10 Necessary Pieces Of Fitness Equipment For Home Workouts

If you’re planning on creating a home gym in your garage, make sure these must-have pieces of fitness equipment are on your list.

Want to exercise more often, but don’t want to spend a fortune on pricey gym memberships or trendy fitness classes? Get your own fitness gear and build yourself a workout corner in your home.

These inexpensive pieces of fitness equipment will help you sweat it out at home. No more hours lost on the way to and from the gym. No more 1000s of dollars spent every year on gym memberships and fitness classes.

We’ve curated a list with 10 most affordable and effective pieces of fitness equipment that every workout enthusiast should own.

You don’t have to get them all at a time. Just pick the ones you need most and try to build a home gym room that works best for you.

Fitness Equipment Necessary For Everyday Workouts

Here are the top 10 pieces of fitness equipment you should use for an effective everyday workout:

1. Weighted Jump Rope

This is a must-have piece of equipment if you want to lose weight and build muscles. Using heavy jump ropes brings amazing benefits.

Using this equipment in a workout will burn fat and sculpt your muscles all over your body. A weighted jump rope is a full body muscle toning equipment, a great cardiovascular and easy to incorporate workout.

It works as an effective routine that will reduce your body fat. It is perfect for building endurance, coordination, and strength.

Using a heavy rope will mean that you will get a more effective workout that when you are doing speed rope or other kinds of rope exercise. So if your goals are to improve your strength, coordination, and endurance, do weighted jump ropes.

Doing just a 10-minute session is equivalent to a 30 minute of jogging. Get ready to skip that heavy rope and get a full body workout that will engage all your muscle groups.

To make sure you are choosing the right heavy rope for you, you need to pick one based on your fitness level.

2. Resistance Bands

These resistance bands have many benefits and they are also affordable, accessible, and portable. You can perform many exercises with resistance bands.

This equipment will strengthen and tone muscle groups like your pectorals, triceps, deltoids, hamstrings, quadriceps, and abdominals.

The more you stretch your band, the more resistance it gets and the exercise becomes tougher.

This is great equipment that will help with your stretching routine, especially if you lack mobility and flexibility.

It will help you to deepen the stretch and increase the range of motion as you move the band towards your body or away from it.

This fitness equipment is great if you are a frequent traveler. You can easily put them in your backpack as they are very lightweight and take minimum space.

The resistance bands are very inexpensive, costing between 5-10 dollars.

To make the exercises harder and get more resistance, you need a thick band. The thicker the band the harder your exercise will become.

3. Medicine Ball

Doing a medicine ball workout will help you increase your balance, strength, and coordination. It is great for your endurance and it is an effective core workout to tone your abdominal muscles.

Working with a medicine ball will help you build up your explosive strength.

The explosive strength is the ability to use maximal force over a short period of time. Your explosive strength is used for jumping, sprinting, kicking, and throwing.

The best exercises to build your explosive strength using a medicine ball are squats, lunges, and alternate lunges.

You can even use your medicine balls to strengthen your core and abs. Just do your crunches while holding your ball for added resistance.

You can also improve your balance by using a medicine ball when doing a push-up routine.

Choose a medicine ball over your usual dumbbells or kettlebells to add some variety to your routine.

If you are new to this medicine ball, you need to use a lighter one, especially if you never used one before. As your fitness level improves, you can increase the weight of the ball.

4. Dumbbells/Kettlebells

Using a kettlebell or a dumbbell is great for building muscles and strengthening your whole body while burning tons of calories.

However, dumbbells and kettlebells are free weights used in different workouts and movements.

If you, for example, want to improve your grip strength, you should use a kettlebell because it has a thicker handle than a dumbbell.

Also, the kettlebells are unbalanced, the handle being light while the ball is heavy. This isn’t a feature of dumbbells which have the weight evenly distributed.

For general fitness, you can use a dumbbell. It is great to use when doing squats and general arm moves.

So if your goal is to improve your fitness level and general strength, choose the dumbbells. They are a balanced piece of fitness equipment that offers you stability when working out.

Using dumbbells will allow you to do a more controlled movement while using heavier weights. The kettlebell is great if you want to tone and define your muscles rather than bulk up.

You have to choose your fitness equipment according to the goals you want to reach.

5. Stability Ball

Using a stability ball will come with lots of benefits. They are great for developing your entire body’s muscles. You can also use these balls for rehabilitating knee, back, and hip injuries.

A stability ball workout will also increase your strength, improving your core stability, balance, and posture at the same time.

