Resistance Band Workouts

About the Author

Karina Inkster is a fitness coach, author, and podcast host. Karina’s award-winning online programs offer vegan fitness and nutrition coaching to clients around the world. She’s the author of two books (Vegan Vitality: Your Complete Guide to a Healthy, Active, Plant-Based Lifestyle, and Foam Rolling: 50 Exercises for Massage, Injury Prevention, and Core Strength), a writer for several magazines, and host of the No-Bullsh!t Vegan podcast. She holds a Master’s degree in Gerontology, specializing in health and aging. When she's not working with her clients, writing, or weight lifting, you'll find Karina playing accordion, piano, and Australian didgeridoo; hanging out with her two cats; or sneaking spinach into her husband's smoothies. Visit her website at www.karinainkster.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

If you want to improve your strength and body composition without a gym membership, this book is for you. You’ll be able to work out at home, outdoors, and while travelling. My fitness coaching clients have performed their resistance band strength workouts everywhere from airports and long-haul flights, to sailboats, to empty conference rooms at the office, to campgrounds in the forest, and everywhere in between!

In this book, you’ll discover the benefits of strength training, and resistance bands in particular. You’ll learn how to choose resistance bands and how to safely use them to increase your strength. I’ll go over the three types of resistance bands so you can put together your own inexpensive gym that fits into a small bag.

A collection of 50 strength exercises that work all the major muscle groups will inspire you to create—and maintain—a regular strength training practice. Once you’re familiar with these exercises, you’ll learn how to put together your own workout programs. After all, having 50 exercises to choose from is well and good, but they won’t be of any use unless you implement them!

Strength training—also called resistance training—is one of the most effective ways of improving your body composition, preventing injuries, increasing your bone density, revving up your metabolism, and improving your day-to-day functioning. Given these wide-ranging benefits, everyone, at any age, should be strength training!

The most common form of strength training is lifting weights at a gym. However, not everyone enjoys going to gyms, and not everyone has access to these facilities. I work with clients all over the world, some of whom live in extremely remote places like the middle of Outback Australia or a tiny island in Bermuda with only 20 houses and no roads. These places certainly don’t have gyms! Other clients have new babies and must strength train at home while their partners are at work. Some want to save money by not purchasing gym memberships, while others prefer training at home for logistical reasons like saving time traveling to and from a gym, or being able to fit in a quick mid-day strength training session while working from home.

This is where resistance bands come in. If you want to work out wherever you like, including at home and while traveling, resistance bands are the most effective, user-friendly choice.

As more and more people learn about the incredible benefits of strength training, more and more types of exercise equipment are being
produced. The options can be overwhelming! Rest assured that the humble resistance band is one of the most effective, well-studied, economical, and travel-friendly equipment options available. Professional athletes from countless different disciplines have been using resistance bands in their training for decades, especially when traveling.

This book contains everything you need to learn a wide variety of resistance band strength exercises, and put them together into a fun and effective workout program you can perform anywhere.