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Cheap Exercise: Take Fitness off the Budget
With today's modern super-gyms and late-night infomercials hocking expensive (and typically useless) exercise machines, it can seem out of reach for some to stay in shape. Fortunately, there's many ways to exercise that technology forgot.
Cheap exercise - is it possible to lose weight, build muscle, or maintain a healthy lifestyle while living within the constraints of a low budget? Assuredly, irrevocably, undoubtedly, the answer is most certainly yes! Low-budget exercise is not a complicated matter, with options existing even at the price of absolute zero.
Starting with the simplest of simple, we begin with the concept of healthy substitution, wherein unhealthy choices are replaced with their calorie-burning alternatives. For instance, the ancient concept of putting one foot in front of the other makes for a healthy and scenic substitution for the polluting and lethargic car ride. When walking is an option, take it! Not only is walking one of the easiest forms of free exercise, but it is also one of the only discovered common of nearly all "centurians" (those who live to be 100 or older).
Healthy substitutions don't end with just walking, though, and include taking the stairs as opposed to the elevator, pick-up as opposed to delivery, and perhaps even a romantic walk on the beach as opposed to a not-so-romantic action flick. These substitutions will spare both your health and your wallet - a double-victory for those afraid to exercise due to financial woes. To provide exponential benefit to that wallet, drop your notions of "simulated exercise" as well.
Tread mills, exercise bikes, stair machines - what do they all have in common? They all simulate the performing of a very healthy activity, though come with a price tag not seen on their mundane counterparts.
Instead of running in the comfort of your own home on a tread mill, try running in the beauty of the great outdoors.
Instead of purchasing an exponentially expensive exercise bike, pick up a traditional bike at a garage sale for a fraction of the price.
Finally, instead of a stair machine, try... stairs.
Don't feel the need to empty your pockets for a contraption that allows you to do what your body is fundamentally capable of doing by itself! Cluttering up your living space with unsightly machines is as expensive as it is unnecessary.
There's no need to equip your home with a gym, though there is merit to using what's already in your home as a gym. A floor gives you the means to do push-ups, sit-ups, squats, crunches, stretches, leg-raises, and an impossibly large amount of alternatives for the arms, legs, abdomen, chest, and back muscles. A wall allows you to expand upon the aforementioned, opening you up to new stretches and squats, and the frame of a doorway is suitable for chin-ups, depending on thickness. Opening a cupboard should reveal a multitude of objects available in substitution for expensive weight sets. Shoulder-fly's with soup cans, anyone? Bicep curls with bags of flour? So long as you're willing to sacrifice an element of convenience, the list of absolutely free exercise solutions stretches as far as your creativity.
With a little innovation, you can target every major muscle group without spending a cent that you wouldn't have otherwise spent, and compose a great aerobic workout. This is more than low-budget exercise; this is taking exercise out of your budget altogether.
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