- 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
