If you’re the proud owner of a gym membership, you might have no excuse to get your strength workout in. After all, you’re paying to use the facility’s equipment and machinery. But if you’re the kind of person who prefers to home workouts, or if a gym membership isn’t exactly in the budget right now, trying to get any serious strength training without a proper form of equipments like a set of weights might seem impossible for a full-body workout plan.
In reality, you don’t need a gym membership or any fancy equipment at all — even when it comes to training for building strength. You might already have several items at home that you can substitute for weights and do workouts. All it takes is minimal equipment to help you get going.
It’s time to take inventory of your kitchen pantry, cupboards, closets, and garage. With just a few household items on hand, you may never again be tempted by that gym with the shiny logo or that crazy fitness gizmo you see on TV infomercials.
Here Are Seven At-home Workout Equipment That Will Do The Trick:
Cans Of Soup Or Beans
If you’re starting with adding a bit of resistance to your routine, soup cans (or any type of canned goods) are an ideal option if you’re new to lifting weights.
Depending on its size and contents, canned goods typically weigh about 1 to 2 pounds. With one can in each hand, you can use them to do bicep curls, hammer curls, overhead shoulder presses, and even tricep kickbacks.
Jugs Of Water, Milk Or Juice
Looking for something slightly heavier to lift? Jugs of liquid will do the trick. And you probably already know just how heavy they can be when you’re carrying your groceries from your car to your front door.
A gallon of water or milk is about 8.5 pounds. If you have two, you can hold one in each hand and use them to add more resistance to lower body exercises, like squats and lunges.
Bags Of Apples Or Potatoes
Now we’re talking heavy lifting! Similar to using jugs of liquid, you can kick things up a notch with big bags of produce. The more you have in a bag, the heavier it will be.
These might be more appropriate to use for bicep curls and hammer curls when you’re ready to move on from the soup cans, and you can use them to add extra weight to your squats and lunges if you don’t have any jugs of liquid lying around.
A Weighted Duffel Bag Or Backpack
Ever seen someone working out with a medicine ball or a kettlebell? You can create the same effect just by throwing a few heavy things in a duffle bag or a backpack.
Try large books, cans, containers, and anything else that isn’t terrible fragile. With straight arms, you can lift the bag or backpack out straight in front of you, up over your head, or out to each side for a good upper body workout. You can even combine these moves with lower-body movements like squats and lunges.
A Regular Old Chair
Everyone has a chair at home that they can use to take their workouts up a notch. It just needs to be sturdy enough to support your weight. With your back facing the chair and two hands placed behind you on the seat, you can lift your body weight up and down to do tricep dips.
The Bulgarian split squat is another popular move to do with a sturdy chair, which is a traditional lunge with the back leg elevated by placing the foot on the chair.
A Hand Towel
Seriously? A hand towel? You bet. It may not be a heavy item, but it will do wonders for your core muscles. While seated, lean back to engage your core.
Holding each end of the towel in both stands straight out in front of you to add some weight, twist from side to side to work your obliques — similar to a Russian twist. If you can lift your legs and balance, you’ll get an even better core strength workout from it!
A Scarf Or Belt
You’ve tackled your obliques with the hand towel, but you still have that pesky lower abdominal section to take care of. By tying the two ends of a scarf together or buckling up a belt, you can wrap it around your ankles and lie down with your back flat on the floor to get ready for a killer lower ab workout.
With your legs straight up and spread, as much as the scarf or belt around your ankles will allow, slowly lower your legs down and back up several times while trying to keep your lower back touching the floor. Similar to how you’d do it with a stability ball.
Shiny pair of dumbbells or weight and complicated machinery are okay, but they’re not necessary. All you have to do is get a little creative with workouts with what you’ve already got.
BOTTOM LINE
So here you have it! The best at-home equipment to keep yourself active when you are not able to hit the gym for challenging workouts.
