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Many of us work from home or need to be mobile and travel due to work or family commitments or we simply just have a lifestyle that is so active that even though we would like to, getting to the gym isn’t always possible and many of us are struggling with consistency. From this perspective home based workouts deserve a place in our exercise routines and have become a very important part of any health and fitness program.

The question is, can a home based workout be as good as a gym based one? And what equipment should you use? 

Some very interesting research shows exercise bands may be as good or even better than traditional gym equipment if you know how to use them correctly. 

The reason why is that resistance bands allow us to take advantage of the peak force because they offer continuous resistance. They also allow us to recruit stabilizing muscle groups, and provide extra intensity to already challenging body-weight exercises.

This is exciting because research actually suggests athletes make better strength gains and muscle gains when they train with bands than when they train with dumbbells. 

Research also suggests banded exercises are a more powerful tool in combating osteoporosis and rehabilitation or preventing injuries than traditional weights. Let me explain…

Elastic resistance provides continuous tension to the muscles being trained. When you lift a free weight in any direction other than straight up and down, the tension on the muscle can actually be removed at certain points in the range of motion. It comes down to the difference between needing and not needing gravity for resistance.

For example, when doing a biceps curl with a dumbbell, as you curl the weight up, at the very top of the movement the dumbbell is literally falling toward the shoulder. This means that the tension on the biceps has been removed because the dumbbell is no longer being lifted up against gravity by the biceps. When doing a biceps curl with elastic resistance, the tension is present throughout the entire range of motion because the elastic material provides resistance due to its own properties.

This unique characteristic of resistance bands has allowed you to take advantage of the peak force. The peak force is the moment in an exercise during which you are at your strongest and the exercise is at its easiest point. For example, in a traditional chest press we experience it is more difficult when the bar is close to the chest and then it gets progressively easier the higher we push the bar. We are at our strongest towards the end of this movement so the end is the point of peak force. 

If we do a banded chest press, instead of it getting easier as we progressively push the bands further away from our chest, it gets harder because the bands are under more and more tension the further we stretch them. This means that we have less resistance at the start of the move and towards the end we have the maximum amount of resistance so we take full advantage of the point in the exercise when we are at our strongest (the peak force). It is this peak force that has been shown in research to be key to greater strength and muscle gains in athletes and better rehabilitation too. 

One study published in a 1998 issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine reported that collegiate tennis players who trained using elastic bands significantly increased their shoulder strength as well as the speed of their tennis serve compared to those not using bands. 

Another study—this one from Louisiana State University (New Orleans)—discovered that an elastic band training program strengthened the rotator cuff muscle of collegiate baseball pitchers better than a program that used dumbbells. 

Apart from all that we of course have the added benefit that bands are easy to put in your bag. They do not weigh much and they are inexpensive to buy.

Are there any downsides?

The biggest downside seems to be that a lot of people find it difficult to know how to use bands to get an effective workout. It takes a bit of knowledge to be able to work out the correct angle to best perform each exercise and how to create the tension that you need to recruit the optimum amount of muscle fiber. Most people need coaching on how to do this type of exercise routine but with a knowledgeable coach I think almost anyone can benefit from doing banded workouts. 

Find out how Kerstin used her ability to use all of her mind to lift heavy weights and get clients into their best shape.

I lifted 370 kg in a belted Squat machine. I did this officially recorded lift with the World Record Academy and I was thoroughly tested for steroids to prove that I performed this lift naturally.

Did you ever hear those stories of ordinary people who are not particularly strong but still managed to lift a car of a child in a crisis situation. Later when they come back and try to lift the same car they are no longer able to lift the car and even two or three people together can not lift it. To me that shows the difference between using a part of your mind and all of your mind. 

When the person is attempting to rescue the child their whole mind is taken up with lifting the car. The capacity to use all of the mind is what empowered me to be able to make this world record. That is my secret. Then by being able to use all of my mind continuously over a period of time I got stronger and increased my muscularity until I could safely make this lift. 

