Watch: Our 30-minute resistance bands workout with a shredded bodybuilder

During COVID times, home fitness has boomed. With gyms closed – some permanently – as a result of the global health crisis, people have gotten used to working out at home with their own fitness equipment. Some have bought the best elliptical machine they could find (often consulting our guide in the link above), while others have picked up a set of the best adjustable dumbbells. 

However, for sheer value and versatility, nothing tops a set of the best resistance bands. These simple elastic devices allow you to replicate almost every muscle-building gym exercise in the comfort of your own home. 

Pull them to train your back and expand your chest, stand on them to do bicep curls, weighted squats or reverse flys, or lie down and hold them, pressing with your legs, to simulate a leg press. Loop them over a bar or trap them in a door frame to perform lateral pull-downs – the possibilities are numerous, perhaps endless. 

Expert PT and bodybuilder Roger Snipes knows a thing or two about building muscle. The former WBFF European champion bodybuilder is a world-class strength athlete, with a body honed to perfection – but just like everyone else, he's had to work out at home from the last year too. He talks you through a 30-minute resistance bands full-body workout, from deadlifts to flys. Check it out below:

Watch Roger Snipes' resistance bands workout here:

Who do this workout?

Roger shows us how to get full-body muscle here, exercising our legs, back, core, chest and arms. He shows us how to create more resistance-based push-ups by bending the band around your back and performing push-ups to increase the work on your triceps and chest, and performing deadlifts at home with no heavy weights. 

Deadlifts are one of the best muscle-building exercises you can do. It works your legs, bum, back, core and forearms, which makes it a great exercise for full-body muscle. This is called a "compound exercise" and Roger shows us how to use the resistance bands to emulate dumbbells or barbells. The key is to lower it slowly, under control, as the elastic works against you all the way. 

Resistance bands have been studied and found they're just as good as gym exercises. Brazilian researchers studied bands in comparison to regular resistance training, and found "the results of the meta-analysis demonstrated no superiority between the methods analyzed for upper limb or lower limb muscular strength. 

"Elastic resistance training is able to promote similar strength gains to conventional resistance training."

In short? You get the same strength gains as heavy weights, for a fraction of the price. What are you waiting for?