Author: gary

Our series on home fitness equipment continues with the venerable kettlebell. This one should have been further up the list but I'd somehow neglected to put it on the list at all! Oops. But it's here now.

Fill in the blank in this quote: "We found that _______ had a stronger association with all cause and cardiovascular disease mortality than do systolic blood pressure or total physical activity..."

If you hadn't read the title of this post, would you have guessed the answer to be "grip strength"?

Starting the next ten entries in the home equipment list we have a big one: the power rack. Also known as a "squat rack" or "power cage" or "squat cage" or "Arthur." OK, I made that last one up.

I went many years without one of these but now consider it indispensible. If you use a barbell (and you should) and have the space, get one.

My trusty Pacemaster Gold treadmill was getting a little long in the tooth at 13 years old. It still worked fine but the motor was noisy and the belt could skip a bit at high speeds if I didn't clean it often enough. Rather than wait for something bad to happen and be without a treadmill for the winter, I opted to get a new one. Times being what they are, I did my research online rather than in the store, and the one I picked wasn't in the store anyway. My only option was to get it and, if I didn't like it, return it. That treadmill is the Horizon 7.4 AT. All the reviews I read on it looked good, although there wasn't as much info as I'd have liked. It was also significantly less expensive than my Pacemaster. (They're out of business, unfortunately.)

Not long ago, I wrote a post on the importance of using a full range of motion (ROM) in strength exercises. One of the most difficult exercises to do full ROM is the pull-up (or chin-up, which is just a pull-up variation). Just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't do it!