Use Common Household Items as Exercise Equipment
Anyone who is a fan of kung-fu movies loves Jackie Chan. His talent is amazing and his ability to use anything as a weapon is inspiring. This ability to use anything for something that it was not meant for has many other applications as well. For the person who wants to build a home gym but has no money the home is full of multi-purpose tools that can work as exercise equipment.
I will discuss a few common house hold items that can double as great exercise equipment and help you get a gym quality workout.
The floor is my first most useful suggestion. Sounds stupid but on the floor with no equipment at all you can do push ups, hundreds of core exercises, hundreds of stretches, calisthenics, shoulder presses, squats, lunges and dozens of other exercises. You don’t even need weights for many of these.
A door frame. If you can find a good sturdy door frame in your house I would not be surprised. If you can do more than a couple finger pull ups on it at first I would be surprised. Start small and work up, use a chair (also fairly common). These are hard but they will get easier and they force you to use other small stabilizer muscles throughout your body.
As I already mentioned a chair. Use this for dips, to assist with pull ups, to make push ups harder or easier. Use a chair to help you balance when doing stretches or to assist when doing some leg exercises.
A towel. Keeps getting simpler. Use a towel to help you stretch. You can hook it on your toes and get a great hamstring stretch or you can pull it behind your back for a great tricep stretch. A towel can also be used for pull ups by wrapping it around something larger and holding both ends.
Anything of weight can be used to add resistance, like canned food or garden stones. Fill a back pack with heavy objects for a similar benefit to a weight vest. Be creative and you can make nearly anything into a great, effective piece of exercise equipment.
March 17th, 2011 - 04:49
thanks for the ruling man! sis and i were divided over the door frame/pull up issue.she says no pull ups on the doorframe. i have seen my brother do them in our house and the doorway was fine. I also plan yto use a chair for support (p90x).