Jenny McCoy

When you don’t have a ton or time or any exercise equipment at your disposal, consider a bodyweight circuit that combines strength and cardio for a quick-yet-seriously challenging workout. We have a stellar example below that you can do in about 25 minutes or less!Pairing strength and cardio together in a bodyweight circuit format can be effective since you don’t need to do it for too long before your body starts to feel it, certified personal trainer Francine Delgado-Lugo, CPT,  movement and strength coach and cofounder of Form Fitness Brooklyn, tells SELF. This makes it a solid pick for busy exercisers.This type of routine can also be a great choice for folks who don’t have access to a gym or weights, or who simply don’t like going to the gym, but still want to get functional strength work with bonus cardio thrown in.“This is a way that you can challenge your body to move differently, and to work hard against gravity to build strength—but then also do movements that are really getting your heart rate up,” says Delgado-Lugo, who created the below five-move bodyweight routine for SELF.To effectively combine strength and cardio in one circuit workout, you want to select challenging, full-body movements that you can perform with good form. You’ll want to do these moves quickly and for longer bouts of time, rather than focusing on just a handful of repetitions as you would do for normal strength training, explains Delgado-Lugo. That will ensure the routine gets you feeling breathy.The below workout centers on five exercises performed in a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) format where you’ll alternate between 40-second work periods and 20-second rest periods. Get ready to challenge your muscles to the max, because these bodyweight moves are intense! There are three plank variations (inchworm, frogger, and plank up-down), which will seriously engage your core plus a bunch of other muscles throughout your body, as well as two exercises (jumping jack and skater hop to floor tap) that will get you dynamically moving side-to-side in the frontal or lateral plane of motion, which is important if your goal is well-rounded, functional strength.Speaking of functional strength, this routine also incorporates unilateral exercises (moves where just one limb is doing most of the work, such as the skater hop and plank up-down), which help build the kind of strength needed for a lot of daily life activities, like climbing the stairs or holding a child with one side of your body. In short, this workout won’t just tax your muscles and leave you breathless—it will also help prep your body to move safely and effectively in day-to-day life.You can do this circuit two to three times a week, says Delgado-Lugo. Because it’s full-body and pretty intense, be sure to give your muscles the downtime they need to recover between sessions. It’s “probably not something you want to do on back-to-back days,” says Delgado-Lugo, who recommends giving yourself a day or two break after doing this routine before trying it again. However you slot in this routine, make sure to do a warm-up first so that your body is properly primed. Consider this five-move sequence designed to prep you for any workout.The WorkoutWhat you need: Just your bodyweight! You may want an exercise mat for comfort.ExercisesJumping jackInchwormSkater hop to floor tapFroggerPlank up-downDirectionsPerform reps of each move for 40 seconds, then rest 20 seconds before moving onto the next move in the circuit.Repeat the circuit for 3 or 4 total rounds, resting 1 to 2 minutes between each round.Make sure that you don’t compromise your form in order to move fast through the work periods, says Delgado-Lugo. If you find your form slipping, slow down and if needed, modify the movement.Demoing the moves below are Landyn Pan (GIFs 1 and 4),  an online fitness and nutrition coach; Francine Delgado-Lugo (GIF 2), cofounder of FORM Fitness Brooklyn; Heather Boddy (GIF 3), a group fitness instructor and creator of the Geeknasium workout program; and Keri Harvey (GIF 5), a Brooklyn-based NASM-certified personal trainer currently training at Form Fitness Brooklyn.

