Using Bands In Calisthenics To Progress Quickly

Bands for deliberate practice in calisthenics push your limits

After training in so many different forms of fitness for so long, you eventually have trouble progressing. You hit plateaus everywhere – in strength, cardio, flexibility you name it. Especially if you don’t use deliberate practice and track your journey with a relentless drive to always improve. Literally months can go by where you don’t even realize you are doing the same things over and over with no result. In calisthenics, stalling on moves and progressions can be very frustrating. I learned this quickly when I began my journey to do some of the impressive body weight exercises like planche, flag, lever etc.

Even with relentless deliberate practice, sometimes you cannot get the body to progress like you want in your training. To give you an example, on my journey I progressed quite fast on a lot of strength exercises due to my training back ground – dips, push ups, pull ups, the basics. I progressed quickly to heavy weight and reps. However some of the more elite skills I had trouble with. Like the front lever. No matter how much I put into my front lever, I just wasn’t passing a one leg tuck one leg extended progression. Like in months. It feels like a waste of time almost. You know your lever training is today, but you don’t even want to bother because the progression you are on just won’t budge, so you get frustrated and probably do less work than you could, put less effort and move onto moves you’re good at.

This is where bands come in. A lot of people use bands in calisthenics, but one detail is different in our program. They are to be used only on plateaus because they cannot take the place of full body weight on a leverage point, and they are used as an almost final progression to have the body aligned properly when you are almost at a move you are training to achieve. It’s amazing how fast you can jump into a move when you are almost there, and then you throw band support for just a couple workouts slowly decreasing the tension and removing it and just like that, progression achieved. You remove the band and your body is used to proper form, alignment and performing the movement with just a tiny bit of assistance – progression achieved.

Some great examples where bands can push you to the next level on moves are planche, one arm push up, front and back lever, lever pull ups, one arm pull up and flags. Use them at the near end of your progressions or when you are stalling and you will see how you can get back on track.

Have a couple of different ones with different tensions on hand. Just remember that band training should not start until you have built enough strength and control on some mid level moves to ensure your body is ready for the leverage you are putting on it. Don’t skip tuck planche and just go to full planche with a band holding you up, for example. However do use a band to help hold a full planche when you can straddle planche under your own skill and strength. You can progress fast once you have your foundation built. Check out our eBook program to see how we build our body weight strength quickly.

Make it happen.