I helped some friends move house today and while I was breaking my back lifting a giant book shelf I realized how good home workouts can be. In this article I want to look at some cool ways you can use household items to get a great home workout.

How to use household items to get a great workout

The idea behind this article is to give people who don’t have much money some inspiration and ideas for creating some effective home workouts. Despite what the big fitness companys tell you, you do not need much to have a great workout.

Bricks, stones and logs

Bricks, stones, logs and other heavy objects that are just laying around are excellent workout tools. You can do all sorts of things with these simple items. For example, picking up a heavy stone and carrying it from one end of the yard to the other is a great way to develop your back, forearms and leg muscles. It also really challenges your cardiovascular fitness.

Bricks can be used individually or in a bunch. The photo above shows my brother holding a brick so as to get a good grip workout. This really challenges your finger strength. Or, hold one brick in each hand and do side lateral raises to workout your shoulders. If you pick up five or more bricks at once you can carry them around the place and work your back some more.

Logs can be used to hoist around or used for bicep curls. Another thing that my buddies and I do is hand-offs where you press the log above your head as many times as you can (as my brother is demonstrating above) and then hand it to your partner. He then does the same and you continue back and forth without any breaks until you are all too tired to do any more.

Chairs and tables

If you have ever been on a holiday and wanted to do a workout in your hotel room you will understand how useful chairs and tables can be. I quite often use two chairs to do tricep dips on or to create a space for me to do pushups. When you do pushups between two chairs you can get a really deep stretch which makes your pecs work especially hard.

Another way you can use tables and chairs is as different levels to put your feet up on so that pushups become more difficult. When you elevate your feet to do the pushup you place a greater emphasis on the shoulder muscles as well as the upper pecs. It is much harder than ordinary regular pushups.

Trees and garage beams

Quite often you can get a pretty complete bicep and back workout by doing pull ups and chin ups on the tree in the back yard? Or, if you have an outdoor garage you can hoist yourself up onto the beams and do the workout there. You really don’t need a fancy chin up bar to get a good workout. Sure your hands might get a little worn out but at least you are working hard and pushing your boundaries.

Steps, stairs and ledges

Another great way to workout at home is to punish your legs with some step ups and calf raises using whatever steps, stairs or ledges you have around the place.

At my house we have a very unfinished fence around the front and my brother and I often compete to see who can do the most step ups in a miunute. After this kind of workout your legs turn to jelly and you really feel it the next day. As you can see above the fence is quite high and takes a lot of effort to “step” up to it.

The photo above shows how you can use your front porch stairs to get a really good calf workout. Calf raises are easy to do and if really isolate those pesky calf muscles. You can make the workout a lot harder by adding a backpack full of weights or books so that your calf muscles have to do more work.

Conclusion on home workouts

These are only a few ways you can use household items to get a killer workout. Just be as creative as possible when you are trying to cook up your own workouts. If you don’t have bricks then use books. If you don’t have a front fence like mine then use a solid chair or coffee table. There are plenty of ways to get a good workout at home.

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