What I am is someone who has trained consistently for over 12 years, and who got tired enough of badly made equipment to start making her own.

Twelve years, mostly at home

I started training in 2014. I’d just taken my first real job in Asia, I was working shifts, I didn’t know anyone yet, and I had a lot of empty hours to fill. Training was what I decided to do with them.

It stopped being a phase somewhere around year three and became the thing I do most days, the way other people run or swim or garden. I’m not chasing a competition and I’ve never been on a stage. I just train, consistently, and I’ve done it long enough to have opinions.

Most of those years have been at home or while travelling, which turned out to be the part that mattered. Home training means your equipment is the gym. When one piece of it is badly made there’s no rack of alternatives to switch to. You just quietly stop doing that exercise.

Over that time I’ve bought and tested dozens of pieces of equipment, and more resistance bands than I want to admit to. Mats, skipping ropes, dumbbells, and a lot of things that are now in a cupboard. Some were excellent. Most were fine. A surprising number were quietly, persistently annoying in ways nobody warns you about before you buy.

How I actually train

I train six mornings a week, before work, forty-five minutes to an hour a session. Morning is self-defence: leave it for later and something always eats the slot: work, a friend, tiredness. Most sessions happen at home, in my living room, in front of the mirror. Sundays off, usually spent hiking or swimming instead.

My split is two or three HIIT sessions, two or three strength, one calmer Pilates day. Mostly full body. When the weather’s right I run or swim the Cyprus coast instead. That’s where the colours came from: out on a run, looking at the water and the rocks, the palette was just there. Blue for water, orange for sun, grey for stone. They became our Light, Medium and Heavy.

Honest weakness: I can’t meditate. Sitting still and breathing makes me restless in about four minutes. What works for me is muscles in motion: the stretch, the burn, the shape of a movement done right. My head only goes quiet once my body’s already moving.

What’s changed since 2014 isn’t the effort, it’s the structure. I train more now, not less, just with more variety and an actual schedule instead of repeating the same thing and hoping.

The frictions

I kept a list. Not deliberately at first, it was more that the same irritations kept coming up:

• Latex bands roll up your thighs. Every single set. You stop mid-rep to pull it back down, your glutes disengage, and by the third set you’re thinking about the band instead of the movement.
• Then they snap. Usually with no warning, usually mid-squat. Anyone who’s had a latex band let go against bare skin remembers it.
• Nobody designs bands to be washed. You sweat into a piece of fabric wrapped around your legs, three times a week, for months. A gym shirt goes in the wash. A band just gets worse.
• The levels aren’t labelled. You end up holding two nearly identical bands up to the light trying to remember which one is the medium, or digging the packaging out of a drawer.
• The seams go first. Cheap fabric loops fray exactly where the load is highest, and once they start, they’re finished.
• None of these are dramatic. That’s precisely why they never get fixed. They don’t show up in a product photo. They’re the kind of problem you only find in month four, when you’ve stopped using the thing and can’t quite say why.

Why I started the brand

At some point the list stopped being a complaint and became a specification. I wanted bands that stayed where I put them, could go in the wash, told me which one I was holding, and didn’t fall apart. That didn’t exist at a price I thought was reasonable, so in 2024, as a new year’s resolution that actually happened, I started Aniq Fitness. Fabric bands, silicone inner grip, reinforced seams, each one printed with its level.

Getting there took longer than I expected, and most of it was spent rejecting things.

The early samples failed in three ways. Some had no real grip, so they slid on skin the same way latex does. Some were simply too long, which sounds trivial but isn’t: a band that’s too long has almost no tension at the working range, so you’re going through the motions against nothing. And then there was the stretch test.

I tested every sample by stretching it to its absolute limit and holding it there. Most of them failed. On some, threads pulled loose along the seam. On others the printed logo separated from the band entirely. One sample came through with no visible damage at all: no fraying, no seam movement, no lifting on the label. That was the one.

It also just felt different in the hand. The stitching was tight and even, the fabric had weight to it, and it looked like something made with attention rather than assembled to a price. It stretched well and came back, every time. That’s the material we shipped.

The first production run shipped, and I still train with a set from it. I use the bands once or twice a week, and I’ve had them for over a year. Let’s be honest: if you train regularly, your equipment is going to get used, and it should show. They look a little used, but the colours are the same, the grip is still good, and most importantly they’ve kept their tension. That’s the test I care about most, because a band that has lost its tension is just a loop of fabric.

What I know, and what I don’t

What I know well: how resistance bands are made, why they fail, how they behave on different body types, in leggings versus on bare skin, after months of use. I read every review we get, including the critical ones, because they tell me what to fix next.

What I don’t know: exercise physiology at a professional level, rehabilitation, or programming around injuries. I have no certification and I’m not going to buy a weekend one to put a badge on this page.

The training content on this site is based on published research and my own experience, not clinical training. Where the research is genuinely uncertain, we say so instead of rounding it up to a promise. Where a claim comes from a study, we name the study, the year, and its limitations. If you find something here that’s wrong, tell me at support@aniqfitness.com and we’ll correct it and note the correction.

I’d rather this site be useful and modest than confident and wrong.