Why QBands

Dr. Andy Barr, DPT, CSCS, QBANDS Creator

“Why I created the Qbands”

Hi I’m Dr. Andy Barr, creator of QBANDS and a sports physiotherapist with over 20 years of experience working with some of the most elite athletes in the world.

I created the QBANDS system essentially for the athletes that I work with. I’ve used various band systems all through my Physical Therapy career but there wasn’t a product available that fitted all my requirements for rehabbing and training the most elite level athletes.

I needed a high quality, durable system that was portable and all encompassing, with the capability of multiple configurations and use cases. I designed the QBANDS for all types of exercises including corrective, total body training, flexibility, rehabilitation, core specific but primarily to allow me to perform movement control exercises that directly relate to the sports specific actions of the individual athlete.

     My mission creating the QBAND System is to positively impact the health, longevity and performance of the elite athletes I work with but also to provide other practitioners and athletes of all levels the opportunity to access the immense benefits of the QBAND System too.

What are QBANDS?   

      QBANDS are a one of a kind resistance Training/ Performance/ Rehabilitation Training tool to help with activating core muscle engagement, improving functional strength and power, motor control, and programming coordination/ alignment of the body. This tool helps athletes and practitioners to take their programming to the next level!

         Because of my experience and proximity to top athletes in the world, I was privileged to be able to develop the QBANDS alongside a very eclectic set of athletes, from all walks of life, from many areas of the world… soccer, basketball, baseball, football, boxing athletes… What this meant was that I could apply a one-size-fits-all concept to add a training tool to each athlete and their health team (if applicable). QBANDS add a layered progression to core activation and body control to influence longevity with very advanced variable resistance therapies.

 

QBANDS for Performance    

       In conjunction with the dynamic application of the QBANDS, I applied different analysis and strategies, “The product was developed so that we could zoom in on a specific joint or we could zoom out through the connecting points of the chain, all the way to a whole body application. Also, the product was intended to be utilized along the cycle of rest & recovery, training & programming, performance preparation, and performance maximization. Among many benefits realized, something that stood out was progressions to an athlete’s general motor control along their entire kinetic chain. So by applying different attachments to different parts of the body, we could mimic game situations that would be proprioceptively beneficial in addition to enhancing each athlete’s core activation.”

         Another way to describe the usefulness of the QBANDS to my specialty physical therapy and performance practice is they helped me 'work from the top down.'

Sport-Specific Philosophy

         I think my general philosophy now is you have to really understand the dynamics of the game and what is the game, as the starting point, and you work backwards from there. I have more of a top-down approach rather than creating objective references from a practitioner level and trying to get your athletes to reach the those objective references. I try and create them from a sport level so everything is relevant to the sport.

       This, with communication, makes greater buy in for the athlete, greater integration and collaboration with the coach and staff and the people that you work with. So, my philosophy is about being as sports specific as possible, using sports specific language, like using sports specific references, and then having a pathway that delivers the athlete back into the demands of the sport that are specific to their position and to what they need as an individual.

QBANDS Benefits

         The integration of QBANDS alongside the high performance care continuum had a noticeable impact on the athletes that utilized it. They even directly reported benefit and preferred to use it! A state of freshness and readiness was something that stood out as we progressed into even using the QBANDS pregame. If an athlete could be given a key to unlock the activation of their core, maybe an athlete could not only decrease injury potential (especially of the non-contact variety) but also maximize their performance potential!

         With so many elements that are out of anyone’s control, training and preparing as close to game-like conditions as possible is best. To give an athlete optimal function of their body is one of my highest order goals. The ideal is for an athlete to have masterful control of their joints, or movement production at the different joints that integrate into the specific functional actions required when they are playing their sport.

 Thank you for taking the time to read this blog! We appreciate you and welcome your feedback. Please email us at info@qbands.co to give us your feedback, ask questions, or make requests for blog topics.

AND if you'd like to purchase QBANDS with a discount, enter the code: trainlikeapro for 15% on our QBANDS PRODUCT PAGE!