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Strength and conditioning professionals have been adding elastic resistance bands to traditional squat and bench press exercises. It’s thought that adding elastic bands to these traditional barbell exercises will increase force output. Researchers at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles published a paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that quantified the force production of thick elastic bands during elastic-augmented barbell exercises.

The researchers noted that the exact loading pattern provided by elastic bands needs to be quantified for programming optimal exercise variables. They were concerned with 3 variables: the thickness of the bands, the attachment of the band, and the exercise performed. The researchers attached different thicknesses of bands as they would be used during a bench press or squat. Four elastic band lengths were used for bench press compared to 2 lengths for the squat. Elastic force was determined as the bands were stretched 200 to 300%, and prediction equations were calculated. As expected, the bench press set-up (4 band length equivalents) produced about twice as much force and slope as the squat (2 band length equivalents).

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