SOS Stretches are designed to be done in the moment—when you need them most. These super quick routines will relieve tension and tightness, and ease sore muscles from whatever activity you’re taking part in. In today’s break from a long car ride routine, you’ll beStretching your: Back, chest, neck, shoulders, hip flexors, and hamstrings.You can do this: Wearing whatever clothes and shoes you’re traveling in, and at any location along your route—think a rest stop or a gas station parking lot. You’ll be standing for all of these stretches, so you don’t need a ton of room.Taking a long car trip may help you avoid the chaos and stress of an airport, but it does come with a potential downside: Extended car rides can certainly take a toll on your body.Specifically, your hip flexors and hamstrings can tighten up from being locked in the same position for so long, and your chest, back, neck, and shoulders may ache due to poor posture, Candace Harding, DPT, an integrative physical therapist and registered yoga teacher in Arlington, tells SELF.Moreover, “whenever we just sit in the car for a long period of time, we’re just not getting as much lubrication to the muscles and the joints,” Harding says. And that lack of lubrication can cause a feeling of overall stiffness in our bodies, since “dry things don’t move well,” Harding explains. She gives the example of a creaky door with rusty hinges. “You oil it and it moves better,” she says. The same is true for your muscles—and that lubrication comes from movement.The good news is, taking a few minutes to hop out of your car and stretch dynamically can help you feel better.  With stretching, Harding explains,“you’re just giving the muscle a chance to lengthen back out and remember that it’s possible to be in a different position.” And by focusing on mobility-based stretches—basically, stretches where you’re moving in and out of a pose instead of just holding one position—you can help hydrate tissues and boost blood flow, she adds.With that in mind, Harding created the following four-move stretch routine that you can do to break up a long car ride and provide some sweet relief. Trust us, you’ll want to bookmark this quick yet effective sequence for your next extended car ride.DirectionsDo each move for the prescribed number of reps listed below. Harding designed the sequence to work your body from top to bottom, but you can do these moves in any order. Also, if some stretches feel better than others, feel free to pick and choose—you don’t have to do all four. You’ll reap benefits from doing the sequence just one time, but if it feels good and you’d like to repeat it, then go for it, says Harding.

Your glutes power lots of everyday movements, from climbing the stairs to squatting down to pick up a child. With a kettlebell glute workout, you can fire up these mighty backside muscles and ensure they are working as optimally as possible.“Our glutes do so much,” certified personal trainer Alicia Jamison, MA, a coach at Bodyspace Fitness and lecturer of exercise physiology at Brooklyn College, tells SELF. Whether you realize it or not, your glutes lend a hand in tons of different scenarios—think walking, running, hiking, squatting, and deadlifting—so the stronger they are, the better you’ll be able to perform a myriad of tasks. Additionally, when your glutes are functioning well, your pelvis and spine are aligned and you’re less likely to have pain in your hips and low back, Jamison says. Moreover, if your glutes are firing, they’re doing the work they should be doing for certain moves and not putting it off on other muscles, like those in your lower back, and overstressing them. Problem is, all the sitting many of us do on a daily basis causes the glutes to turn off, meaning they don’t activate as much as they should to help power certain movements. “And the longer your glutes are turned off, the more comfortable they are with being off and the harder it is to get them to fire up—even when you start moving,” Jamison says.With that in mind, Jamison created the below five-move kettlebell butt workout that will seriously activate the all-important glute muscles. The workout she created is only 10 minutes long, but because it’s made up of all compound exercises—moves that recruit big muscle groups—it’s an intense routine that’ll really challenge your lower body.In this routine, you’ll fire up your glutes with two deadlift variations (a single-leg deadlift and a Romanian deadlift), a goblet squat, an alternating reverse lunge, and a kettlebell swing. All these exercises work your glutes, yes, but they engage other muscles too, including your hamstrings and quads. That means, in addition to great glute activation, you’ll get other lower-body strength work as well. Additionally, the order of the movements—you alternate between squat-dominant moves that especially hit your quads and glutes and hinge-dominant moves that really work your hamstrings and glutes—allows one muscle group to rest while the other works and vice-versa, Jamison says. Compared to a routine that stacks exercises that target the same muscle groups back-to-back, this alternating format is less exhausting on your muscles.  You can do this 10-minute butt workout as a finisher after any type of routine, Jamison says. Pair it with a full-body workout to get an added lower-body oomph, or slot it at the end of leg day for an extra intense burnout. (If you use this as a finisher to a leg workout, you may want to go a bit lighter on the weight). Alternatively, try it as a stand-alone routine as a way to ignite your butt muscles after a long period of sitting.

