Equipment
This chapter very quickly discusses equipment for fitness and where to get it. If you already have equipment, or go to the gym, or want to do it all without equipment (which is actually preferable), skip forward!
What’s available?
There’s an abundance of fitness equipment.
- Dumbbells / weights
- Resistance bands
- Kettlebells
- The water bag / aquabag / aquaball (which I mentioned earlier)
- Fitness benches
- And more
All of them have their own uses, their own pros and cons.
Resistance bands are very flexible and allow exercises other tools can’t do. But they work with resistance, not weight. This means the pressure they apply isn’t constant. Sometimes, that makes an exercise impossible.
There are some really great exercises that require your body to be slanted. Either you lay on your back, at 45 degrees, our you lean to your side. This can only be done if you have the right fitness bench for it and can’t really be approximated any other way.
My recommendation
Therefore, try to buy a package (for 50–100 euros) that has a bit of everything: some weights, some resistance bands, some kettlebells.
If possible, add additional balance tools, like a water bag or balance board.
If budget is a real issue, go for resistance bands. They are by far the cheapest. Even if you get many different types and strengths.
You can also approximate balance tools by recreating them yourself.
- No aquabag? Just find a bowl and fill it with water, then use that during your exercises!
- No balance board? Find a plank and a small, solid object. Place the plank on the object, and voila, you have your own balance board.
But the best thing? You don’t need it at all, if you don’t want to. There are plenty exercises that use your own body weight.
Most medical experts prefer these. Why?
- Cheap
- Easy to start and maintain. (No need to grab equipment, no setup, etcetera.)
- All of them have variations, in case it’s too easy or too hard. (For example, if a normal push-up can’t be done, you can do one from the knees. Our body has many places to reduce weight or change how load is distributed.)
- The difficulty grows as you progress. (As you become more muscular, you become heavier. So the challenge stays somewhat constant.)
The most important part of any exercise routine, is that you can do it again tomorrow.
The intensity, the weight, the tools, it all doesn’t matter. What matter is that you can consistently do the exercise, every day, to maintain that active lifestyle. If that means you make the exercises very easy, or reduce the weight to a level that brings shame to your family’s honour, so be it 😛
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