Getting strong and fit doesn’t have to involve an expensive gym membership or lots of equipment. Here we share a few ideas of how you make your own DIY gym using
readily available objects in and around your house, garage, or garden. We also touch on so low cost DIY gym options, too.
Weights
The American website Family Handyman suggests homemade barbells from plastic bottles filled with water or sand:
- a 2-litre plastic bottle filled with water is going to weigh 4.5lbs or 6.75lbs if filled with sand;
- a gallon container will weigh 8.3lbs when filled with water and 12.75lbs with sand; while
- a half-gallon container will weigh around 4.25lbs filled with water and 6.3lbs filled with sand.
To up the ante, but still using materials you’ll find around the home, fill an old duffle bag or rucksack with sand or gravel. Alternatively, take a six-foot length of 2-inch diameter plastic waste pipe and fill it 2/3 full of water and cap the ends – using it for quick bursts of strengthening exercises such as overhead lifts, presses, carries, drags, and deadlifts.
Exercise Bike
An exercise bike will give you a good cardio workout without putting as much pressure on your knee joints as running, for example, and also strengthens your hamstrings and thighs.
If you already have a bike, you can exercise indoors by investing in a bike trainer stand.
Skipping Rope
A skipping rope continues to be one of the best ways of burning off non-essential calories – and, provided you’re using it in the most effective way, will strengthen your core and build your stamina and endurance
Get started with a standard skipping rope – such as those once found in every school playground – and it’ll cost you as little as just £5 or so.
Go Online
You make use of just about any item in your home, such as using a dining chair or stool for tricep dips and push-ups using old garden hoses as battle ropes. Just do a search online for something like “DIY home gym with no money” and you will be amazed at the brilliant, money saving, fitness building ideas out there!
Tow Rope And Tyres
If you have the space, you can use an old tyre (pick one up from a scrap dealer, or, if you are lucky, you could find one lying on the side of the road). There will be different sizes you can use: a normal car tyre or if you are feeling strong, a truck tyre. You can use this for flipping, carrying and, combined with a rope, you can drag it.
Rucking
Even simply loading up a rucksack, or daysack with some books or bottles of water and going to a walk is going to help you get fitter. Start light and build up your fitness levels.
Summary
Using materials that you can find around your home, or by investing a modest sum in some basic apparatus, you can have your own DIY home gym – improving your overall fitness and making you stronger. But don’t overdo it. This is about getting fitter overtime, not trying to get superfit in 3 months. Track your progress and build fitness activity in consistently for the best results.
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