Building a budget home gym but not sure what to buy? In this video, I review home gym resistance bands based on cost, effectiveness, versatility and practicality and tell you whether you should buy it, whether you sould consider it, or whether you should avoid it.
Contents
Cost
Effectiveness
Versatility
Practicality
The Verdict
Cost
For the Christmas and New Year holidays, I traveled back home for a month. These resistance bands on the wall behind me were a lifesaver. Without them, my workouts would have consisted of only bodyweight exercises and using household items as improvised weights. With them, I was able to easily adjust the load to hit my target rep ranges and effectively load up my muscles.
I bought this four set of resistance bands for ¥2,888 from Amazon Japan. That is extremely cheap.
For cost, I rate these resistance bands five stars.
Effectiveness
Because they are so cheap and often used for rehabilitation and recovery, many people assume that resistance bands aren't effective for building muscle. These people couldn't be more wrong. Yes, because they have a low risk of injury and don't place much stress on the body, resistance bands are great for rehabilitation and recovery. But they are also extremely effective for building muscle.
In fact, studies show that training programs which incorporate not just free weight exercises but also resistance band exercises achieve more muscle growth. Bands apply what is called accommodated resistance. Simply put, this means that as you resist the bands by stretching them out further and further, the load on your muscles increases. Your muscles aren't used to receiving this kind of stimulus, and by applying a stimulus your muscles aren't used to, it achieves more effective muscle growth.
For effectiveness, I rate these resistance bands five stars.
Versatility
Resistance bands provide the most choice in exercises out of any training equipment, even more than free weights. Firstly, any cable exercise you can do on resistance bands. This you probably already knew. But what you might not have known is that you can incorporate resistance bands into almost any free weight exercise and almost any bodyweight exercise to either increase or decrease the load and also change how that load is applied to the muscles.
As an example, let's say you're doing an incline dumbbell bench press, but your dumbbells are not heavy enough. By using the dumbbells together with resistance bands, not only can you increase the load on your muscles, but now you can also apply that accommodated resistance we just talked about, putting even more load on the muscles at the peak of the movement.
This accommodated resistance can also be used to make exercises easier. When first starting training, many people struggle to do even just one pull up. Pull ups require a lot of strength, and building up that strength takes time. But even if you're not strong enough to do a pull up yet by using bands, you can do what's called a band-assisted pull up. When the bands are stretched, they want to return to their normal position. In most band exercises where you resist the bands, this is the mechanism that applies load to the muscles. But in exercises like the band-assisted pull up where gravity is pushing the weight down into the bands, this mechanism now makes it easier to resist the weight on the way up, allowing you to resist loads that you normally wouldn't be able to do.
For versatility, I rate these resistance bands five stars.
Practicality
These resistance bands are extremely light and compact. Not only does this make them easy to store and move around in your home, but it also makes them great for taking with you when you travel. And unlike other training equipment, because they are so light, there is zero risk of damaging the walls and floors in your house. And as I mentioned, because the stress that resistance bands place on your body is so low, they are great for rehabilitation after an injury, great for training at a high frequency while avoiding overtraining, and they're even great for those days when you have a bit of a cold and can't do your normal high intensity training, but you still want to have an effective workout.
For practicality, I rate these resistance bands five stars.
The Verdict
The answer should be really obvious. These resistance bands are a product you should buy.
These resistance bands are extremely cheap, they're light and compact, you can take them with you when you travel, and they can even be combined with other training equipment to provide an enormous selection in the exercises you can do. Just these advantages alone make them an excellent choice for a home gym. But on top of all this, they are extremely effective at building muscle. If you only buy one product for your home workouts, buy these resistance bands.
For effective training in your own home, contact Tokyo Titan!
I am Tokyo Titan, an internationally ceritified bodybuilding specialist fitness trainer and nutritionist. Using advanced bodybulding techniques, I can help you create the body you want in a short amount of time. I provide fitness and diet coaching through 3 possible formats: at my private gym, 4 minutes walk away from Omori-machi Station in Ota-ku; in-person at a public park of the client's choosing or at their home; and online via Zoom. Clients can choose any combination of these lesson formats, allowing for effective training that suits even the busiest of schedules.
As a native-English bilingual Japanese speaker, I can also provide lessons in either English or Japanese. If you want to improve your language skills and your body at the same time, then inquire now!
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