Usually, when people think fitness, the gym comes to mind. The gym supplies you with everything you think you need to get in shape and stay fit. However, the gym is not always a reality, there can be a variety of reasons you can’t get to the gym from time, to convenience, to cost. Here’s a shocker, you don’t need a gym to stay active! Use these tips and tricks to stay motivated and active to get fit without a gym membership!
Let’s look at some No Gym Workouts.
Ways to Get Fit Without a Gym Membership
YOUR COMMUNITY
From parks, to rec centers most large cities and many suburbs offer different no gym workout options.
- Walk-ride-play. Check your local community park. Most parks offer walking and running trails. Depending on the size of the park these trails can cover several miles. Some will even have markers to show you the distance you have traveled or to access the different difficulty of the terrain. When you run outdoors on a paved or dirt trail you have to compensate for terrain. Even if paved, the ground is never 100% straight and even like the belt of a treadmill. The variations in hardness of the ground or different dips and slopes all require more use of energy and activate different muscle groups. Another thing to consider with outdoor running is wind resistance and the varying oxygen needs dependent on the weather and elevation.
A 2012 study found that participants actually ran faster on the ground as opposed to their speed on a treadmill.
- Community groups encourage fitness. Many cities have been sponsoring groups that run or bike. The city of Detroit has a collaborative of more than 40 different organizations offering access to healthy food and availability to physical activity. Bike Cleveland is non-profit that offers safe biking options for citizens throughout the greater Cleveland area.
To see what community groups your city offers go to your cities website or call the city recreation/parks department.
- Use the community to your advantage for your gym free workouts. Taking your kids to the park? Well while playground equipment might be a fun time for kids, many of the pieces of equipment double as bodyweight and leverage machines. Some parks will even include balance beams, pull up bars, and parallel bars. With a simple parallel bar you can do dips, incline pushups, decline pushups, and pull-ups.
LOCAL SPORTS
Do some research and I bet you can find a basketball or baseball league in your town. If you can’t then why not start it? Most communities have baseball diamonds, football fields, and basketball courts. I’ll bet you that your city’s parks offer running, soccer, and volleyball leagues.
Sports improve aerobic conditioning, reaction time, speed, and agility. You can work muscles that often get neglected in fixed weight gym exercises. This makes sporting events a perfect no gym workout.
Here are some estimates of calories expenditure from different sports
- Golf 180 pound person 369 calories
- Softball 180 pound person 430 calories
- Tennis 180 pound person 515 calories
- Basketball 180 pound person 687 calories
“Meet -Ups” for Gym Free Workouts
If you aren’t familiar with “meet ups” its a site an app that allows people to post groups in cities across the nation to “meet up” for anything and everything. You just register on the site then scope out all of the fun groups! There are tons of different fitness activities posted!
YOUR OWN HOME
An astonishing 80% of people with gym memberships don’t make time in their day to attend. Here are gym free workout options at home.
- Stairs– Unless you are super rich you’re not taking the elevator in your house to get up or down stairs or to the basement. How about apartment stairs? One Canadian research study found stairs to be more demanding than walking and weight lifting. They found as much as 50% more effort required in climbing stairs. A study from Harvard found that men who average eight flights of stairs a day had a 33% lower mortality rate than sedentary men.
- Clean up– The simple act of house work requires effort and can turn into a form of exercise. From vacuuming, to cleaning windows, to yard work, these activities are all functional exercises that recruit multiple muscle groups to do activity. NBC’s Today featured a segment that estimated calorie burn for various household activity.
- Home gym– You can turn your home into a gym and still get a no gym workout. Check out my Guerilla Home Workout to find out how to use any area or surface of your home for a no gym workout. Another option is to set up challenge points throughout your home. For example, every time you pass a certain point you do 10 pushups to pass, or every time you go from one floor to the next double back once you reach the top and bottom of the stairs.
Finally, you can even get fit watching TV. Assign challenges to certain shows, commercials, or visuals. When you see a commercial for a car dealer do 15 crunches. When you change to a channel with a commercial do 10 push-ups before proceeding. When your show goes on a commercial break do burpees until the show resumes. You can also use our easy to follow commercial break workout routine!
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