At first, I had zero idea what I was doing as we cycled through bodyweight exercises that involved a surprising amount of total-body coordination, such as tapping various parts of our feet with the opposite hand in an intricate pattern, or doing an inchworm-like motion to move across the pool. Because there are lots of new and different types of exercises in a water exercise class compared to an on-dry-land workout, the coordination challenge can be real. Stick with it though, and you may notice your baseline coordination abilities improve. I’m no coordination queen myself, but have noticed that some of the more complicated water moves have become easier over time. 4. Water exercise provides low-impact cardio. For many people, exercising in the water simply feels good. That’s because water exercise is a low-impact activity that reduces the pressure on bones, joints, and muscles, according to the Mayo Clinic. This means it can be a great workout option for folks with pain, injuries, or limitations that prohibit their participation in other forms of cardio exercise, such as jogging or running. (That said, if you have a history of injury or pain, check with your doctor first before you start water exercise to ensure they recommend it for you.)  At the same time, water exercise can absolutely get your heart pumping, especially if you attend a cardio-focused class and perform the movements at a pace or intensity that is challenging for you. For instance, the water class I teach follows a HIIT format where we alternate between bursts of high-effort work—like 45 seconds of squat jumps or jumping jacks—followed by brief periods of rest. These types of high-effort intervals leave class goers (and myself) pretty breathless. 5. Water classes boost mobility and flexibility. When your body is immersed in water, the buoyancy and pressure of the water allows your joints to move more freely, Denomme says. This can help you achieve a greater stretch as you move your body in various positions. As American Council on Exercise puts it, “water is a welcome environment for performing stretches that might otherwise be difficult on land. Because the effects of gravity are lessened, you can move your joints through a wider range of motion and achieve long-term flexibility.” As someone with chronically tight hips and hamstrings, this is definitely a welcome benefit of water classes.6. Water classes remove the comparison factor.Perhaps my favorite benefit of water exercise? I find it less intimidating than other forms of fitness, like indoor cycling classes, weight lifting, or yoga. That’s because the focus is really on you, not on anyone else. When everyone’s in the water, it’s really difficult to see what your classmates are doing, and thus you can’t easily compare yourself to other people. So instead of fretting over the fact that you aren’t nailing the same exact pose as the people in front of you, you can turn your focus on what you are doing, which will ultimately help you get the most out of your workout! 7. It’s just plain fun. I’ve noticed there’s just something about being in water that makes you feel like you’re on summer vacation. Maybe it’s the fact that the buoyancy effect of water can help you “move like you’re a child again,” Denomme says. “You can skip in the water, you can jump in the water,” she explains. These types of movements may feel silly, or simply not so great to do on land (and depending on your current health status, they may not be safe), so having the option to move in those ways in the water can feel pretty damn awesome. 

On those really busy days when you have almost no time to exercise, you might wonder if a 20-minute workout is even worth it. But we’re here to let you know that, if that’s the time you have, you actually can get in an effective workout. Truth is, there’s a lot you can achieve in a short exercise session—and some pretty compelling reasons to slot a quick workout into your schedule. For starters, short workouts can be a great way to fit movement into a busy day, Ava Fagin, CSCS, assistant director of sports performance at Cleveland State University and strength coach with Team Wilpers, tells SELF. And even a 20-minute workout can bring mental and physical benefits. According to the latest Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, exercise sessions of any length can contribute to positive health benefits, including decreased blood pressure, improved insulin sensitivity, reduced feelings of anxiety and depression, and better sleep. Quick sessions can also push you to maximize every minute and help you really dial into your movement: When you have very little time to waste, your attention is laser-focused and you make every rep count. With a 20-minute workout, “it’s straight to the point and you maximize your time,” certified personal trainer and corrective exercise specialist Keith Hodges, founder of Mind in Muscle in Los Angeles, tells SELF.The catch with all this is: If you want to make the most of a 20-minute workout, it’s important to be really intentional about what you want and to work hard during the limited time you have. That means your best 20-minute workout will probably look a little different than a shortened version of your regular routine. Ideally, you should be clear on your goals, be strategic about the structure, and put in a strong effort. With that, we tapped training experts for advice on how to create a stellar 20-minute workout for four major exercise goals: boosting your cardio, getting a full-body pump, building muscle, and lifting heavy.1. Set your intentions up front. When your workout is strapped for time, “you have to go in with a plan,” Fagin says. Without one, you may find yourself aimlessly roaming the gym (or your living room), unsure of what to do and wasting valuable exercise time. A good plan starts with setting an intention or goal. What’s the number one thing you want to hone in on during your workout? Since a 20-minute workout is pretty quick, you realistically won’t have the time to fit in everything, which is why you’ll want to narrow your focus.Once you’ve set your intention it’s easier to build a specific workout that supports it. All workouts should include three main parts: a warm-up, a main set of work that’s specific to your goal, and a cooldown. With a 20-minute workout, though, each part has to be super targeted to what you want to get out of it. Here’s an intended focus for your workout for those four common intentions.

