Free Fitness

These days it's hard to do anything without money. It acts as a barrier for many of the things we tell ourselves we can't do. How many times have you told yourself 'when I get the money I'll…' insert goal, dream or bucket-list activity? Fortunately for those of you with fitness on that list, it doesn't need to cost hardly anything.

Not many will argue that a gym is the best place to get fit, especially if you have lifting weights and building muscle in mind. A gym allows one to integrate the science of measurement to track their progress with pounds or kilograms and is absolutely optimal. But in order to access those pounds and kilograms, the gym comes with a price of membership that not many are willing or able to pay. This facilitates fitness falling into the category of the 'when I get the money I'll' list which in my opinion is completely unnecessary.

Get Creative

From the time I started training, a speed/strength coach of mine always preached that money is never a barrier for achieving fitness goals. He instilled in me the ability to be creative and to find solutions. One summer while we weren't allowed to train in our gym due to a teacher strike, he went to the junkyard and for free the owner let him take old inner tubes from truck tires that he then filled with sand and duct taped. Now, with three different weights, my coach was still able to put us through hell and allow us to keep training even despite not having a weight room.

Through that training, upon returning to the weight room I noticed an increase in almost all of my lifts and from that point on I would see the world differently. Every playground was full of pull up bars or places to hold your ankles for glute-ham raise, cinder blocks are dumbbells and the list goes on.

My point isn't to discourage gym goers, my point is to decrease the stigma of nonconventional training methods after all everyone built differently. Herschel Walker, an NFL and college star running back trained only via pushups sit ups pull ups and other bodyweight exercises and started only being able to do 10 but worked his way up to doing thousands a day. For speed, he would chase trains. Obviously, not all of us can be Herschel Walker but his consistency is what allowed him to outperform the rest by only performing simple movements and being creative.

The take-home message is that there is no bad way to start and it is possible to learn by doing. Be creative even if you are a gym member, mix it up and take one of your workouts to the playground. They don't call it the jungle gym for anything. Start small and with consistency comes creativity and you may surprise yourself with the results.

Written By: Kieran Testa