You don’t need a gym membership and fancy equipment to build full-body strength. You can challenge your muscles at home with nothing more than a resistance band.
NASM-certified personal trainer Sadielee Thomas recently shared an Instagram Reel that proves this. Using four exercises, her banded routine targets muscles across the body, including the triceps, biceps, quadriceps, and core.
You can do this workout from home or in a quiet corner of the gym. All you need is a short-looped resistance band and a little space.
How to do SadieLee Thomas' resistance band workout
This is an interval-style workout and Thomas recommends completing each exercise for 45 seconds, followed by 15 seconds of rest. Move through the circuit four times in total for a 16 minute workout.
Benefits of resistance band training
A resistance band is a large elastic band that you can use to challenge your muscles. They're easy to store and cheaper than dumbbells, so they're a good option if you're new to strength training.
Research in SAGE Open Medicine found that "elastic [resistance band] training can promote similar strength gains to conventional resistance training." This means a workout like Thomas' can be just as effective as using dumbbells or kettlebells.
Whether you're doing a full-body dumbbell workout or exercising with resistance bands, the key to making gains is to progressively overload your training. This means that you should increase the intensity of your workouts over time, to ensure you keep challenging your muscles.
To do this, you can buy bands with an increased level of resistance. You can also increase the intensity of a workout by doing more repetitions of each movement or holding positions for longer.
Looking for a new set to support your workout regime? Our guide to the best resistance bands can help
