The Best Exercise Equipment for Your Home
The best exercise equipment for you home should meet a few, simple criteria. It should allow you to create cardio and strength exercises; should create a variety of workouts to prevent repetitive stress and plateauing; and should help you create fun, enjoyable workouts you look forward to. If your exercise equipment meets these requirements, you will most likely get the results you want and stick with your fitness program.
Weights
You don’t have to be a bodybuilder to benefit from weights. Even if your goal is calorie burning or body shaping, smaller weights can help you raise your heart rate and improve the look of your muscles.
Dumbbells are great additions to aerobic workouts. You can start with weights as light as 2.5 pounds each and work your way up. A kettlebell looks like a bowling ball with a handle and lets you create a variety of workouts. You can use the same one to burn calories, bodybuild or work your abs with a variety of simple exercises.
Home Gym
A home gym lets you create many exercises and target specific muscles without requiring you to lift heavy weights. Putting the resistance setting on a lower level, you can use a home gym to create cardio workouts with more repetitions using less resistance. A home gym lets multiple family members create different workouts by changing the machine’s settings.
Resistance Bands
Resistance bands let you perform many of the same exercises as weights, creating different types of workouts with one piece of equipment. Resistance bands let you increase the resistance as you build strength by simply tightening the bands or cords as you get stronger. This feature also makes resistance bands the perfect equipment for two or more people of different fitness levels to share. Tony Little’s Easy Shaper adds convenience and variety to exercise bands by attaching them to a lightweight metal bar you use standing, sitting or lying down.
Cardio Machines
Treadmills, rowing machines, exercise bikes and ellipticals all help you burn many calories using simple exercises and motions. These machines can become monotonous, or cause you to plateau in your results or develop repetitive stress pain because they offer limited motions. However, if you find a machine you really enjoy using, you will be more likely to use it and keep improving your fitness.
Look for cardio machines that offer workout data, such as heart rate and calories burned. If you can change the incline or resistance settings or use different workout programs, you’ll add variety to your workouts. The best cardio machine choice may be a rowing machine because it offers a full-body workout, includes resistance and is non-impact.
Jump Rope
If you will be using a variety of exercises and workouts to get fit, add a jump rope to your home exercise equipment. Jumping rope for long periods can be difficult, but it’s great for warming up or adding a few minutes of high-intensity exercise to a circuit training or aerobic workout.
Exercise Ball
An exercise ball is a low-cost piece of home workout equipment with big benefits. With an exercise ball, you can create a variety of beneficial core exercises because the ball creates a lack of stability as you sit on or lay across it. During your exercises, you need to recruit your stomach muscles to keep your balance.
