You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to build your home gym. If you want to, and if you can, that’s fine. For most regular people looking to lose weight and tone up, a gym membership and the open road is pretty much all we have. But there are a few inexpensive pieces of exercise equipment out there that should be a staple of any home gym. They’re simple and relatively cheap, but they get the job done. For the most part, if all you had was the following 5 pieces of exercise equipment, you could build yourself into quite a hardcore animal.

The Ab Wheel – $7.75

Providing the most bang for the buck out of all these items, the ab wheel will build core strength unlike anything you will every come across. Surprisingly, every gym I have ever been to does not have an ab wheel lying around. The principle is simple: a handle bar attached to a wheel. For beginners, you get on your knees and roll out slowly. If you collapse on the floor, well you got some work to do. If you can make it back to your starting position, repeat until you can repeat no more.

People with greater core strength will be able to do it from their feet. Bend over like you’re touching your toes and extend all the way out. If you can recover from the repletion back to your starting position, then you’ve got more core strength that 95% of Americans. That isn’t a true statistic, but I’ve only seen two people in my life pull off an ab wheel repetition from their feet.

Ab Ball - $21.49

The ab ball looks like a piece of exercise equipment geared towards women and yoga instructors, but don’t be fooled. When it comes to ab exercises such as crunches and weighted crunches, you’re going to get a far better range of motion than lying on the floor. You’ll stretch your abdominal to the extreme and keep your bones intact without the pain and discomfort that you’ll experience on the floor.

And it’s not just for crunches. You can use the ab ball to build core stability by sitting on it to do dumbbell shoulder presses, regular dumbbell presses, chest-flies, and so on. You can even try using the ab ball as a place to put your feet for push-ups. Or you can be a complete asshole in the office.

Pull-Up / Chin-Up Bar - $20.98

We all know that the pull-up is essential to your weight training foundation. Unfortunately I can’t do one unless it’s a reverse grip chin up. But my goal is to do a few by the time summer rolls around. I used to be able to do them, and that came after many months of trying everyday.

So rather than doing pull-ups every once in a while when you’re in the gym, you can do that at home every morning. You don’t have to exert yourself to failure every time, but you can get away with doing a few during the day. You’ll be doing pull-ups before you know it.

Push-Up bars - $29.99

I know it seems ridiculous to get a bar for push-ups. You just put your hands on the ground and go right? Or change up where you place your hands to target different muscle groups, such as the diamond push-up for a strictly triceps exercise.

But the Push-Up bars do have their advantages. Sometimes it’s very uncomfortable to place your hands in awkward positions for the more advanced push-ups. Having a grip on those bars feels a whole lot better than pressing your palms against the pavement. And they offer you a chance to do exercises that you can’t do without them. How about using just one and crossing over while you’re at the top of your push up?

Ankle Weights 10lbs - $16.79

The things you can do with ankle weights are pretty much limitless. Once you have them on, you can go about your daily business while putting resistance on the muscles in your legs that you’re not used to. They add another challenging level to running and jogging if you’re the kind of person that thinks 5 miles isn’t that far.

A gym doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars

State of the art fitness equipment doesn’t mean you’re going to get stronger or leaner any faster than the next guy, or girl. A person who has never seen a gym can get a better body than someone who spends every day in one. When it comes to fitness, the best piece of exercise equipment you have is your heart. And everyone gets one of those for free.

Trusted “Where to Buy” Links

• Ab Wheel from BodyBuilding.com
• Ab Ball from BodyBuilding.com
• Pull-up Bar from BodyBuilding.com
• Push-up Bars from BigFitness.com
• Ankle Weights from BodyBuilding.com

I’ve been meaning to add this section for many months, but just never had a chance. Now, it’s finally here. This section is all about the no bull, no nonsense weight loss and fitness products out there. Trust us, it’s hard to sift through all the crap that doesn’t work to find out what does. And there’s a lot of crap out there so it makes the job really hard!

First Product Spotlight - Hot-Rox Extreme by BioTest

Hot-Rox is a product I hold dear to my heart. One summer I used it and lost over 50 pounds. That was about 3 years ago and it was a good few months! Since then, I’ve slacked off and lost focus. But the truth is, it did work and it will work for anyone that takes it seriously. Read about Hot-Rox Extreme here

Running Techniques

What is this piece about? Quite possibly the best exercise ever! If I could only do on the thing in the world, I would run (talking about working out of course. If I could only do one thing overall, I think you know what I would choose¦ Fighting, of course!) Don’t like running? I know why that is. Because when someone says run, almost 100% of people will automatically see those long tiring jogs around the track. Although long jogs are tremendous for aerobic capacity, I am here to introduce you to a world of running that you never thought was possible.

I will list every running method one can implore, why it is good, and why you should do it. This is probably going to be my favorite article, since nothing beats running in my world.

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Full Out Jump Rope Training

Ever get bored of the same old workout? Tired of the same old monotonous workout that you do religiously day in and day out, until you get so tired of the boredom you just don’t want to workout anymore, period. Enter jump rope training. If you get bored of training with the magical leather or plastic rope, then you really got no business in the fitness world. Seriously. The jump rope is one of the greatest inventions to ever hit humanity. It is excellent for conditioning the anaerobic and aerobic energy systems, gaining rotator cuff and shoulder strength, conditioning, powerful lower body, and so on and so forth.

There are many ways to train with the rope, but most people I know only know of one way: swirl the rope and jump. Of course most people don’t jump rope because all they do is twirl and jump. Not only is that tiring, it gets boring and then you just don’t want to do it because you feel the boredom is not worth the benefit. BIG MISTAKE!! Get yourself a rope, and read this article and you will be in better shape than anyone not jump roping.

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Enter the Animal

Did you know that out of the major predators in the animal kingdom, humans are the weakest? Funny, isn’t it? Why are humans the weakest of all animals? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know this. The animals are obviously doing something right to have that immense strength. So why don’t we train like animals do? What is it that animals do to train exactly? Well, they walk, they run, they hunt, and they kill. That’s what. What are we going to do? We’re going to perform movements that some of the pound-for-pound strongest animals do on a daily basis. Prepare yourself for the most intense workout session you will ever have in your life, my friends.

To describe animal training with a word will be senseless, because there is no word in the languages of man to describe the ferociousness, the intensity, the sheer PAIN of animal training. I will list the moves, and tell you how to do them. After that, you are on your own.

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