Save Money and Keep Your Fitness Resolution with Cross Training
In order to save a lot of money, start preparing for your New Year resolution a little early this year. Put a few simple fitness items on your Christmas list, and you will be all set to follow through with your goal to get in shape when January comes around.
Typically, people make the monetary and physical mistake of joining a gym in hopes of keeping their fitness resolution. As most gym members could tell you, this financial commitment saddles you with a contract, even when you (like the other 90% of new members) stop going to the gym.
Even the most affordable gyms charge at least thirty dollars a month, and that price usually requires a one year-contract. For that same thirty dollars, you could purchase all you need for a simple fitness routine, one that you could do at home and without the financial burden of a contract.
I am now fifty, and I have been doing cross fitness at home for about four years. Let me say that it has been much more rewarding than all the gym memberships I used to purchase. Not only is the cross fitness much cheaper, but unlike at the gym, I can work out whenever I desire.
The three pieces of equipment I use cost me a total of thirty five dollars. Everything else I need for my workout involves things around the house or nothing at all.
A cross training workout will vary, depending on the individual. Most routines should include three exercises, and these should never be the same on consecutive days.
My daily routine involves one activity for cardio, one for endurance, and one for muscle tone. I have four different routines, which I do four straight days. The fifth day then is a rest day to allow recovery time for my body.
Here is my routine, which never exceeds twenty minutes.
Day one: 300 line jumps, ten lunges with a broom handle, fifty triceps curls with an 18-inch dumbbell and two 25 lb. plates. I repeat the three exercises for twenty minutes, usually completing 1200 line jumps, 150 curls, and thirty or forty lunges.
Total financial cost for day one: ten dollars for dumbbell and two plates.
Day two: three minutes of running in place, fifteen chin ups, twenty-five squats with ten pound medicine ball. Again, I repeat the three activities for twenty minutes.
Total financial cost for day two: ten dollars for medicine ball, and ten dollars for chin up bar.
Day three: fifty box jumps using the front porch step in warm weather or the bottom basement step inside, 75 push ups, 65 ball tosses with ten pound medicine ball. As usual, I repeat the activities for twenty minutes.
Financial cost for day three is nothing, but a ten dollar aerobic step could be purchased in place of the porch or basement step.
Day four: three minute jump rope, eighty sit ups, 25 bicep curls with dumbbell bar and two 25 lb. plates. I continue these three activities for twenty minutes. Total cost for day four is five dollars for the jump rope.
Day five is my favorite, which is the rest day. That is when I can pat myself on the back not only for the workout I endured, but all the money I saved in lieu of a gym membership.
