The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - These are the Key Components of A Home or Garage Gym | PPP #87

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

In addition to the myriad of body weight exercises, in this episode I share 5 items that are accessible, relatively cheap and mostly mobile that will help you kick off your home exercise journey.

Hey everyone, Kevin Pinnell, episode 87, five essential things to get you started on your home exercise journey. Maybe a little behind the curve on this one as last year saw a boom, which was good in home gym stuff. But as I thought about episode planning and how it could help, I know I've gotten some correspondence from folks about home gyms and exercise, and I'm big into that, exercising every morning, either in a jiu-jitsu class or in my home gym or going for a run or whatever. And I've spoken about it before. For me, it wasn't just the physical, but the mental stress relief after the past 18 months and now, and just in general, exercise is great. And so I wanted to share, I went out and looked at my garage gym and thought, what are things, not just the whiz bag things to get a full blown home gym started like barbells and bumper

plates and this and that, but what can folks get? What did I start with when I really reinvested in myself and my home workout routine and getting equipment? These are the things that I use. So I'm going to share five things that you can get that are easy to obtain, that can travel with you, depending on what they are, and have many variations that you can use. And as a precursor, we're going to set some ground rules. So please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we will get started with people process progress

in three, two, one. So thanks again for coming back and let's get into these five things. So these are things that I use that I had, that I bought. They're not very expensive. They're very accessible. Even kind of last year when a lot of home gym stuff sold out, when gyms were closed, when people had to go home and which I don't think was necessarily a bad thing, meaning it pushed exercise into the forefront a bit more. Hopefully that continues for folks in the country to reduce some of the underlying symptoms of many diseases, many viruses, not just COVID. And as a precursor to these five pieces of equipment, I just want to throw a body weight. Body weight exercises, push-ups, air squats, crunches, there's so many things.

Mountain climbers, they count bodybuilders, burpees. Those should be a staple mixed into any exercise routine. You can get smoked. I know I did when I was in the military, working out with my friends. Now, when I'm doing that. There's a bar involved in the Murph Challenge or the Memorial Day Murph, but the rest of it is air squats and stuff with or without a vest, usually with a vest for him. But push-ups, sit-ups, air squats, just there's so many things you can do. Planks, all those. So body weight should be considered, especially if you're someone that's getting into exercise, getting into a regular exercise routine, of course, in consultation with your physician.

But if you're getting back into it or just jumping into exercise, body weight, just start simple. Get up, do some push-ups, do some air squats, do some crunches, supermans. That hits your chest, your legs, your core, both front and back, and good kind of things there. You can level up the, put your feet up, put your arms up, elevation with push-ups. You can do more, do less, so many different things. So body weight, that should be a precursor or a given in any routine mixed in there. The first thing I would recommend if you are looking to put together a basement gym, a garage gym, or some kind of space at your home to exercise regularly is a bar, a pull-up bar.

Whether it's a pipe between two rafters like I used to have in my garage slash kind of big shed gym, or it's one of those freestanding dip pull-up stands, or it's a doorway one, right? Just make sure if it's mountable that you mount it good into the jam and the studs. Or if it's one of the ones that kind of use and loops into the doorway, they still work. Just don't be swinging on it because it'll come off. Or like mine, I actually have a Titan Fitness pull-up bar that's mounted and I mounted it on the wall in my garage gym. And the reason I say a bar is one pull-ups, which are just the ultimate test, water, pull-ups, burpees. They are physical tests. Pull-ups are a great thing. They're also very hard. But when you start out, you can do jumping pull-ups.

So if you can't do your own pull-up, you can jump a little bit. You can kip a little bit. You can hang from the bar. You can hang and do knee raises, leg raises, all sorts of different things. And then as you progress, you'll have that bar and it's anchored well. Not the doorway one, I wouldn't recommend that, but if you have a freestanding one or one that's mounted that's pretty sturdy, you can use straps on it like TRX or other systems like that.

And it can be a challenge if you're mounting a pull-up bar, particularly on a wall in your garage or your basement on drywall, you may want to use this thing called a stringer, which is a board that you put horizontally and you bolt that to the studs. And then you mount the pull-up bar to that piece of wood. So you've got this sturdy piece of wood that's mounted to the wall and you're using lag bolts. So these are big, huge bolts. And then you mount that to the wood and YouTube it. That's what I did to mount my pull-up bar. And other folks have. Or if you're confident that it lines up with a studs, you can do that.

But the stringer concept, really secure for one that you're going to mount there and keep there. So a pull-up bar, very diverse. Killer workouts doing pull-ups or even hanging from the bar. Toes to bar, knees to elbows, those kind of things. Really good. The second thing I would recommend is resistance bands, right? They sell them with the handles built into them. They sell them with little carabiners on each end and handles you can take off or a foot attachment on one. And you can have a holder that goes in a doorway so you could loop

the band through that holder that's in the doorway and then turn around and do chest things and turn around and do lat things where you pull it towards you. You can stand there and do curls and shoulder press. And I use this regularly and just increase the resistance or the weight that it says on the bands. I've seen resistance bands that go up to like 100 pounds resistance, just craziness. They are regularly and readily available at places like Target has them, Dick's Sporting Goods. Of course, you can order sets of them online and they travel extremely well. So if you do some body weight or just do a whole workout, I've done whole workouts where you do, you know, reps. I'll do reps of a hundred of like curls and shoulder press. And I would

