New Resistance Bands

P90X is undoubtedly one of the most popular fitness programs on the market today. With over 2 million users, a charismatic developer, and a great reputation for helping people get in shape and stay there you would think that any products allowed to carry the P90X brand name would be top quality. Unfortunately this doesn’t hold true here. While the P90X Resistance Bands Workout Kit from Beachbody is not the worst set on the market, they are far from the best and over priced for what you get.

The set includes :
3 Fitness Bands of varying tension (15, 20, and 30 pounds)
2 Comfort Grip Handles

That’s it. For almost $50.00.

Yes, the bands are of decent quality, but there is only 3 of them. 3 resistance bands and 2 handles which means that you will be switching handles from one band to another quite often if you need to use all 3 tension levels during your workout.

Also:

NO ankle straps
NO door anchor
NO workout charts or DVDs
NO carry bag

So you are paying for $22 worth of bands and $23 for the P90X trademark. There are many resistance band sets that offer much more than the P90X Resistance Bands Workout Kit, and those sets will work just as well with P90X as the “official” ones. If you are looking to buy resistance bands to use with P90X, then pass these by and buy a more complete set from Bodylastics or SPRI.

When the purple version of SPRI’s popular Xertube resistance band showed up at our door last week we all just kinda looked at each other. While the three of us have gotten into really good shape over the past two years, we aren’t exactly bodybuilders so we weren’t sure we would be able to put a purple band (the very heavy grade) through any sort of actual testing. So we asked my brother to try it out over the weekend just to let us know how it feels to someone who can bench a lot more weight than I can.

So while he was testing product I planted some flowers. Then on Sunday he came over for dinner and we talked about the SPRI ES503R Purple Resistance Band. According to him it felt great, smooth tension across the entire range of motion and the handles were comfortable. He had no problems using the door attachment and he even said that he really liked the particular shade of purple on the tube (yeah, he’s weird).

Before I let him go home we gave it the old overexertion test, in which we repeatedly pull the resistance band past what looks like a comfortable limit. While hardly scientific, we think this should give people a decent idea of the overall durability of the band. What we look for after doing this is fraying on any attachments and scarring or rips on the resistance band itself. After 5 tests the handles and the SPRI ES530R were both still in good shape.

Anyone who is buying a purple band probably already knows what kind of exercises they are going to be doing. But just in case you don’t, or are looking for something new, the SPRI ES530R comes with a handy exercise chart showing most of the basic fitness band exercises that you can do.

SPRI is one of the resistance band makers that always puts out a decent product and the purple SPRI ES503R Xertube Resistance Band with Door Attachment and Exercise Charts is no exception. If you are ready to progress past the lighter bands and start putting on some bulk or get your 6 pack abs ready for the beach, then this is a great addition to your resistance band collection.