This article is part of SELF’s Keep It Hot package, a collection of content that celebrates love and lust. Throughout February, we’ll be dishing out advice and inspiration for feeling hot, getting horny, and nurturing romantic relationships.Yoga can calm your mind and body in the moment, but if you pick the right postures, it also has the potential to work some bedroom magic later.Any kind of movement that maximizes your mobility and gets you comfortable holding your bodyweight—both of which yoga does super well—can set the stage for some pretty awesome sex. “[It’s] just gonna give you more options during sex,” Haylin Belay, trauma-informed yoga instructor and trauma-informed sex educator, tells SELF. For instance, you may be able to more comfortably get into, and hold, an all-fours position.When it comes to cultivating a better relationship with pleasure, “Yoga stands apart from other kinds of exercise,” Belay says. That’s because yoga doesn’t just condition your body—it can also help you build awareness of what you’re feeling as you engage certain muscles and what thoughts, feelings, and emotions arise in the process.Both yoga and sex are tools for exploring how you feel in your body, Belay explains. With that ethos, she created a yoga sequence for SELF that can help enhance your sex life by boosting mobility, strength, flexibility, and blood flow in key areas; helping you find new and playful ways to move; and encouraging mindfulness as you experience different poses. This flow is developed from a trauma-informed perspective, Belay says, which means it focuses on restoration and inward reflection instead of super challenging poses, which can sometimes push you past your comfort levels as you try to do them “correctly.” It also means the routine is less prescriptive, and is driven by what feels good to your body.Improving your sex life “should be a fun and joyous exploration—not a grueling slog that you’re dragging yourself though,” Belay says. So when you’re going through this routine, keep joy, playfulness, and mindfulness at the forefront as you move your body in ways that feel good to you.Here’s what you can expect: Moves like cat-cow and garland pose work on mobility and flexibility, particularly in your spine, hips, feet, and knees. Being able to move more smoothly and with a greater range of motion can help you get into new positions that can provide different sensations. For instance, more flexibility could make it possible for partners’ bodies to be really close during sex, or for partners to use and share toys in new ways. Then, moves like half-boat pose and reclined goddess can help build strength, particularly in areas like your pelvic floor. And that’s important, since increased strength, especially in the pelvic floor area, can heighten the sensation of an orgasm. Additionally, boosting strength in general can help you more comfortably hold poses for a longer period of time, which, put simply, gives you a wider variety of things you can do during sex.

The dilemma: You want to get a little strength work in, but also really want to watch Netflix. A solution? This 10-minute arms workout you can do while catching up on your favorite TV show. Ten minutes may seem too brief to get much done, but with the right routine and challenging-enough weights, you can absolutely get in some quality strength work.With that in mind, certified personal trainer Francine Delgado-Lugo, CPT, movement and strength coach and cofounder of Form Fitness Brooklyn, created the below quick-but-effective arms workout for SELF that you can do either standing up or sitting on a chair or couch in front of your TV. You don’t need to move around much to complete this routine, which makes it ideal for your next at-home movie marathon.This workout primarily targets your biceps, triceps, and shoulders through moves including the Arnold press, overhead triceps extension, bent-over reverse fly, lateral raise, and cross-body curl. But added bonus: It’s also a “chest and back workout in disguise,” Delgado-Lugo tells SELF. That’s because a lot of the movements require your back and chest muscles to assist in the exercise, either by helping to move the weight directly or by stabilizing your body as other muscles do the work. For example, in the lateral raise, your shoulders are the primary movers, but your back muscles help to control the weight as you lift and lower it. Additionally, in the reverse fly, muscles in your back are lifting the weights, but your chest muscles are assisting in controlling them as you lower them back down, Delgado-Lugo explains. In sum, “there’s a lot going on in the workout,” she says. “It’s truly an upper-body workout.” With a special emphasis on the arms, of course!When selecting weights for this workout, it’s important to pick ones that feel challenging for you, Delgado-Lugo says. Not only does this make for a more effective workout, but it can also help you stay mindful while performing the exercises—key for maintaining good form. That’s especially important if you’re doing this workout while watching a show or movie, since it’s easy to get distracted and let your form falter. (If you’re not familiar with these moves and feel like your form needs a little extra TLC, it might be helpful to do this routine a few times sans distractions to get it all down. And even if you are familiar with them, if you feel your form starting to falter during your routine, you may want to hit pause until you’re done.)In terms of frequency, you can do this routine at least twice a week, Delgado-Lugo says. Just make sure, as with any type of strength training workout, that you give your muscles enough time in between sessions to recover. The general rule of thumb is to schedule at least one day in between workouts that target the same muscle groups, which means you likely wouldn’t do this routine more than three times a week.

