Everyday Items You Can Use During Your Workout

The COVID-19 shutdowns closed gyms and fitness centers all across the nation, relegating countless fitness buffs to at-home workouts. Believe it or not, you can effectively work out from home with your high waisted workout leggings and some everyday items. That’s right, using a little ingenuity and some household items you likely have on hand, you can create a great workout, even at home.

Everyday Items You Can Use During Your Workout

Stairs

Let’s face it, the Stairmaster at the gym is an intense, carb-burning machine. However, if you are blessed with indoor stairs, you have a built-in Stairmaster right at home. Get your heart pumping by walking or running your stairs a few times to work your glutes and provide you with a good cardio workout. If you don’t have indoor stairs, use the stairs up to your porch or off your back deck. Almost everyone has some stairs, even if they aren’t inside your house.

Gallon Water Bottles

If you want to duplicate free weights, try lifting gallons of water. To increase the weight, lift more than one. They weigh around 25lbs each when fully filled. If you aren’t up to lifting the whole 25lbs, fill it only ¾ or ½ way up. In addition to the benefit the weight provides, lifting a jug is easy thanks to the shape of the handle. Swing, curl, or grip to duplicate working out with a dumbbell.

Chair

Use a sturdy chair to perform tricep dips. Keep in mind, you can move the chair wherever in your house, even in front of the TV to watch something while you workout. To start, sit on the chair with your fingers wrapped around the edge and to the side of the seat. Then, extend your legs straight forward in a straight line. Lift upwards with your arms, moving your torso two inches in front of the chair. Now, you are in the starting position. To perform the rest of the exercise, lower your elbows until they are at a 90-degree angle. Dip down and then back up into your starting position and you have successfully completed one rep.

Backpack

Before weighted vests were trending, the old school way to intensify a workout was to use a backpack. Remember, walking around school with a full backpack? When you contemplate how hard it was to carry that burden, it makes sense why this serves as a good way to work your body while going through other chores. Load your backpack with various items to weigh it down, put it on your back and go about your day, or strap it on when doing pushups, lunges, squats, or other bodyweight exercises to increase the challenge. For some ideas of what you can use to weight down a backpack, consider the followings items you are likely to have on hand:

• Books.
• Cans of food.
• Sand (obviously in closed bags).
• Water (in containers).
• Rocks.

Working out at home doesn’t necessarily mean a less effective workout. In fact, you can stay in good shape even when exercising at home if you use the above items to increase the effectiveness of various exercises. Therefore, go put on your best workout pants and gather some standard household items and get ready to workout!