Hello. Welcome to Brides Made Fit Podcast. I’m Jennifer DiDonato, your host. And, this episode number eleven and Brides Made Fit at you. I don’t know. It is Metro Detroit’s only in-home personal training service for brides to be. And also, the Brides Made Fit Podcast is for you too. It’s for everyone. It’s your source of the latest health and fitness information, demonstrations and exercises.
So in this episode, I am going to tackle the mystery that is known as the resistance band. Now, I’m sure if you were a trainer or a workout enthusiast in the 80’s, you’re like, “What are these things?” I know you are still stuck on the exercising and bench pressing a hundred fifty pounds. But, these are not jump ropes. I know you have probably seen them at the gym, but these resistance bands, they are made of rubber and they come as you can see in a variety of colors to keep you “oohing” an eye at them. But also, it tells you, based on the colors and by the thickness of the resistance. So, the thinner the band is, the lighter resistance level that has and upwards. This one is real thick, this purple one. This is the strongest resistance level that it has. Different brands have different colors. So if you are at your local gym, just try them out first and see which ones are best for you.
Now, the way you know which ones are best for you is, just pick them up and you can stand on them, or these also come with the door attachment. You can attach them to a door and do arm and back exercises with them. Well, with resistance bands, the benefit of these versus dumbbells is that they could be a substitute for free weights if you use them correctly. Resistance bands are good for endurance. You want to make sure you can do about 15 to 20 repetitions with the exercises that you are doing with the resistance bands. So, that’s how you know which one is right for you. If you pick up the purple one, you are going to five repetitions and then you completely give out. I’ll recommend that you step it down a couple because you don’t want to injure yourself.
But the great thing about these is that you can target muscles that aren’t necessarily working against gravity. For instance, the shoulders caption. It’s kind of a unique move. You step on the resistance band and you are raising your arms at a 45-degree angle and bring them back down. Now, if I were holding a dumbbell doing this movement, my shoulder would relax as it gets higher because no longer is my shoulder supporting the dumbbell. Now, my back and my rear delt. Now, it’s my front shoulder, my anterior deltoid that’s supporting this dumbbell. But, if you are using a resistance band, your rear shoulder and your back is supporting the weight and it’s forcing you to control it even on the way down, not just on the way up. So, that’s the unique thing about resistance band. I’ll show you that movement from the side as well.
Exhale. Now, another awesome thing about resistance bands too is that because there is resistance on them all the time, it forces you to control it even on the negative motion like I was showing on the shoulders. A great one you can do with bands are squats. You can mix up your squats. So, not only are you just doing squats normally, you can put these on your feet, bring the resistance bands up, and do squats this way. Because now, you are not just squatting against gravity and against your body weight, but you have a little bit extra umph in there that you got to force and push through. And try some pulsing squat from here, about 20 of these. Make sure your chest is up and your butt is out and show your side motion too. Of course, you are getting that. Good. Pulsing squat.
So, it’s a great little mix up that you can do with the resistance bands. Another final one that I’m going to show you that you can’t get from just the dumbbells are the hip adductor and abductors, or basically working your inner and outer thighs. Side to side. Keep it nice and low. And you can make it even more fun and to really kill your butt—big butt buster. Start with squats, side, side, squat, side, side. That one really kills you. Give me about like 15 or 20 minutes, you will be done before I tell you. So doing those, get your heart rate up and it’s also really affordable. They’re about maybe $8 to $15 per band depending on where you get them from. And, they are just really affordable. And if you have a small apartment or you don’t feel like buying dumbbells because nowadays, dumbbells run way over a dollar or a pound. So, these are very, very affordable. They are economically smart to get, and also they don’t take up a lot of room. And if you want to know more about how to use this and maybe have me come to your house and teach you more things to get the greatest workout that you can of these, you can call me, Jenny, at 888-MADEFIT. And, you can also see this podcast on iTunes. You can subscribe to it on our website, bridesmadefit.com and on YouTube as well. And oh yes, tell your friends about this. I can come to your house with any type of equipment. We can do a book camp and talk about how much fun that is for when you’re planning your wedding and things like that. So, I’m in the Metro Detroit area. Give me a call, 888-MADEFIT. And also, email me with any questions that you have at jenny@bridesmadefit.com.
Well, that’s pretty much it, but I do have one question for you. At the end of this podcast, I want you to go to the comments section, I want you to answer this one question. Tell me what the biggest, most intimidating machine there is at your local gym. It can either be at the gym at your condo complex or gym your friend took you to, or any piece of equipment that you walk by and you’re like, “You know what, I still don’t know what the thing is. I am too embarrassed to go up and try it.” So let me know what one it is. You can describe it to me if you don’t know what it is and I will try to figure it out and I’ll help you out. If you have any suggestions for a podcast, just give me a holler over there too.
So, thank you so much for joining. I hope you learned a lot. And I will see you next week on Brides Made Fit Podcast. See you.
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