You can read exercise directions, watch videos of the moves, and still feel like something isn’t quite right when you’re executing it on your own. Maybe your back feels funky, or your arms tire while your core seems suspiciously fresh, or the movement just appears way too clunky. Whatever’s going on, something is off.You may feel ready to shelve a certain exercise when, suddenly, you hear a simple phrase that changes it all for you—an exercise cue that suddenly makes the whole thing click. By visualizing your body moving in a certain way or doing a certain thing, everything falls into place. You feel the correct muscles working, the aches disappear, and you feel ready to rep out a whole set on your own.These cues are training gold because they help you strive toward proper form in a way that’s easy to understand, imagine, and visualize yourself. And that’s important, because maintaining proper form is key not only for making your workouts safer, but also for maximizing their effectiveness. “Form is crucial to try to make sure that you turn on the right muscles at the right time,” physical therapist Kellen Scantlebury, DPT, CSCS, founder of Fit Club NY,  tells SELF. For instance, having good form in a deadlift will ensure you’re utilizing the muscles that should be working—your glutes, back, and hamstrings—and thus reaping the full benefits of the movement. Good form can be tricky to master, which is why many top trainers develop their own exercise cues or visualization tips to help get it across. An exercise cue may sound like a simple phrase, but it can make a really big difference in how you execute a move by helping you understand things like what you should be feeling in your body, where to focus your force, and which muscles should be firing. We tapped Scantlebury and 10 other top trainers for the best exercise cues they use with their clients to really help them nail their form on some of the most common, foundational exercises. Read on for their favorite visualization cues, and how incorporating them can help you avoid some of the most common form mistakes that could be messing with your favorite moves. 1. RunningThe mistake: You stare down at the ground while you stride.What to visualize: Picture holding a baseball in the space between your chin and collarbone. For new runners in particular, it’s really common to look at the ground as you stride “as a way to feel safe in a new activity,”  Kaila DeRienzo, CPT, and certified run coach, tells SELF. “It’s also common for people to stare down at the numbers on the treadmill.” But good running form involves keeping your chin parallel to the ground, as that will reduce your chances of neck strain and upper back pain, and also keep an even flow of oxygen coming in, says DeRienzo. Envisioning a baseball under your chin can help ensure your neck and head are in the right positioning. 

In an ideal world, you’d have access to tons of different fitness equipment to really target all your muscle groups. But when your supply is limited? A single-kettlebell workout can still provide great full-body strength work.In order to really challenge all your muscles when you have just one set weight at your disposal, you’ll likely need to tweak the reps for the moves accordingly, ACE-certified personal trainer Sivan Fagan, owner of Strong with Sivan, tells SELF. For instance, you’ll likely be able to perform more reps of exercises that work larger muscle groups, like your legs, versus those that target smaller muscle groups, like your shoulders. So for a single-kettlebell workout to be effective for your body, you really need to pay attention to how your body is feeling and adjust your rep count up or down as needed.That’s exactly what’s on the schedule for the full-body workout Fagan created for SELF below that uses just one, medium-weight kettlebell.In the workout, you’ll take on four exercises to work your whole body: quads and glutes (split squat), core (windmill), back (single-arm row), and shoulders (single-arm push-press). You’ll be given the same rep range for the split squat, single-arm row, and single-arm push-press, and a slightly lower rep range for the windmill, but note that the ranges are simply  “a general recommendation,” says Fagan. For example, with the split squat, you may find that your muscles can still handle more even after you’ve passed the top of the rep range. But with the windmill, you may find that even the lower rep range is still very challenging, since that exercise demands a lot of stability from the shoulder, a small muscle group that typically isn’t able to handle a ton of load.That’s why it’s really important with this workout to pay close attention to your form—and more specifically, the number of reps you can do before that form starts to falter. You’ve found the correct number of reps when your muscles feel tired, and may only be able to eke out a rep or two before your form starts to break down. That may be below the suggested rep range or above it, which is completely okay!Overall point is: Get mindful with this workout and really tune into how your muscles are feeling. When you need to tack on a few reps, do it, and vice-versa with backing off. With that approach, you’ll really challenge a ton of different muscles across your body, from your legs and butt to your biceps, shoulders, and back.In addition, you’ll seriously fire up your core in every movement here, since all four exercises are unilateral, meaning just one side of the body is working at a time. Compared to bilateral moves where both sides of the body work simultaneously, unilateral exercises require more core activation since your midsection muscles have to fire to prevent your body from twisting, leaning, or bending to the side as it naturally wants to do, explains Fagan.

