8 Essential Pieces of Equipment for Your Home Workout

According to recent surveys, it seems the majority of people will be sticking with home training even with the gyms opening this week. So, if you’re enjoying home training and the benefits and convenience it offers you need to find equipment that’s useful, versatile, and compact. While some can afford sprawling home gyms with lifting racks and stationary bikes, the majority of us have a limited amount of space and may have downstairs neighbours to think of.

Boosting your home workout routine with just a few pieces of equipment can significantly shorten your fitness goal time and provide a better, more well-rounded workout.

With that said, let’s take a look at the eight indispensable pieces of gym equipment that will help you achieve your fitness goals.

#1: Slide Pad

A slide pad (or slide board) is another multi-purpose piece of equipment. Slide pads are great because they can be used to load the hamstrings which are harder to target at home, exercises like floor slide as well as in some lateral exercises like side lunges and curtsey lunges. Many exercises are focused on forward-backward movements, but including lateral exercises into your daily routine comes with important benefits, such as:

• Reducing risk of injury by strengthening muscles that support your joints
• Strengthening stabilizer muscles, which improves balance
• Giving your workout a wider range of exercises, which makes them more fun and challenging.

#2: Kettlebell

If you’re looking for a piece of equipment that’s versatile, compact, and inexpensive, the kettlebell is essential. Not only is a kettlebell multi-purpose, but it also lasts a lifetime, so no replacements or repairs are required. There are many reasons to add a kettlebell to your home gym:

• Its thick handle improves your grip and forearm strength.
• Its center of gravity is an added challenge that can improve your performance.
• Training with kettlebells can boost your power-endurance, which contributes to muscle conditioning and fat loss.
• You can get the benefit of an aerobic workout while strength training.
• They are easy to store and won’t disturb your neighbours when in use.

Find out how to get rock-had abs using science and a kettlebell.

#3: Pull-up Bar

Let’s be honest if you want to get better at pull-ups you need to be practising them and doing so regularly, all the rowing exercises in the world are not going to help improve overhead pulling strength so if you’re serious about nailing your first pull up, installing a bar is essential. Pull-up bars are inexpensive and fairly easy to install. Also, a well-installed bar creates an anchor for you to attach resistance bands which need a high attachment point.

#4: Resistance Bands

I imagine you might already have a set of resistance bands. These have become a staple of the home workout during lockdown. Bands are super versatile and mimic a lot of the exercises you can perform on a cable machine in the gym. Once again they are useful for training the upper body pulling patterns such as rows and face pulls as well as hip hinges like kneeling thrusts and b stance hip hinge.  In my opinion, by far the best bands on the market are by perform better . 

#5: Suspension Trainer or Paralletts  

The hardest movement patterns to load at home are always the rows and upper body pulls. I appreciate not everyone can fit a pull-up bar into their homes so this is the next best thing. The suspension trainer is a great place to do rows off, as too are parallettes. Of course, both bits of kit can be used for other exercises to but the row patterns is where they really excel.

#6: Jump Rope

If you don’t have enough room to store an exercise bike in your home, a simple jump rope is a cheap and effective piece of equipment for increasing your weekly aerobic exercise. An additional benefit of skipping is because it’s a plyometric form of training where you train the connective tissue in the foot and ankle to absorb and produce force rapidly. Similar to running, but in a much more controlled environment. Impact forms of training are great for improving bone density but sometimes running can be hard on the keeps so a jump rope is a great substitute.

#7: Foam Roller

When used in conjunction with a well-rounded movement practice, a foam roller can help increase the range of motion at a joint.  What I like more with foam rollers is they come in a variety of sizes, opting for the long version can give you a handy base to perform lying exercises like chest presses on as well as being incorporated into other exercises. Foam rollers don’t just benefit your soft tissue. You can incorporate this inexpensive piece of equipment to also:

• Improve your mobility
  • Performing stretches using a roller makes it possible to relax into the postures and focus on your breathing.
• Help your balance
  • You can incorporate a foam roller into your core workouts to challenge lateral stabilisation.
• Boost strength and stability
  • Using a foam roller in your strength exercises can add a slightly different training stimulus by destabilising you, which can be the added challenge you need to boost your workout and improve your overall strength. Incorporate your foam roller the next time you do planks, push-ups, RDL’s, and bridges.

#8: Medicine Ball

Medicine balls add variety to your workouts and can be used for numerous exercises, which gives you plenty of value. Mixing things up with some medicine ball exercises can increase your core and arm strength and since standard medicine balls are about the width of your shoulders, they don’t take up too much room either. Add medicine-ball based exercises to your routine such as slams and chest throw.

If you’re interested in building an at-home workout that’s designed for your specific workout goals, contact me today to learn more about my online personal training.