Every gymgoer knows the standard equipment: dumbbells, benches, power racks, and so on. While these items can be effective, they can also feel boring and stale after so many uses. If you want to make your home gym more interesting and unconventional, consider these outside-the-box additions!
Monkey Bars
Monkey bars aren’t just for playgrounds—they provide an excellent workout for your upper body. These bars develop your grip strength, wrists, elbows, and shoulders in a more athletic and natural way than with free weights.
Swinging around from bar to bar is also a good test of your stamina and power. Plus, they can bring you back to your childhood days on the playground!
Rock Climbing Wall
If you’re interested in really developing your endurance and the finer muscles of your upper body, try rock climbing. Rock climbing is an excellent core workout that builds muscles in your fingers, hand, forearms, and leg muscles.
If you don’t want to get a rock climbing gym membership or don’t live near one, you can install a rock climbing wall in your home. You only need an open wall, some climbing holds, and imagination to create challenging routes!
Waterballs
Another outside-the-box addition to consider for your home gym is the waterball. If you’ve never tried them, waterballs are similar to medicine balls, except you fill them with some water.
The water sloshes around in the ball and creates instability while you work out, which forces your body to work harder to stay balanced and makes exercise more challenging. You can do practically any exercise with the added challenge of a waterball, from pushups to squats to ab workouts.
Sandbags
Like waterballs, sandbags offer another option for an unstable version of exercise equipment that forces your muscles to work harder to stay balanced. Sandbags replace traditional free weights such as dumbbells and kettlebells, and you can do pretty much the same exercises with them.
The unstable sandbag develops your grip strength, as you must hold on tight, and forces you to focus on your balance and technique as you go through the exercises. They may seem simple, but after a few sets, you’ll feel the burn in muscles you didn’t even know you had!
Tires
Large tires are a popular workout item for functional workout enthusiasts and Instagram fitness influencers, but there’s a reason they’re popular—they work! We’ve all seen videos of people flipping huge tires, but there are other ways to use them, including sledgehammer tire slams, decline pushups, or broad jumps.
We hope our handy list has given you some ideas for what to add to your home gym instead of the usual standard list of weights and machines. If you’re bored with your workout routine, try thinking unconventionally and add some new items to your gym!