- People are taking to Reddit and fitness blogs to find creative ways of lifting weights at home.
- Here are some ways to replicate typical gym weights using common household objects, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced lifter.
- Always exercise safely and be sure to properly secure your equipment to avoid injury or other possible mishaps.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
With lockdowns stretching into months, most Americans are making do with home workouts for the foreseeable future.
But if you don’t happen to have an impressive home gym setup, don’t be discouraged – there are ways to move beyond a body weight workout by making impromptu weights with common household objects.
Here are a few ways you can incorporate light, medium, and heavier weights into your home workouts with items you already have, no special-DIY skills requires.
(A disclaimer: to avoid injuries when exercising, do not attempt to lift more than you can safely manage, and always secure your equipment, or you might, at the very least, end up on a list of home gym fails).
For bicep curls and other smaller-weight movements, use a bottle of wine or jug of water
For starters, you can get a solid workout with lower weight items by doing more repetitions, and focusing on upper body movements and smaller muscle groups, including stabilizing muscles.
For weight, look to your kitchen. Cans of soup or beans weigh slightly less than a pound, so are ideal for high-volume movements such as weighted jumping jacks or cardio boxing movements.
And an average bottle of wine weighs about 2.65 pounds, according to the blog Wine Folly (and a champagne is slightly heavier due to the thicker glass).
A gallon of water (or juice, milk, and similar liquids) weighs about 8.34 pounds, according to the Science Notes website.
You can also use other household containers like milk jugs or laundry detergent bottles or tubs, filled with water, sand, or small rocks. Just make sure you seal them properly before lifting, or you could end up with quite a mess.
Depending on your experience level, you can use any of the above for concentrated upper body exercises like bicep curls, lateral arm raises, triceps kickbacks (as tennis star Venus Williams has demonstrated in her home workouts). You can also add weight to make body weight movements like supermans or sit-ups more intense. Just make sure to focus on holding the tension throughout the movement, celebrity trainer Sebastien Lagree previously told Insider.
"Move so slow you can feel gravity pulling your body to the floor, feel your body fighting gravity," Lagree said.
For medium weights, check your bookshelf or pantry
Larger units of canned or pantry goods can make for more challenging compound workouts.
If you're able to tape a few jugs together, for example, you could have a solid 32 pounds to work with, as did personal trainer Lita Lewis.
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And if you don't have kettlebells (which are increasingly hard to find), you can make do with a large sack of flour, sugar, rice, or even beans, carefully secured into tote bag or even doubled-up plastic bags. By reinforcing the handle with tape, you'll have a swingable weight that can replicate many kettlebell exercises, personal trainer Natalie Guyan told the Guardian.
A 24 pack of soda, beer, or other canned beverages weigh about 20 pounds, while a 24 pack of bottles weighs between 34-36 pounds, according to the camping blog Survival Tech Shop.
A tire, if you can find one, is an ideal workout tool - for passenger vehicles, these weigh in between 22 and 35 pounds depending on the vehicle size.
Many DIY fitness fanatics have also recommended filling a sturdy shopping bag or backpack with books to lift. If you go that route, you can calculate approximately how much weight you're using depending on the size and type of book - a typical paperback weighs slightly less than one pound, while a hefty hardcover is around two pounds, and a large textbook could be as much as 5 pounds, according to Reference.com
Sandbags, a popular fitness tool for lifts between 10 and 50 pounds, are expensive or even sold out at many online stores, but you may actually already have one - a large bag of cat litter, pet food, potting soil, or similar material will work just as well for lifts. You can even make one yourself by doubling up some sturdy trash bags and filling with sand or soil, and carefully sealing it.
If you're tossing it around, however, you may want to reinforce the container with duct tape, to avoid a mid-workout mess.
For heavier weights, get creative with industrial containers
Some exercises call for heavier weights since they incorporate larger muscle groups, including legs, or the whole body. These include various forms of squats, carries, and deadlifts.
That's a lot of books, so unless you have a very big backpack, you may need to get creative.
A jerry can, or steel container typically used to store gasoline, is about 9 pounds when empty, but 50 pounds when filled with liquid, and 70 pounds when full of gravel, according to one Home Gym redditor.
Tractor tires, which you may have seen at CrossFit style workouts, weigh in between 400 and 600 pounds for extremely heavy lifts or movements like tire flips. But semi truck tires, if you can find them, are also a versatile lifting tool for heavy workouts, ranging around 120 pounds each.
If you don't have access to these and still miss your barbell, it's possible to keep practicing form and mobility with just a broomstick, PVC pipe, or similar object, according to personal trainer Bryan Goldberg.
And don't forget that body weight exercises can still be an effective way of maintaining and even improving your fitness while gyms are closed.
"Right now it's most important to move, stay healthy and get a moderate amount of exercise," Goldberg previously told Insider.
Read more:
People are posting their home gym fails on TikTok. Here's what not to do when you work out.