- Are you willing to spend $40+ on gym membership costs?
- Are you willing to drive every day after a long day of work, for a 30 minute workout?
If you’re
like me the answers to those questions are no. I’m by no means an expert, but
hopefully through this blog, you can learn and experiment different and simple
ways of exercising at home, on a budget.
To start
it off, I wanted to share a type of exercise training which I find very useful. (I will use Wikipedia’s help
in trying to define the term). Plyometrics or “Plyos”for short, uses
fast-acting movement that helps the body improve overall speed by developing
muscular power. A plyometrics trainer describes it as an event that
“involves powerful muscular contractions in response to a rapid stretching of
the involved musculature. These powerful contractions are not a pure muscular
event; they have an extremely high degree of central nervous system
involvement. It is a combination of an involuntary reflex (i.e. a neural
event), which is then followed by a fast muscular contraction (i.e. voluntary
muscular event)."
It
sounds difficult right? You’ll be surprised how easy plyometrics actually is,
and the best part is that you don’t really need equipment to do it. We have
all seen it, and surprisingly we have all done it. Here are a couple of exercise examples.
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Lower body plyometrics:
long
jumps, jumping jacks, leg hoping, squat-jumps, bounds, hops.
Spend
30 minutes alternating between these exercises and let me know how your legs
feel afterwards!
Upper body plyometrics:
"Alternative Box Push-off with shoulder press"
Targets the upper and lower body
The dumbbells can vary in weight 5-25lbs depending
on your strength. The more weight of course, the more
strength your muscles gain. Walmart sells a 10 lb dumbbell
at a starting price of $9.47 each.
"Burpees"
Targets upper and lower body, core
This one in particular will make you
sweat and your thighs burn!
"Alternating split squat jumps with dumbbells"
Targets upper and lower body
Here are a few to get you started! Share your experiences and let me know how each exercise works out!
Pictures
and exercises taken from GoldsGym.com
Wow, these are great tips. I used to do Plyos as part of track practice, but it has been YEARS. I had never tried the tuck and squat jumps so I gave them a shot. I was out of breath faster than I would like to admit! I would like to keep these up and see how they work for me. Do you have any suggestions on length of time for each of these?
ReplyDeleteChristine, the way I do it is by reps instead of time. Let's say I'm going to do 3 different exercises, burpees, squat jumps and hops. I would do 10 burpees, then 10 squat jumps and then 10 hops. That would be one set. In my next round I increase the rep amount, instead of 10, I take it up to 12..and so on. The amount of sets and exercises will depend on how much you want to work out.
DeleteI MUST try these. I once bought into the gym membership thing & got stuck with a $40 payment for 2 years (even AFTER I moved out of the state and the closest affiliated gym was 40 mins away)!!! Now, my workouts consist of running (ok, jogging), sit-ups and occasional machine workouts at our apartment gym. Total cost...$0. Plyos seem like the perfect addition to my repertoire!
ReplyDeleteCould also check out Crunch. They have two locations in Sarasota and cost $10 a month. No contract. Full gym equipment PLUS free classes on yoga, zumba, etc.
ReplyDelete