I am totally convinced that if athletes were able to avail of all of their minds every record that is standing today would be broken. 

In my job in Educogym I find that using all of the mind is the secret to getting people into the best shape of their lives. In university research it was shown that when people become stronger and more muscular this gives them a higher metabolism which helps to burn off fat.

So the secret for anybody, including athletes who want to get into the best shape of their lives is to increase their strength and their muscle mass. This is achieved by learning to use all of the mind and applying that to the training. 

Ultimately then you can apply the Mind – part that you developed training, to your daily life. I believe in training people’s bodies and minds together.

Our gym equipment was custom designed for a university-based research study and called The Time Machine in said research. Want to know why?

The name is connected to how we age. After the age of thirty we lose on average 0.5 lbs (0.23 kg) of muscle per year, which amounts to 6 lbs or close to 3 kg of muscle loss in 6 years! 

We can lose up to 30% of our muscle mass by the age of 60, and this is what is commonly known as the aging process.

It isn’t just skeletal muscle that is being lost. We lose muscle from internal organs such as the heart and the intestine, causing reduced function. We also lose muscle from the face, causing the face to sag and promoting an aged look to the facial features. Having less muscle also causes us to release fewer youthful hormones (such as testosterone and growth hormone, vital for maintaining a lean and strong physique). 

Does this mean we are facing a bleak future? Not necessarily; the research shows people who train on the Time Machine gain, on average, 6 lbs (3 kg) of muscle in the first 12 days! That is the same amount of muscle we previously saw is lost over the course of 6 years during the so-called natural aging process. 

Gaining back skeletal muscle causes an increase in muscularity in general (internal organs and face, for example). Having more muscle also causes an increase in the output of our so-called youthful hormones (testosterone and growth hormone), which are the hormones that determine our body composition, or, in other words, the ratio of fat to muscle that your body is made up of.

So what is it about training on the Time Machine that caused such rapid muscle gain and, in effect, such a jump start to rejuvenation?

First of all, our gym equipment was built to facilitate working out in an inward-facing circle and without taking breaks in between exercises and sets. What this would do is facilitate completing your workout much faster, allowing you to have a full workout in just twenty minutes. Twenty minutes is the window of opportunity we have to work out before our output of the catabolic hormone cortisol (which breaks down muscle fiber) starts to increase. 

Training this way (in an inward-facing circle without breaks) was also shown in the research to help people who trained deepen their attention to the point where they accessed a deeper-than-normal state of attention (named unconscious attention) in the research. 

The research showed people who trained in this deeper state of attention were able to lift heavier and train at a higher intensity than they normally could. This helped them gain muscle faster than a person weight training in a normal gym on normal equipment, and therefore they had a fast return to their much younger self, on average, from six years ago. 

Getting a membership in Educogym is the beginning of something new, even if you have trained in other gyms previously, and it will be an exciting journey! Together we set a goal, and then you get to learn how to use MORE of your mind to train your body and achieve it!

In the research, we are based on people who lost on average 7 pounds of fat (3.5 kg) and gained 3 pounds (1.5 kg) of muscle in just 12 days because they learned how to use more of the mind and apply it to the training and to their goals.

Using more of your mind when you train means that you are in a deeper than normal state of attention (or unconscious attention, as it was called in the research).

This research showed that people who used more of their mind when training their body were able to train at a higher intensity level and lift heavier weights than they normally could, causing them to gain muscle faster. This extra muscle mass caused their metabolism to go up so that they burned more fat and got into much better shape.

This is how we help you use MORE of your mind in Educogym Eccles Street:

• We teach you where to focus your mind in each exercise.
• We teach you when to inhale and exhale.
• We teach you the names of the exercises and how to set up exercises.
• We teach you to do perfect form on each exercise (and we correct you if you do something wrong).
• We teach you how to read and fill out your workout card.
• We teach you how to know if you should increase or decrease the weight you are lifting.

Does it sound difficult? Don’t worry; we are with you every step of the way to make sure your workout runs smoothly.