This discomfort, she adds, can cause people to steer clear of exercises that could benefit them. “I’m for sure one of those people,” says Summers. “I don’t enjoy putting that band above my knees and having it digging into my thighs.”What to look for in mini-bands for larger bodies The good news is, more brands are making mini-bands that work well for exercisers in bigger bodies. These bands tend to be constructed a bit differently than the flimsy, lightweight bands you may be familiar with: Many include features like hooks that allow you to more easily put on and remove bands. Still others are made of cloth fabric that is more durable and feels better against the skin than latex.It’s also worth noting that a band doesn’t even have to be a mini-band to serve the purpose of one. “If someone is in a much larger body, I just always use straight bands instead of looped,” Jenna Doak, co-founder and head trainer at Body Positive Fitness, tells SELF. Straight bands—which, as we mentioned, are one long piece of material, instead a loop—are more versatile, Doak explains. “In general, the straight bands can be stretched a lot further and therefore used in many different ways,” she says. They can also be tied  in a loop to work just like a mini-band. Playing with placement also matters for comfort, too. “You don’t have to have the band above your thighs for it to be effective,” says Thompson. For instance, in a squat, instead of placing a mini-band around your mid-thighs, you could place it directly under your knees or at mid-ankle level. This positioning will likely be more comfortable, though you may need to use a stronger band to create the same level of resistance, says Thompson. How to use mini-bands in your workoutsUse mini-bands to increase the challenge in your lower-body workouts by adding resistance, or load, to common moves:  They’re a great way to incorporate more strength work into your routine without adding actual weight, says Thompson.With a band, you can amp up the load simply by stretching it. The more you stretch the band, the heavier the resistance becomes, and vice versa, as SELF previously reported. This means resistance bands provide “a lot more variability in your load” compared to free weights like kettlebells, dumbbells, or sandbags, where each weight is fixed and you’d have to pick up a different weight in order to adjust the load, certified personal trainer Alicia Jamison, MA, coach at Bodyspace Fitness in New York City, previously told SELF. In general, the thicker the resistance band, the heavier the resistance, says Doak, though that may vary brand by brand.Like we mentioned above, mini-bands are also great for helping you dig into the mind-muscle connection, ensuring that you’re engaging the muscles you want to be working. “Bands require a lot more control and stability in the muscles and joints than dumbbells do,”says Doak. “Using bands will require folks to slow down a bit and focus more on the controlled movement, which is easy to let slide when you’re using dumbbells.” Because mini-bands help engage small muscles in your glutes, especially when you move your legs to the sides (laterally), they’re handy for warming up. Leavell does exercises like lateral side steps with a looped band to warm up her lower body before a lift. In sum, there are a lot of awesome perks to using mini-bands. To help exercisers in bigger bodies tap into these benefits, we asked six personal trainers to recommend the best resistance and mini-bands for folks with larger bodies. “It’s a game-changer when we have equipment that is made for our bodies and is accessible to us,” certified personal trainer Wendy Welsher, owner of My Joyous Adaptive Momentous Movement and co-founder of Joyful Inclusive Movement, tells SELF. Below,  six awesome trainer-recommended resistance bands for exercisers in bigger bodies. Committed HPCommitted HP The Better BandThese mini-bands—recommended by both Taylor and Summers—are made of fabric instead of latex, which helps minimize rolling once placed on your body, Taylor explains. The fabric also doesn’t dig into the skin, adds Summers, which makes it a “much more comfortable piece of equipment.” 
Additionally, the bands have a metal hook that “makes it a little bit easier for plus-people to get them on,” says Taylor, since you can easily clasp the band around your body instead of having to shimmy it on and off.  Also cool? The hook has multiple settings, which allows users to change the length of the band—ideal for scaling the intensity of a movement up or down, or for adjusting the band to fit different bodies. Lastly, the band comes in four different fit categories, including a recently launched “plus” category where bands are several centimeters longer. That extra length “just makes it a little bit more accessible for plus-size people,” explains Taylor.