5 Essential Pieces Of Home Fitness Equipment

I’m a big fan of home workouts because you can do them at a time of your own convenience, they don’t cost you ongoing fees, and you can tailormake them to your mood (not always a good thing).

But does working out at home mean you have to have all sorts of home fitness equipment?

It certainly doesn’t. All you really need is a few essential items and you can virtually do everything you need to. In fact, you can get away without anything at all and just use your own bodyweight and a few bits of garden furniture if you really want to. But a few bits of simple equipment will help change the plan and add those few extra things into your routine.

5 Essential Pieces Of Home Fitness Equipment

1. A yoga mat

I love doing my workouts outdoors when I can so a yoga mat is really handy to put on the ground. Sure you could probably use a towel, but the mat provides that bit of extra padding and better keeps me away from the bugs I also use the mat for stretching.

2. A stability ball

Love, love, love the stability ball because there are so many exercises you can do with them. You can use them to help you do squats and lunges, use them for a great ab routine, use them to imporve your core strength, use them for stretching, use them for back strengthening exercises, use them to relax over. You can also use them as your office chair to help strengthen your back while you’re sitting at the computer. They are one of the best home tools you can use. When you get one make sure you invest in a good quality ball. One that is burst resistant and safe to use!

3. A set of dumbbells

They don’t have to be anything fancy but having dumbbells is definitely essential because they help you to add more weight into your workout routines. I’ve got a set of adjustable dumbbells. They are very cost effective and you can simply adjust the weight to suit you as needed.

4. A step

Step ups, box jumps, and other exercises on the step work really well in home workouts. You can use any step around the house of course but I find a good quality, stable, stand alone step is a great tool for many exercises. You can also take it outside and use it as a bench to do your pushups, bench press type exercises, and anything else you might use a bench for. Definitely one of my favorite home tools.

5. A timer or watch

Often I like to do timed circuit type workouts or some type of interval training. It keeps things more interesting and burns more fat! So having a sports watch with a timer alarm on it is definitely an essential fitness tool.

Simple Home Fitness Routine

Here’s a workout you could do using these simple items.

Get all your bits of equipment organised, put the stabilty ball with the yoga mat, the step in a different area with the dumbbells beside it. Get your timer ready to go off at 1 minute increments. We are going to do a simple circuit type workout that will get your heart pumping and burn the fat!

Start by spending a few minutes warming up by walking around the room or yard, fastening your pace as you go.

High knee step ups – 1 minute of step ups onto the step, lifting the knees as high as you can on the step up.

Squats – 1 minute of dumbbell squats – do them at your own pace and depth. Stand beside the box, grab your dumbbells and squat as many times as you can within the 1 minute.

Walk it out – 1 minute at a fast pace walk around the room or yard.

Pushups – get on your knees or feet if you can and do 1 minute worth of pushups on the mat

Ball bridge – lie on your back on the mat, feet placed on the stability ball, then lift your pelvis off the ground into the air. This is challenging your balance and getting all the muscles around the pelvis and abs to work to stabalise you as you lift up. Lift and lower as many times as you can in 1 minute.

Sit ups – push the ball aside and do sit ups for 1 minute.

Start again and repeat...start at the beginning with your step ups and go through the simple circut 2-4 times. It’s about 6 minutes to get through  the exercises so if you do 4 rounds you’ll get a nice workout done in about 20 minutes. If you allow time for stretching, then you’ll be done in 30 minutes and you’ll definitely feel like you’ve done a good all over workout!

Give it a try and report back and tell me how you go

Talk soon

Jedha

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