Do You Need Weights To Workout?

If you think you need a lot of equipment to create the perfect, healthy body, you’d be wrong. You don’t need any extra equipment, like weights to workout. People have been building fitness and muscle for years without added equipment. Weights, kettlebells and other exercise equipment just add variety to the workout and provide a few other benefits.

Think bodyweight exercises.

You carry weights with you. It’s the weight of your body. Upper body exercises using bodyweight include push-ups, pull-ups, rope climb, dips and muscle-ups, to name a few more popular ones. You do need a bar or rope to do these, but a tree limb or go to the playground and use the monkey bars.

Lower body bodyweight exercises work the glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves. All types of squats, mountain climbers, high knee runs, donkey kicks, bridges and planks are examples that will get you fit and build muscle, too.

If you want to maintain strength without equipment, try isometrics.

You may not build muscles or added strength with isometrics, but you can maintain your strength. While they can build muscle tissue, they aren’t the most effective way to do it. You don’t move during isometrics, so you’ll only build strength when the muscles are in that particular position. The good news is that there are a variety of isometric workouts to do and you can do them almost anywhere. Stomach suction and planks are good examples.

Make your workout a non-workout.

It’s amazing how much exercise you can get when you throw your whole self into something. Consider daily tasks as a workout, but instead of using your same normal slower way, throw your whole self into the job. Scrub the floor with vigor. Wash the windows enthusiastically. Run through each task if you can and if you’re doing something in place, keep your feet moving to music. Tidy the room with music and dance your way through it. Enjoy every movement and marvel at how magnificent the body is.

• Make your own equipment and do your workout. If you don’t have weights, fill milk jugs or laundry liquid bottles with sand until you get weights that challenge you. Use soup cans for dumbbells.
• Swim. It’s harder to move your body against the resistance of the water. That means you’ll build strength and burn calories, while making it easier on joints.
• Try this circuit workout you can do anywhere. Do 10 body-weight squats, 10 supermans, 10 push-ups, and 20 crunches one following the other. Take a short breather and start the circuit again. Do the rounds up to ten times.
• Take the stairs and go as many flights as you can. Just taking the stairs instead of the elevator can help you get fit, without going to the gym. Climbing eight flights of stairs a day lowers mortality by 33%.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness