your workout, even of each step separately.
- Integration of cognitive and reaction time training into your workouts with resistance bands.
- You can devise your own workouts that focus on the areas you need improvement.
How to Use Blazepod Light Pods to Integrate Cognitive Training in Resistance Training?
With Blazepod Light pods, you can get creative and make your own workout and drill plans. Here are some examples to demonstrate how the pods can transform the way you train with resistance bands.
Band Press Up
This is one of the very basic exercises with resistance bands that anyone can do. Classically, this is for strength training, but using Blazepod Light Pods, you can add an element of surprise and cognitive training to it. Here’s how:
- Hold a resistance band in your hands so that it wraps around the upper back of your body. Have a partner do the same.
- Place two Blazepod Light Pods one foot apart, set them to light up at random and get in the press up position. Ask your partner to assume the same position in front of you with two light pods on either side of their head.
- You need to do press ups as usual but everytime you go up, touch the pod that lights up with your hand while maintaining the position.
- Do the exercise for 5 minutes and see who has touched more pad in that time.
While push-ups are good for your abs and arm muscles, the resistance band adds to the workout’s difficulty, helping you increase muscle strength more than you can with your body weight alone. The Light Pods will introduce an element of cognitive training and reaction time in the workout. You can see the data generated in the app to see how quick you were to respond to the pods lighting up and how you improve over time.
Band Russian Twist
This is a full-body resistance band workout that can be made more interesting with Light Pods.
- Sit with your legs straight ahead of you and a resistance band in both your hands and around your feet.
- Place a Light Pod on one side of you, 6-8 inches from your bottom and set them to light up randomly.
- Have a friend sit on the other side of the pod in the same position as you.
- When a pod lights up, you need to keep pulling back as hard as you can without bending your spine and twist the lower back muscles to reach your hand and tap the pod.
- Do it for 5 minutes. The one who taps the pod more times in the exercise wins.
This exercise is good for the whole body and is great for enhancing body elasticity and muscle strength. The light pods will make reaction time training a part of the workout. The app will provide you with valuable data on how you are doing with the exercise.
Band Coordination Drill
This drill uses resistance bands that focus on body coordination, balance, and reaction time improvement.
- Place 4-6 Light Pods in front of you in a straight line with no gap between them.
- Anchor a resistance band to a post on one side of you, parallel to the pods.
- Set the pods to light up randomly in different colors.
- Your task is to keep pulling on the resistance bar and tap the pod that lights up in a specific color.
- Tapping the wrong color will cost you a point and the right color will earn you one.
- Do this drill for as long as your fitness allows, take a rest, switch the hand at the band and do it again.
This is a fast-paced drill that needs you to act fast in the face of unexpected circumstances. It is not only good for muscular strength building but is highly effective in improving agility and reaction time. The Blazepod app can give you the data on your agility and how it is improving over time.
Conclusion
Resistance bands are versatile exercise equipment that can increase muscle strength and endurance without having to invest in expensive machinery and weights. You can add cognitive training to resistance band exercise using Blazepod Light pods. These can be controlled by a smartphone app and provide you with insightful data on your exercise performance so that you can identify where you are falling behind and improve.
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