If you’d rather not invest in a pricy gym membership, you may want to purchase equipment to increase the range of exercises you can do at home or outside. However, lots of home exercise equipment can be expensive, and not everyone has the budget for it. Fortunately, there are plenty of basic, budget-friendly exercise tools and gadgets you can purchase to intensify your workout a little. Here are a few of them.
Budget-Friendly Exercise Tools
1) Running Shoes
If jogging or running is part of your exercise regime, you should buy a good pair of running shoes. These will support your feet and protect them from the road, reducing your risk of injury or unnecessary aches and pains. There are a lot of expensive running shoes available but there’s no need to spend a lot. Look around for a pair that are affordable but fit your foot shape well.
2) Pedometer
We should all be doing a little walking each day, but sometimes you may struggle to find the motivation to get up and go out for a brisk stroll. Pedometers can help you with this. Research has shown that step counters encourage people to do a lot more walking. Something about seeing exactly how much you walk and keeping track of how much you improve your walking habits over time inspires you to get more active. Pedometers don’t cost much and picking one up is sure to get you on your feet more often.
3) Resistance Bands
Resistance bands are cheap, portable and a great addition to any strength training routine. You can use them to stretch various muscles, to replace the weights you use for some arm exercises or to increase the intensity of your push-ups. They can be used to work out virtually every major muscle group in your body, so there’s no shortage of reasons to give them a try.
4) Hand Weights
Some types of weights are pricey, but basic hand weights – or dumbbells, as they’re also known – don’t cost much, and are great for an upper-body strengthening workout. Alternatively, you could save even more money by using substitutes for hand weights which you may already have at home. Water bottles, socks filled with dried beans or sand, and bags of rice can all be easily grasped in each hand and lifted like hand weights. Any small, weighted objects will do.
5) Exercise Ball
An inexpensive exercise ball can help you with a range of exercises. The idea behind exercise balls is that exercising on them or with them rather than directly on the floor improves your balance and muscle strength, because your body must work harder to remain balanced in response to the ball’s instability. Exercise balls are particularly good for working out abdominal and back muscles.
6) Yoga Mat
Buying a cheap yoga mat not only gives you something on which to practice yoga at home, but can also come in handy for a range of other exercises. You can use it when doing push-ups, sit-ups, deep knee bends, or any other floor exercise.
There’s no reason a tight budget should prevent you from having plenty of exercise options. Give some of these budget-friendly exercise tools a try and you’ll see just how much of a varied and effective workout you can have without spending much money at all.
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