No Real Equipment? No Problem!

Well, I've been working out from home for a while now, and I've mostly settled on my workarounds. I do not have any dumbbells or kettlebells, and certainly not a barbell and plates. I don't even have room inside my apartment to jump rope, so I've been doing a lot of hopping and jumping instead. It's been tricky, but I've been getting my sweat on almost every day.

This is the workout space. Where the "magic" happens. 

Of course, no magic can happen with that rolling chair in the way. It gets moved to a different location and the blanket is put on the carpet to prevent rug burn - yes, I have gotten rug burn from working out on carpet before, no fun!

This classic folding chair could be used for chair dips, but I haven't actually used it yet. But the moment I need it, boom, a place to do chair dips, elevated push ups, and, if I'm feeling daring, even step ups (I am not that daring). 

This step stool, I will use for step ups. Not box jumps though, there's just not enough space for my feet. It's 18 inches, so a shorter step than I'd be using at CrossFit, but more than the alternative (the alternative is 0 inches). 

I'm the kind of person who would love to have her own personal fan at CrossFit. Well, now, with working out from home, I can finally realize that dream. This fan is dedicated to blowing directly at me, at whichever speed I want it to blow. It is the best part. 

Many year ago, before I was at my current job or my current apartment, I wanted to lift more weights, but I didn't want to pay to join a gym. So what did I do? I bought some concrete and filled various size cans with the mixture, along withe some chains so the links could stick out. Technically, I can use these like dumbbells or kettlebells. I mean, kind of. They only weigh about 4 pounds each though so I don't really like using them. Too light. But they look heavy. 

These are twenty 1 pound sandbags. I got them when I bought a weighted vest. The vest itself was pretty shitty, and I ended up getting rid of it. But I kept these little babies. They are useful for loading up a backpack for a training hike, and now they are also useful for working out from home, but not by themselves. 

They're better with a container, like this Nalgene bottle, which holds 7 of them. It's still a pretty light weight for a dumbbell, but it has the added difficultly level of having a very large grip. 

At first, I thought I could only fit 6 of them, but after I did a workout, the motions had cleared more space inside the bottle, revealing room for one more. 

Of course, this little backpack can hold all twenty - or any number of them, if I want less than 20 pounds. I can pretty much treat this like a sandbag and do cleans and overhead presses, or I can put it on as a weight vest. This backpack usually has more straps, but I took them off so they would stop thwapping me in the face while I worked out. I'm debating removing the shoulders straps, but they've come in handy for some movements, so they stay for now. You'd think that being away from the gym would mean that I wouldn't be getting any hand tears, and I'm not - on my palms. I did manage to wear the skin off of the last knuckle of my middle finger using this backpack for ground to overhead movements. I'm skilled like that ;)

Now, I don't have a barbell. But I do have this thingy. It's a bar, kind of heavy, and it has some rings on the ends that allow me to attach my homemade weights (or any weights that I can get a caribiner on). 

It's not a lot of weight, maybe 15 pound total between the bar and the cans, but the instability of the setup adds a level of challenge to movements. Especially lunges. I almost lost my balance a couple of times doing 100 walking lunges with this across my shoulders.

One of my greatest laments about my current living situation is the lack of a pull up bar. We can't exactly hang one in a secure fashion when we're renting, and Ambrose is convinced that the door frame ones will either break the door frame or break me by falling at an inconvenient time. But I did figure out a way to get some pull ups in.