recommend starting with that with like the 35 pound resistance band. And it's really good. And like I say, it takes up little to no space in your suitcase or the back of your car. And you can use them everywhere that you go. The next thing is kind of mobile and a staple of many people's exercise routines. And those are kettlebells very readily available. I've seen these at Target and Walmart all the time, you don't have to get the fanciest, best kettlebell in the world, particularly if you're just starting. Start with a lower weight. Learn the movements. Again, YouTube is fantastic for exercise movements. I got a couple of mine at Dick's. Actually, I got all my kettlebells at Dick's. Just easy to pick up there. Like I said, they have them at other retailers. I have no connection with these

retailers. Just keeping it real with where I get things from. And as you all know, you can go online and order kettlebells. It's easier and there's probably places near you unless there's not. But if there's any of those stores I mentioned near you, they probably have some sort of kettlebell for the heavier ones. If you're already working out and you want to add kettlebells to your home gym or basement gym, garage gym, you probably do need to go to a sporting store play it again sports a great right chain with used equipment but the kettlebell is so diverse for the swings and the get-ups and overhead press and walking with them like farmers carriers i'll use my 261 pound kettlebells and just walk with them a distance and come back

you want to talk about a forearm burner but but building your grip up, especially for jujitsu and other sports, just kettlebells are outstanding and they travel pretty well, right? You just have to make sure if you have your kettlebell in the back or in the trunk or something, it's kind of blocked in by your suitcases and not rolling around. But you know, between so far a pull-up bar, some resistance bands or a set of those and a kettlebell and, or a set of those, and a kettlebell, and your body weight, of course, like we talked about, that's a given, you can get a killer workout and have a really good routine. The fourth of the five items, and I could have gone with so many different things, but I went with the medicine ball.

And again, these are all things that I started with. I've had kettlebells for a while now, probably, gosh, probably seven or eight years. And I got them and they didn't really use them a lot. Resistance bands I've used for a long time, pull up bars from before the military, when I was in the military and afterwards were used. But the medicine ball I got from inspired by CrossFit, these wall balls. And so what you do, I have a 20 pound medicine ball and medicine balls have been around for a while, a long while, right? But you do this wall ball. So you start squatted down, holding the ball in front of you, like on your chest, and you stand

up in the squat and you throw it up a certain height, like 10 or 15 feet, and then you catch it and you go down and you do that over and over again. Watch videos, be safe, start with a lighter one. They also have kind of a variation of the medicine ball, like a slam ball where you slam it on the ground. And I've done that with mine as well, but just the wall balls are great. But again, you can, you can hold the medicine ball and do kind of halos around your head. You can sit on your butt and do these like Russian twists. And you can do that with the kettlebell as well. And I'll, I'll put exercises for each of these on the website when I post about this episode. But for me, the medicine ball has played a big part. I've really used it a lot. And it can also travel, right? Probably not as much

if you're flying somewhere. The resistance band is a better option for that. You're probably not going to take your pull-up bar with you if you're traveling. If you're in a car though, and you have a doorway kettlebell or a doorway pull-up bar rather, the kettlebell, the resistance band, the medicine ball, you can take all this with you. The last thing that I have, and this could have been so many different things or nothing, because you can do jumping jacks and burpees, like I say, body weight, is a jump rope though. I think for hand-eye coordination or hand-feet coordination, for timing, for cardio, for leg, all the stuff that it's used for. You see, of course, the Rocky sequence, boxers use it a lot, fighters use it a lot. CrossFit folks use

it a lot doing these double unders where you hear them go, double under, meaning it goes under your feet twice before you come down. I just kind of do it regularly. I mix in one, one and a half minute sequence between that and kettlebell swings or something like that. But again, super easy to travel with. I use a weighted handle jump rope, which is helpful. So each handle weighs a pound, but they have speed ropes, which are those light plastic handles and they spin around a little faster. You can make them do that. I was never good at those. But a jump rope to me is a great essential piece of equipment that travels well. You can get them for pretty cheap at anywhere. You could even use, you know, remember the old school PE jump ropes that were just covered and there were

plastic links put together with a wire or something on the inside. Those work, right? Might be a little short if it's from the kids section or toy section, but sporting goods stores have jump ropes. They have the weighted handles ones. You can order them, of course, anything online these days. But a great addition to that cardio where you have just a bit of room, you could use it, depending on, I guess, the ceilings in your hotel room. But you can go outside your hotel, right? You can use them anywhere if you're traveling or certainly at home. Step outside and get a good jump rope session in there,

jump rope sequence into your exercise routine. So to me, five good starter things that don't have to be the whiz-bang name brand cage bar, bumper plate, barbell, dumbbell thing is a pull-up bar, resistance bands, kettlebells, a medicine ball, and a jump rope. And that plus body weight and whatever else you can think of will get you started, will keep you sustained, will hopefully help all of us as we consider exercise and health more and more as the foundation of disease and virus resistance will keep us safe. And I thank you all for coming and listening to my two cents here on this just short episode, for continuing to tune in, for reaching out to me. If you want to be on the show, if you have an idea,

you think you have a story to share, you know you do. PeopleProcessProgress.com. There is a link there. Click on it. Share your story. Let me know. We'll link up. We'll have a chat.

Email me at PeopleProcessProgress at gmail.com. I'm also on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook, People Process Progress. Stay safe out there, everybody. Wash your hands and Godspeed.