Jumping into the world of sports can be really intimidating if you weren’t raised around them as a child. This should always be a part of everyone’s life, but it should never be intimidating enough to cause someone to lose interest or never get involved at all. If you’re trying to figure out the best way to spend your initial investment money in order to get the most return, here are the most common fitness purchases by those in the industry.
Probably the most obvious option to start with would be free weights. Free weights allow you to the freedom to do just about every exercise with them all while strengthening your stabilizers as well. Many times machines are created for isolation movements and this takes the strain off of your stabilizer muscles. While this allows you to typically advance faster in weight, you don’t necessarily get stronger. Your stabilizer muscles are small muscles within your body that allow you to properly balance and distribute your weight or the weight that you may be carrying or holding. Without these, you would be unable to walk straight or even carry things without falling over. All in all, free weights are one of the best bangs for your buck in the fitness world.
One of the most common places where many people start out is with gear and apparel. They think that if you look the part, people will think that you play the part. While this may be true and you may be able to fool those around you into thinking that you are some sort of professional athlete, this isn’t one of the best places for your initial investment. Reason being, because this doesn’t help you perform any better. Unless you’re at the competitive level, buying fitness clothing and gear is nothing more than an overpriced T-shirt. Again, this doesn’t apply for everyone, as the fitness wear can be very beneficial to those who are at the competitive level. This is totally up to you to decide whether or not you will receive any return on your investment with apparel, but my personal suggestion to you is to save it for later.
Another good option for you to spend some money on would be balls. No, not the ones in your shorts, but balls that you can use in order to increase your strength. Even footballs and baseballs train your body and bring you strength over time, but that wasn’t what I was initially referring to when I brought this up. One of the coolest tools is a medicine ball. Medicine balls are balls which have different amounts of weight inside them and allow you to do some really cool exercises that will hit your body in ways that you’ve never challenged it before. While this may sound intimidating and possibly dangerous, in order to get proper growth of your body, you need to confuse your muscles by making them do exercises that they aren’t used to having to do. The medicine ball is most definitely one of those things that will confuse your body and spark growth.
Last, but not least is one that you may not have thought of, bats or rackets are an extremely useful tool. Now in and of themselves, they won’t do much for you, but when paired with a sport or activity, you could be working more muscles than you imagined simultaneously. For instance, a sport like tennis or golf not only works on strengthening your arms and upper body, but also causes you to walk or run, therefore working on cardio as well as endurance in your lower body muscles.
Often times, as humans, we work out harder if we are forced to be competitive. That’s the general idea of sports themselves. If you can cause someone to get that competitive manner to be brought out within them, they will work much harder and not notice it. One of the biggest goals of most people in fitness is to be able to work hard and not consciously know that you’re working that hard. That allows you to enjoy your time exercising instead of agonizing through it.
When all is said and done, hopefully some of these options that I listed are going to be useful for you. If you have a specific result that you’re looking for you need to invest your money in things that will help you reach it. Do some other research online and see if you can come up with other lists of the best fitness accessories and compare them with my list. After you’ve done your research, go out and commit to your purchase and most importantly, above all else, commit to using your new equipment that you finally purchased! Just because you went out and bought it doesn’t mean that you’re going to see results if you’re not picking it up and using it every day. Stay committed, don’t get discouraged and in the end you’ll be showing off before you know it!