Source: mytnnews.com
Not to worry! You absolutely do not need to have a gym membership to start working out. In fact, there are some fantastic exercises you can do on a day to day basis that will not require anything other than you and your willingness to workout. So for this blog post, I will discuss some exercises you can do that require very minimal reliance on equipment and your environment.
A lot of the exercises that I'm going to highlight here are good, not only because you don't need to visit a gym to do them, but because they also incorporate many different muscle groups that you can stimulate at the same time while doing them. These exercises also have many different variations to them that you can use to work out and target different muscle groups.
Ready to workout without the bells / whistles / and costs of a gym membership? Well here we go!
Cheap and Effective Muscle Gaining Exercises:
1) PUSH-UPS - If you have two arms and a floor you're good to go! You can literally do push-ups anywhere. In your room, at a friend's house, outdoors, in the office, in the bathroom (though not recommended), etc. It just might be the most versatile of all exercises in how little is needed to do them. They are also the biggest bang for your buck exercise in that literally no money needs to be spent on them, all while greatly stimulating many muscle groups at the same time. Depending on where you hold your arms you can be working out your chest, your triceps, or your shoulders. Whichever variation of push-ups you do, drive through the heel of your palms to get a nice activation of the muscles. Drive backwards for more tricep stimulation, and drive through the center of your chest for more pectoral stimulation.
Source: fitbod.ca2)PULL-UPS - Another fantastic exercise that requires nothing but some kind of sturdy beam that you can hang from. If you live near a playground, you'll most likely have something you can adequately do pull-ups from. Any elevated bar will work however. You could even install one in your house or purchase one of those pull-up bars that mount onto a door for under $30. But again, you could absolutely do these while incurring no cost.
Pullups can work your back and biceps very well, with one being activated more than the other depending on how you grip the bar. A more outside grip with fingers pointing away from you will stimulate the lats more, while a closer inside grip with fingers pointing in towards you or facing one another will stimulate the biceps more.
Source: Youtube User: Simon Boulter
Source: tone-and-tighten.com
4) Crunches - You know what a crunch is. You also know that you can do them anywhere, just like with push-ups. Find a nice clean floor and lay on your back. Put your hands behind your head and focus on a point above your face on the ceiling. Bring your face up towards the point on the ceiling and bend at your core, flexing hard at the end range of motion. You do NOT need to sit all the way up. Just get that nice....wait for it....CRUNCH in your stomach. Hold for a half a second to a second and come back down. These are great for nice core aesthetics.
Source: Youtube User: Scooby1961
BONUS: Bicycles are also good for core development and require no equipment (see figure below).
Source: builtlean.com
5) Lunges - I couldn't in good concious tell you about all the great upper-body and core exercises you can do without throwing in some exercises for leg development. Do you need a squat rack? Heck no. A leg raise machine? Of course not. Hamstring curl / calf raise machines? Stop it.
Lunges are a fantastic leg exercise. In my opinion they are the BEST exercise for quad development. Yeah I said it. All you squat lovers come at me. I can take it haha.
Source: Youtube User: Scooby1961 (Again)
Lunges are great in that they only require your legs and a long enough path for you to do them on. You can grab something heavy (like filled gallon jugs) if you want the lunges to be weighted. To find out how to do a proper lunge, refer to my "top 5 leg exercises" post located here. Remember to drive with your heels!
And those are the exercises I would recommend for gaining muscle mass. I remember way back before I even entered a gym for the first time in my bodybuilding journey, I literally spent 3 minutes or so every single night doing 3 sets of 30 push-ups. I made sure I did them EVERY night and, eventually, people started asking me if I was working out. So you can get results without the fancy gym card that shows you're super serious about making gains in the gym. Just remember that since a lot of these exercises aren't weighted or offer the same kind of fancy resistance a gym would, that you will have to not only do each set until absolute failure (where your muscles refuse to continue doing the motion), but in my opinion do more sets. So instead of the 3-4 sets you're doing in the gym of four exercises, maybe do 6-8 sets of each of these exercises. Also try to do them most days out of the week.
Cheap and Effective Cardio Exercises:
1) Running Outdoors - SO much better than running on a treadmill. You will also enjoy the fact that you don't have to invest in the money and / or space of buying a treadmill or getting a gym membership to use one. Just get some nice stable running shoes and go outside! Enjoy the scenery. If it's cold, bring a hoodie.
Source: californiayogasport.files.wordpress.com
2) Bicycling - I'm a fan of cycling. It's actually my favorite form of cardio as of recently. If you have a bike or want to invest in a cycling machine, use it to go outside for a nice biking session or enjoy your nice new equipment at home! If you are strapped for cash and don't have a bike, this might not be as feasible as say running would be unfortunately.
Source: hickorywellcrafted.com
3) Jumping Rope - A jump rope costs, what? $10 maybe? You probably don't even need to invest in a fancy jump rope and could just use any kind of rope if you wanted to, or anything that resembles a rope. In fact, if you want to just jump in place you could probably just do that too....if you're ok with looking odd and having people wonder why you're jumping up and down for whatever reason.
Source: defeatdiabetes.org
And that's just a handful of what you could actually do for cardio. The possibilities are endless. You can literally do anything to achieve a great cardio session so long as you're keeping your heart rate up adequately. Get creative! Use the internet to find some great new ways to do cardio WITHOUT a gym membership.
Working out doesn't need to be expensive. Your body was engineered far before the first floor-plan for a gym was. Your body doesn't know the difference between a shiny new dumbbell at your local gym and some random hanging bar at a playground. So long as you're stimulating the muscle adequately you're doing things right and sending a message to your muscles to grow. Just keep your intensity up, practice good form, rest well, and supply your body with great nutrition.
Now get out there and build that image of yourself you aspire to be!.........On a budget!
-Jtrain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Have a question about natural bodybuilding / fitness / nutrition / stress? Need some advice? Email me at jtrainfitness@gmail.com and I will answer it on this blog! Be sure to enter your email to receive alerts for when the next blog post has come out, and be sure to tell your friends about this blog! Follow me on twitter @jtrainfitness and tell your friends to do the same!*
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