Exercise Equipment for Home Use

There are a multitude of reasons why you should exercise. The most important is for your health. Exercise will help you lose weight and prevent the risk of obesity. The United States is at epidemic levels of obesity especially in children. 13 % of the children in the United States are obese. There are fast food and donut shops on every corner, in every town in America. And our children are not getting enough exercise as compared to their parents generation. If you tell a kid today to go out and play most of them have no idea what to do. They want to stay home and play on the computer or play video games, and we all know they can do these activities for hours on end. These are frightening statistics. Obesity can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and all sorts of body pains including back and ankle pain. Our ankles were not designed to carry around 300 + pounds.

The easiest and most simple way to start exercising is walking. It's something we all do everyday. So all you have to do is step it up a notch. Go for a family after dinner walk. Start with a few blocks and increase as you get more fit. You would be amazed how much weight you can lose just adding a bit of extra walking in your day. There are also a dazzling array of exercise equipment that you can buy cheaply for in home use. I have been walking for exercise for over a year now but in the winter when the roads are icy I prefer to stay home and ride a stationary bike. Of the exercise equipment I am going to talk about the stationary bike is the most expensive. You can pick up a new one for about 130 bucks at its cheapest. I have a 130 dollar stationary bike and its wonderful. It has a speedometer, mileage, time spent pedaling, and a calories burned counter on it. Put in a movie and pedal while you watch. There always seems to be a stationary bike or two used at many yard sales. Check it out, you can probably pick one up for 10 or 20 bucks.

Resistance bands are a wonderful addition to any home gym. They are easy to store taking up little space. The idea behind a resistance band is to strengthen your muscles. The stronger your muscles the less pain in the whole working out deal. Most resistance bands come with either a work out dvd or a chart showing exercises that you can do with it. Next is an exercise ball. These are great devices for all sorts of exercises as well as balance control. The University of San Diego did a study on the most effective crunches and they found that a crunch done on an exercise ball is the 3rd most effective. Crunches on the floor are painful for your tail bone. But done on an exercise ball helps with that problem. I recently purchased another sort of exercise ball type apparatus called The Bean. It is a curved exercise type inflated device that helps support your back during exercise and it also have a rocking motion to help you with the exercise. Its really great and I use it in addition to the exercise ball. Small weights especially  for women is another useful piece of exercise equipment. They are great to work out your arms and I love them for working out my triceps to help with that whole older woman flabby arm thingy.