BFR Bands Review – Right For You?
Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Bands promise to give you rapid gains by tricking your body into thinking you’re lifting heavier weights. Here’s our BFR Bands review.
What Are BFR Bands?
BFR Bands, also known as Exerscribe bands, rely on a concept called blood flow restriction training. You wrap the Elite 2.0 BFR Bands around your muscles to trick your body into thinking you’re experiencing more resistance than you actually are.
If you wrap it around your biceps, for example, while you’re doing curls, then your 20 pound dumbbells may start to feel like 30 pound dumbbells.
The makers of BFR Bands claim that this training system is used by the NFL, the military, and the National Strength and Conditioning Association. They also cite over 200 research studies that have been performed to date that show blood flow resistance training “can yield significant gains in muscle hypertrophy (muscle size)” within just 2 to 3 weeks of starting to train.
All BFR Bands purchases come with two bands, allowing you to work out both legs or both arms simultaneously.
How Does Blood Flow Restriction Training Work?
Blood flow restriction training claims to enhance your brain’s map of where your body is relative to space. Here’s how the makers of BFR Bands describe the training program:
“BFR is great because it enhances your brain's “map” of where your body is relative to space. This makes it easier for your brain to do it's highest priority job – keep you safe and prevent the body from injury. As a result, your brain becomes less threatened and more comfortable to unlock higher levels of strength. BFR also presents a very low load to the central nervous system (which is why you can do it often).”
They’re also careful to emphasize that BFR is not tourniquet training, where you cut off blood flow to certain parts of your body. BFR, on the other hand, only restricts blood flow, which means blood flows more slowly out of the limbs.
How Do the BFR Bands Enhance Athletic Training?
BFR Bands claim to reduce oxygen supply to the muscles in order to pre-fatigue slow twitch muscle fibers and diminish their response to workout loads while also enabling fast twitch muscle fibers to respond quickly to exercise training loads, leading to faster lean muscle growth.
When blood flows more slowly into and out of the limbs, BFR disrupts the body’s homeostasis, increasing muscle protein synthesis, NOS-1 expression, and mTOR signaling, according to the manufacturer. All of these things then lead to enhanced muscle growth.
The makers of BFR Bands mention a number of studies regarding these benefits, but they never actually link to these studies, making it difficult to determine whether or not BFR Bands actually work.
The BFR Bands themselves also do not appear to have ever gone through any type of clinical testing or scientific trials. They haven’t been shown to improve muscle growth.
One of the biggest criticisms with BFR Bands is that they’re only about 1” wide, while most of the BFR studies have used 2” straps. The 2” straps lead to significantly more resistance than the 1” straps, so it’s unclear just how much of an effective the smaller BFR Bands may have on your workout.
BFR Bands Pricing
BFR Bands are priced at $27.97 + $6 shipping and handling.
That price gives you one pair of bands. So you can wrap the bands around your left and right arms or left and right legs while you workout.
At checkout, you’ll also be prompted to check a box if you want to buy a second pair of BFR Bands for $13.97 (50% discount) + $6 shipping and handling.
You can buy the BFR Bands from the official manufacturer’s website or from Amazon.com, where they’re priced at $17.97 (free shipping on orders over $49).
Who Makes BFR Bands?
BFR Bands are made by a fitness app developer named Exerscribe. That company was launched in 2014 with the goal of providing people with a “roadmap to fitness”.
The iOS app was developed by Kusha Karvandi and is free to download from the iTunes app store.
The app promises to give you step by step guides to resetting your nervous system to prepare yourself for better fitness.
The key feature of the Exerscribe app is the customized workout plans. You’re supposed to use the app while you workout, tracking your sets and reps and following the timer. It’s like having a personal trainer in your pocket.
Although the app is free to download, you’ll need to pay to use most of the app’s features. The app costs $2.99 per month, although you can sign up for an annual plan for $29.99 per year.
You can get in touch with Kusha and the team behind BFR Bands by emailing [email protected].
Will Blood Flow Resistance (BFR) Bands Actually Enhance your Gains?
Blood flow resistance (BFR) training, also known as occlusion training, involves restricting blood flow to the arms and legs during a workout. It may sound crazy, but there’s growing evidence that it can have some benefits on our bodybuilding gains.
Bodybuilding.com wrote a good article on BFR where the author (a BFR specialist himself) cites a number of studies reinforcing the potential benefits of BFR. That author actually recommends starting BFR by walking with devices like BFR Bands around your legs. You shouldn’t immediately jump into weightlifting.
The main problem with BFR is knowing how much to restrict your blood flow: some people either wrap themselves too tightly or too loosely, which either weakens the benefits or causes potential health problems.
However, if you’re careful, and wrap the bands correctly, then BFR Bands and blood flow resistance training appear to be legitimate ways to increase your bodybuilding gains – even if these basic straps are relatively expensive for two pieces of thin material with a simple fastener attached.
