In his article "Are Bands a Bad Idea for Rotator Cuff Strengthening?", Jordan Shallow discusses the pitfalls of using bands to strengthen rotator cuff muscles. Many gravitate towards bands as part of their strength training warm-up. However, as Jordan mentions, every muscle has a strength curve that determines where a muscle exerts the most and least amount of force throughout its range of motion. Essentially, most muscles are weak when shortened and weak when lengthened.
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The sweet spot is in the middle. This is the point that the muscle is strongest. With this in mind, it’s important to note the resistance profile of bands in relation to the rotator cuff muscles. Bands tend to exert more force as the muscle shortens in the shoulder. Given what we know about the strength curve of these muscles, we can conclude that this probably isn’t ideal for those who are looking to build strength.
Jordan confirms this, saying that you don’t want resistance to increase at the point where a muscle gets weaker. The solution? Try using a cable setup so you can have a uniform distribution of force throughout your motion. This way, you build muscles of stability around the shoulder. Rather than forcing your muscles to do more work at their weakest point, you optimize their performance by building muscle at their strongest point.
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So next time you’re warming up for your strength training session, reconsider using bands. Try using a cable setup instead and see how it affects your progress.
For instance, using the example in the video of an adducted external rotation, if the band is across the body exactly as demonstrated in the video, there is less resistance at the beginning, which is good, then more resistance toward the middle, which is again good, and then due to the improved leverage as you continue to rotate past perpendicular to your body, this helps to account for the increased resistance from the band making it an overall decent form of resistance.
This increased resistance of the band is only an issue if you position yourself relative to the band in a way that leverages aren't improved toward the end ROM, like in band face-pulls for instance, where leverage is best at the beginning with the least amount of resistance from the band, while leverage is lowest at the end ROM where the resistance is the greatest.