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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.

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