6 Essential Tools to Turn Your Home into a Mini-Gym
In today’s episode, you’re going to discover six tools you can use to transform your home into a full-time fitness facility that keeps you burning calories and building muscle all day long, without getting bored doing burpees, body-weight push-ups and body-weight squats!
Ben Greenfield
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6 Essential Tools to Turn Your Home into a Mini-Gym
I’m often asked about my secrets to staying extremely fit despite being a busy working family man with plenty of hobbies other than pumping iron or running on a treadmill. Fact is, if you glance around my house, you’ll quickly realize that I’ve “hacked my environment” to allow me to stay as fit as possible without actually stepping foot into a gym. Sure, I have the type of home gym I describe opens in a new windowin this episode but my philosophy is that a workout at the beginning or the end of the day should be the optional “icing on the cake” for mini-movement snacks you’ve been taking quick breaks to squeeze in all day long.
So in today’s episode, you’re going to discover six tools you can use to transform your home into a full-time fitness facility that keeps you burning calories and building muscle all day long, without getting bored doing, say, burpees, body-weight push-ups and body-weight squats!
Tool #1: Kettlebell
I’ve got plenty of resources out there about my favorite ways to use a kettlebell, which has been shown to be just as effective as sprinting when it comes to burning fat and boosting cardiovascular fitness. You may want to take a listen to or read the following:
– opens in a new windowHow to Use Kettlebells
– opens in a new windowHow to Biohack Fat Loss with a Kettlebell
– opens in a new windowThe Best Home Gym Equipment
I’d recommend you start with something simple: for females, around a 15lb kettlebell and, for males, around a 35lb kettlebell. This seems to be an excellent starting size to keep behind the living room couch or under your work desk in your cubicle for quick breaks through the day to do things like kettlebell swings, kettlebell squats and even kettlebell carries up and down stairs.
Tool #2: Hard Foam Roller
When it comes to avoiding injury, soreness, and those aches and pains that can so often accompany a constant quest for improving fitness, burning fat or maintaining muscle, the integrity and health of your deep tissue and fascia is just as important as your six-pack abs or bulging biceps.
For this reason, I keep a foam roller both upstairs in my living room and downstairs in my office, and if I ever feel any nagging aches or pains coming on throughout the day, I stop for a brief break to “roll it out”. Here are a few previous resources I’ve created on foam rolling:
– opens in a new windowSore Muscle Remedy
– opens in a new windowThe Best Fitness Gear and Technology
– opens in a new windowHow To Get Rid of Stiff Muscles
– opens in a new windowWhat is the Perfect Workout?
– opens in a new windowHow to Treat Sore Muscles
Be sure to get a good, hard foam roller, not a soft and squishy one from the bargain bin of your local sports department store.
Tool #3: Gymnastics Rings
For everything from hanging leg raises to muscle-ups to a host of other exercises that require nearly every tiny muscle in your body to contract simultaneously, a good set of gymnastics rings can’t be beat. As you may have read in the article, opens in a new windowHow to Get the Body of a Gymnast, I’ve been incorporating plenty of gymnastics training this year.
A pair of gymnastics rings can be hung from rafters, from a stud in the ceiling or wall, outside in the backyard, or, for a portable option, carried to any local playground for a workout. My current protocol is to simply stop every time I walk near my own set of gymnastics rings hanging in my living room and to practice 1-5 muscle-up exercises. These little doses of fitness sprinkled throughout the day actually have a name: “Greasing The Groove”, and I talk about that concept opens in a new windowhere.
Tool #4: PVC Pipe or Broomstick
A PVC pipe or broomstick might seem like an unlikely exercise tool, but this light and cheap piece of hardware can actually be a quite useful addition to your workout arsenal – as long as you know what to do with it. I have a basic broomstick (it’s actually an ash rake handle) in my living room and I use it for two primary exercises when I need to loosen things up: shoulder passthroughs and overhead squats.
Shoulder Passthroughs:
1) Start with the PVC pipe or broomstick in front of your body, with your hands in a double overhand grip outside the width of your shoulders. Keep your arms extended and grip loose.
2) Raise the PVC pipe or broomstick in front of your body and lift overhead. Once overhead, retract the shoulder blades down and pull behind your back.
3.) From behind the back, keep your arms extended as you pass back up behind your head and into your starting position.
4.) You can adjust and widen your grip if that movement was too difficult. Narrow the grip if you had no difficulty executing the warmup drill. Repeat up to 10 times.
Here’s a opens in a new windowhelpful video that demonstrates the passthroughs.
Overhead Squats:
Overhead squats develop mobility and flexibility, which are two important aspects of muscle and joint health. To perform the overhead squat a PVC pipe or broomstick, hold it using a grip that is wider than shoulder-width and raise it above your head.
Keep your arms extended over your head for the duration of the squat. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, toes turned slightly outward. Push your butt back, bend your knees and squat down as low as you can while keeping the pipe over your head and directly over your feet. If you find this exercise very difficult, you probably need to work on multiple elements your flexibility, usually ankles, knees, hips, back and shoulders!
Tool #5: Yoga Trapeze or Inversion Table
A yoga trapeze is a new addition to my home fitness and body care arsenal. Prior to discovering and learning opens in a new windowhow to use a yoga trapeze, I had simply stuck with an inversion table for any hanging upside down activities.
A yoga trapeze is a swing-like contraption that allows you to hang from it in various ways. It can also be used to act as a support tool for many other yoga postures and muscle strengthening techniques. It is a very most natural form of inversion therapy that lengthens the space between each of your vertebra, acting as an all-natural spine traction system for strengthening the core or reducing low back pain – especially in people who sit a lot. A yoga trapeze also helps to build core and upper body strength through various movements, and allows you to get upside down, reverse your blood flow, and send fresh oxygen to the brain.
Here’s a video I recently shot of me demonstrating my own “moves” on my home yoga trapeze: opens in a new windowHow To Use A Yoga Swing. If you can’t find something to hang a yoga trapeze from, then an opens in a new windowinversion table would be my second pick for this same type of training effect.
Tool #6: Mini-Trampoline
In my article opens in a new windowCan Trampoline Workouts Increase Your Fitness?,
, you learn that cardiovascular benefits aren’t the only big upside to bouncing on a trampoline. For example, running can lead to knee, hip, ankle and other joint injuries, especially for people with existing joint pain or arthritis or excessive weight. But even though the biomechanics of trampolining are similar to jumping and landing on the ground, the trampoline absorbs up to 40% of of the potential joint impact, making it far easier on the body compared to pounding the pavement.
Many trampoliners tout the benefits of “lymph flow” and low-impact blood flow, both which can be beneficial for the immune system, natural, mild detoxification, and increased blood flow to the brain.
A couple times a week, for about 15 minutes, I bounce up and down on my own home mini-trampoline, an activity that can easily done while talking to someone, watching TV, listening to a podcast or audiobook, or simply listening to your own breath in a meditative style bouncing activity. Mini-trampolines are small, easy to store, and pair perfectly with everything else you’ve discovered in today’s article, from kettlebells, to foam rollers, to gymnastics rings, to a PVC Pipe or broomstick, to the yoga trapeze.
If you have more questions, comments or feedback about how you can use these seven tools to turn your entire home into a mini-gym, then you can join the conversation at Facebook.com/getfitguy.