Andrea Chapman , a marketing manager in San Diego, Calif., hadn’t been to a proper gym in nearly six months when she finally accepted that her “hiatus” was more permanent. “I had no choice but to do exercises at home, which I wasn’t used to, and that pushed me to finally purchase equipment,” she said. In September 2020, she bought herself a Zeno Workout Bench. The compact gym, which enables her to do more than 75 different exercises using resistance bands, quickly made up for the loss of her studio workouts. “I love its versatility.”
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Space-consuming strength-training equipment like weight racks and barbells can be pricey and intimidating—one reason trainers say at-home cardio machines have soared in popularity over the past two years. People default to the easiest thing, and nothing’s easier than spinning your wheels or running in place, said Eric Dannenberg, performance manager for Exos, a human performance brand which trains professional athletes and corporate clients.
But if you want to shed some pounds, strength training may better suit your goals, Mr. Dannenberg said, and it doesn’t have to take up an entire room and weigh a ton. Resistance training can reduce body-fat percentage, especially the visceral fat which wraps around your abdominal organs, as it builds lean muscle mass. This type of training can lead to weight loss even without your adding cardio to the mix, according to a recent systematic review in the journal Sports Medicine.
“When we perform aerobic exercises, like running, we burn calories but we don’t necessarily gain much muscle,” said Rami Hashish, Ph.D., founder of the National Biomechanics Institute. Since strength training builds more muscle—and muscle tissue burns more calories than fat does—“through resistance training, we effectively set up our body to more consistently [burn] calories throughout the day,” he said.
