Fitness Equipment: The Benefits of Resistance Bands and Weights

When it comes to basic physical fitness exercises, resistance bands and weights have quite a lot in common. For example, both types of fitness equipment give the muscles something to work with besides gravity. However, when scrutinized in detail, the differences between these fitness equipments actually allow them to serve completely different goals.

Weights, whether in the form of weight stacks on a fitness machine or in the form of dumbbells, give you the opportunity to alter and modify the degree of force that you need to use during each physical fitness workout. This gives you the change to tailor your physical fitness workout to your designated level, as you wish.

Physical fitness training with weights will greatly improve your strength as time goes by. As more strength is built, your coordination will improve greatly; in turn creating a stable environment for joints as well as making your heart work to improve your health and fitness. At the same time, weights are also good for your health fitness, in the sense that they tune the cardiovascular system, which naturally reacts to supply muscles with their required needs.

These benefits are also given by resistance bands, which have more benefits of their own to add to the list. When stretching, resistance bands pull keep pulling back with greater force, giving you a much better physical fitness workout. (Just think of them as much bigger, highly stretched rubber bands.)

Resistance bands also help with health fitness, in the sense that they increase bone density. A body’s natural reaction to the strain that resistance bands provide is the release of biochemicals that add calcium. Although it may seem like an indirect correlation, it is actually real, even though it may be gradual. Also, as the body gives oxygen to tissues, the physical fitness effort exerted with resistance bands will increases your overall metabolic rate, allowing you to burn more calories with each physical fitness workout.

Aside from the physical fitness benefits that come with resistance bands, there is also a huge convenience with exercising with resistance bands. There is absolutely no storage space problem when it comes to this piece of fitness equipment, since they can be stored practically anywhere. They can fit into a drawer or on a closet shelf with ease. Although free weights are also easy to store, they are not as lightweight and flexible as resistance bands. Plus, the latter is much safer.

Although resistance bands and weights are both fitness equipments that have to work against forced directed against them and thus exert effort on the muscles, they are still different in the sense that they operate in completely different directions. Because of this, they tend to work different muscles in completely different ways. Although both fitness equipments enhance strength, you will get a much wider diversity in physical fitness by using both. By doing so, you will result in finding a physical fitness that is much more comprehensive.
An exercise band may be the ideal fitness equipment to use when you are recovering from a cramp from a previous physical fitness workout or a long-term injury. Free weights or dumbbells, on the other hand, allow you to do curls, even if you are on a wheelchair. Although resistance bands can be used in a similar way, it may be more difficult, depending on how serious the injury is. However, resistance bands offer a range of physical fitness exercises that may be a complicated to do with weights, unless you invest in more expensive fitness equipment.

Both fitness equipments have their share of pros and cons. But the ideal physical fitness workout program would simply put the best of both worlds together.