Looking for frugal ways to stay in shape? You can skip the gym membership and still get a good workout. There’s plenty you can do at home to burn calories, tone muscles and get your heart rate up.
Of course, you can always dust off that old bike or go for a jog outside, but those are far from your only options. Using a few household items you likely have on hand, you can get a good muscle burn.
The best part is that the following at-home fitness solutions are completely free and accessible. You won’t need much more than an internet connection and a little free space to move around.
Note: Be sure to check with your doctor before starting any new workout or doing any particular exercise for the first time.
1. Roll out your yoga mat
To get your weekly moment of zen, check out yoga studio chain CorePower Yoga’s free on-demand yoga videos.
If you have an Amazon Prime membership, which includes free access to Prime Video, you can watch select yoga videos for free on Amazon. You can identify these videos by the “$0.00 with a Prime membership” note on them.
If you don’t have Prime or just want more options than Prime offers, you can find plenty of options on YouTube.
Of course, you can also use your yoga mat to perform any floor-based exercises, including crunches and push-ups.
2. Download the FitOn app
FitOn’s workouts are always free and always available. After creating a free account and specifying your fitness goals, you’re granted access to the FitOn workout library.
You can stream FitOn videos on your TV, tablet, computer or smartphone.
3. Make use of exercise bands
The key to building or maintaining muscle is adding resistance with weight or exercise bands. The latter are elastic loops that create tension.
To use effectively, wrap a band around your joints — wrists, knees or ankles — and perform an exercise as you normally would while keeping tension on the band at all times. Resistance bands are made with different tension levels, so you can go “heavier” or “lighter” as needed.
4. Pick up heavy household items
You may not own dumbbells, but you likely have some heavy items lying around the house that will work just as well. If your doctor is OK with you doing weight-based training, some ideas include:
- Using canned food or drinks to do bicep curls and overhead shoulder presses
- Grabbing a gallon of water that you can pull for back rows
- Holding a thick hardback book at your chest while doing sit-ups
5. Climb stairs
Stairs are a great way to do interval training, which is where you spike your heart rate for a short period and then let it fully recover. If your doctor is OK with it, you can try it yourself:
- Move as quickly as you can up a flight of stairs.
- Slowly walk back down to catch your breath.
- Repeat for a few rounds.
6. Grab a towel and glide
A basic hand towel is all you need to perform a number of slow and controlled body-weight exercises. Here are 21 ideas to get you started.
Note that towels glide best on hardwood and tile floors. However, if you have carpet, you can swap the towel for a paper plate. This isn’t the workout for anyone with any balance issues, though.
7. Play cards
Using a standard deck of cards, assign one exercise to each suit and use the value of the card to determine your repetitions. For example, hearts could signify crunches. If you draw a 10 of hearts, you’ll then perform 10 crunches.
If you’re using the jack, queen, king and ace cards, assign them 11 reps (jack) to 14 reps (ace), respectively.
To really challenge yourself, try to make your way through all 52 cards or split the deck with a workout partner.
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