If anyone from the old (now closed) “hardcore” gym is still reading this I have a funny story :
Now being on the gym floor while possessing a functioning brain I’ve picked some stuff up over the years.
I saw the powerlifters doing all sorts of band traction and spinal decompression.
Oddly the planet fitness I go to has the whole selection of bands, mostly unused, though occasionally used for band assisted chins.
I figure the trainer on staff probably pushed for their purchase to use with his group fitness class of heavier old women so they could “do pullups”.
I’ll take the big gray one and do shoulder traction with it on occasion. Rare, but a tool I keep in the wheelhouse.
It’s pretty amazing how well a few minutes of prehab/rehab works.
I’ve never felt the need to do banded spinal decompression myself, but I’ve seen a bunch do it, a friendly 308lb/superheavyweight powerlifter had shown it to me once, and it’s a tool I’ve kept filed away.
Apparently I had forgotten how at the “hardcore” gym spinal decompression was set up with a barbell not a pullup bar.
Ah, the story :
This guy I’m friendly with, an african immigrant (crazy backstory on him), often complains about his back bugging him.
He’s doing pulley crunches, we’re talking for a minute, and low and behold he talks about how he used to do this and that and disliking how his back keeps him from that.
Now I always tell people there’s a way to train that pain away, that some combination of stretching and strengthening will do it.
They always agree.
And while we’re talking I got the idea to show him spinal decompression with the band.
“After your next set, walk with me, I have something to show you that may help.”
As aforementioned, I initially tried to set it up on the pullup bar, I’d described the positioning to him, and as he’s climbing up it like “I don’t know I can get into position” (hips through the band and upside down), anyone looking would’ve seen the lightbulb go off over my head as I stopped him, took the band off the pullup bar, and we three (him, the gray band, and I) went to an open smith machine. I’d realized the pullup bar is way to high, and not a monolift.
With slight difficulty I was able to show him what I meant, and with much more difficulty, and in a very comical way (at one point swinging seated on the band) he too eventually was able to invert himself.
(I was cracking up, just expecting the walking by staff member to say something, or for someone near by to. The black dude on one side was looking at us like wtf, and the blonde on our other side who tries to be discreet about checking me out was this time trying to be discreet about figuring out what the heck was going on in the smith machine nearby, though probably still mixed with checking me out.)
We part ways, and maybe 5 minutes later he comes up to me “that feels good, it helped, I’m going to purchase one to use at home”, then asked me what exactly that is called, and where online to buy one.
File under Donnie Thompson tricks being done at planet fitness.