I’m not really too keen on paying for a gym membership every month, and at this point I’m not really interested in building new muscle or bulking up either. I really just want to do some core workouts and focus on toning and endurance to supplement triathlon training. So I was looking around the web and found some stuff on the Bulgarian training bag–pricey. I also found Matt Wichlinski, who has a great video on making your own, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
The only thing I did different was to use a kid’s inflatable ring pool toy instead of a tire inner tube. I needed it to be lighter because The Missus wants to use it too. It seems to be working pretty well (I’m sore).The bag I made weighs 16.5 pounds. It cost me $2 for the ring, about $4 in duct tape, and the sand was free at the beach. I’m going to make a bigger one, hopefully around 35 lbs for some other exercises.
While I was at it, I bought a basketball from Walmart for $4, cut a small hole in it and filled it with sand too. I used Gorilla Glue to seal the opening, duct taped it shut, wrapped the whole ball in a garbage bag, and duct taped it more. I ended up with a 23lb medicine ball! Here’s a photo of the finished ball.
Kettlebell swings come to mind almost immediately. The Kettlebell Swing is the most basic Kettlebell movement out there, and one which can be learned by almost anyone.
I do not know what I was carrying out prior to kettlebells, most likely losing heaps of time and not acquiring as fit as I could possibly have been.