If you are practicing yoga or pilates, you can use these balls in a variety of moves. Balance is key in many of your pilates and yoga moves, and the stability ball will allow you to have more flexibility while performing difficult moves.

Not a yoga or pilates fan, no problem. Just by sitting on the ball while lifting weights, you will end up tightening your core and get better arm and shoulders definition.

Because this equipment is round, your body has to use its own strength to balance, without letting the ball roll or move. It is not an easy task to keep the stability ball still. But when you are doing so, you will tone your muscles and increase your core stability.

6. Exercise Dices/Cards

Don’t know what routine to do next? Do all your exercise routines start to feel boring? Then these exercise cards and dices are what you need to spice up your fitness routine.

Choosing an exercise dice is a great way to add the element of surprise into your workout routine. Letting the dice decide for you what your workout session will be can be fun.

You don’t need a daily schedule, just throw the dice every time you must switch to the next exercise. This way, you’ll make your exercises fun and sweaty.

The exercise cards are basically the same thing; you just need to shuffle the cards instead of rolling the dice.

Choosing the exercise dice will get you out of your pocket around 5 to 12 dollars. Opting for a set of exercise card is a bit pricier costing 15 dollars and can go up to 30.

So just choose the one that fits your pocket need and let the card or dice choose what will be your next exercise routine. Have fun!

7. Yoga/Exercise Mat

The difference between yoga and an exercise mat is the thickness.

The exercise mats are thicker because they are designed to be shock absorbent and they prevent you from injuries coming from falling, slipping, and jumping. This is why you are using an exercise mat when doing high-intensity training programs.

Your yoga mat is usually about an inch thick with a non-slippery surface. This will prevent you from slipping when doing your different yoga poses.

Your yoga mat clings very firmly to various surfaces and provides you with a good grip. Because of this, your mat won’t move so you will be able to focus more on your posture and balance.

Although they are very thin, yoga mats will provide you with the right support for low-impact exercises.

The exercise mats, or the fitness mat, is thicker to protect your body. These mats also have extra cushioning, to support you when sitting, lying down, or on the sides.

Make sure the next time you are doing your workout routine, you’ll choose the right mat for it.

8. Stepper

Using a stepper can improve your balance, cardiovascular health, and your arms and legs mobility. It is great fitness equipment to burn calories and lose weight.

The steppers are simple and easy to use. You just step on and off them.

One essential thing you need to know is the difference between the low impact and the high impact step aerobics.

When doing a low impact step it means you are stepping on and off the stepper one foot at a time. The high-impact step means you are jumping on and off the stepper with your both feet at the same time.

A one-hour session of low-impact step aerobics burns about 500 calories, while a high-impact session burns about 750 calories (if you weigh 160 pounds).

9. Exercise Bench

Using an exercise bench can get you a challenging workout even if you are a beginner or a pro. If you are thinking of purchasing a bench, opt for a multiple exercise bench.

It has many benefits like improving flexibility or strengthening your upper body muscles.

Exercising on a bench provides you a full-body exercise, strengthens your core, and boosts your cardiovascular health.

Choosing a bench will give you more support and it will be safer than using a chair because it won’t break under your weight.

10. Treadmill

Choosing to exercise on a treadmill is a great workout that will put on your body less pressure than if you are running or walking outside on an uneven surface.

Treadmills are one of the easiest fitness equipment to use.

People are also into the treadmill because you can go for a run no matter the weather, it’s not important if you look good or what you’re wearing, and nobody is staring at you when exercising.

When you are using a treadmill, you have an easy time checking your progress. Most of the treadmills have a digital monitor, that will tell you the time, speed, distance, calories burnt, and even your heart rate.

Being able to track your progress is essential if you are working toward a new weight loss goal.

But the obvious reason why people are using a treadmill is to lose weight. If you are running for 20 minutes at a pace of 10 km/hour you will burn 230 calories. If you want to make it more intense, you can increase the speed to 12km/h and burn 300 calories.

As you might already know, the price of a treadmill is way higher than the price of a pair of dumbbells or an exercise dice. So you should do your research before buying one.

If you don’t own a treadmill, there are a few criteria that can help you choose the right one:

• Choose a treadmill that will fit into the space you want to use it.
• Set up a price range and make sure to stick to it.
• Decide what features you use on your treadmill.

If you can, take a test run before getting a treadmill. If this is not possible, make sure to check some quality treadmill reviews online.

Also, fitness enthusiasts who’ve already purchased the treadmill you’re after can tell you the pros and the cons of it. So make sure you’re reading the customers’ reviews too.