Author Ashley Jones
The use of bands to modify bar kinetics has been made popular by the Westside crew over the past few years, Dan Baker’s excellent e book explains a lot as to the use of both bands and chains and I would read as much as I could from both these sources.
But nothing teaches like what Dave Tate refers to as “Time Under the Bar” the greatest teacher of all is experience, and to try different methods will give you a more complete understanding as to how these methods effect the body. Personally, I like to trial all techniques on myself and assistant before exposing any of my athletes to something new.
Using bands as an assistance method is a fantastic way of increasing overload through both bar speed and also working on lock out strength in different exercises. In the past I have used bands in this mode for working deadlifts, squats, bench, over head pressing and cleans, today I did band assistance work on overhead pressing movements.
Previously I had attached the bands to the base of the power rack and to the bar so as the bar was pressed overhead a greater amount of resistance was encountered towards the end of range. Today I attached the bands to he top of the power rack and the bar, thus providing initial assistance in getting the bar started from the bottom position and less or zero assistance at end range.
Using a system of sets and reps that I have applied recently to block snatch and clean + press variation work, 3 x 3 military press then, 4 x 2 push press and finally 5 x 1 split jerk I worked up to a greater than normal max single on my jerks, an area that I was having trouble with locking out my heavier clean + jerks.
Next is to work with some potentiation ideas using bands, as a resistor then as an assistor and then free of all bands, just bar weight, and then see which provides the best results, possibly a workout such as:
3 x 3 Band resisted military press (attached to the base of the power rack)
4 x 2 Band assisted push press (attached to the top of the power rack)
5 x 1 Rack split jerks (bar weight only, no bands)
So hope you can give some of these ideas a trial and let me know how you find them, cheers, ashley