Essential Fitness Kit
How to get fit and strong
The most effective way to get fitter, stronger and faster is to make it easier to workout and exercise. Building training into your routine is essential. A secret to a good routine is removing as many barriers as possible – anything which limits your ability to exercise.
A great way to achieve this is have equipment in your home you can reach for to get a quick workout in. Why waste an hour traveling to a from a gym when you can use that time to workout at home?
Here’s a list of affordable, accessible and portable exercise equipment which will help you get fitter, faster and are easy to incorporate into your daily routine – all within easy reach.
Mini resistance Bands
Mini resistance bands enable you to turn almost any space into a fully equipped gym. They’re incredibly versatile – you can use them for muscle-building workouts or to assist while you stretch.
Mini bands are great for activating smaller muscle groups or making core exercises more difficult. Loop one of these around your feet, do some Russian twists and feel the burn.
These bands should be in every athlete’s kit bag.
resistance Bands
As with mini bands, the full sized bigger brothers enable you to get a full body workout. Arguably better than free weights, bands increase resistance as you contract the muscle – making it harder where you need it.
Stand on the band, grab each loop with your hands and perform squats. Loop one around a door handle to perform tricep curls or single arm presses. The options are almost limitless. Highly recommended investment.
Exercise Rings
Exercise rings are a phenomenal tool for building upper body strength and all-round fitness. You’ll need to tether these to a chin up bar or over head mount.
You can adjust the strap lengths – high up to enable everything from chin ups, mid-length to do row jack-knife pull ups which is great for people struggling with strict pull ups, dropped down to do press ups.
It works similar to a TRX band. It’s also a versatile bit of kit. Take it to the park, sling over a tree branch and workout in the fresh air and sunshine.
Pull Up Bar
Body weight exercises don’t get much harder than chin ups. But once you’ve built a bit of strength and add pull ups / chin up and hanging leg raises to your workout programme, you’ll see massive gains.
If you’re struggling to do a single chin up, use a chair to step up and slowly lower yourself down, or loop a resistance band around the bar, hook a knee in for a little help.
This is an addictive exercise because the results are quick and very obvious.
Sliders
Sliders might look small, but they can make a massive difference to the amount and intensity of exercises you can perform at home.
They’re great for working your core – try a few body saws or mountain climbers. They’re also fantastic tools for working hard to reach parts of the body, such as hamstrings. Lie flat, put your heels on the sliders, bring your feet towards your buttocks to form a glute bridge. Killer exercise that will bring massive strength boosts.
Kit Reviews
Coros Pace 2: The Perfect Running GPS Watch... Almost
The GPS running watch market has never been more competitive. Garmin’s crown as the default choice for any keen runner in the market for a new device is over.
Enter other brands such as Polar, Sunto and Coros – all boasting new features, accuracy levels and price points, which will give Garmin a run for its money.
When it came time to upgrade my tired, old Garmin 230 – a mid range, running specific watch, costing around £250 – there are quite a few options to consider in this feature and price range.
Theragun Elite - is this massage gun worth it?
I’ve suffered with achilles tendonitis for years. Too many miles and not enough stretching and strength work. So I finally decided to splash out on a Theragun elite massage gun to see if it would solve my injury troubles and help me train harder.
At around $500 USD and £400 GBP, was it a costly mistake or incredible value for money?
Here’s my short-term review of the percussion massage therapy gun.

Nike Dragonfly Review - do these superspikes offer free speed?
Do the latest breed of super shoes give you free speed? I finally gave in to the hype and bought a pair of Nike’s latest and greatest track spikes – the ZoomX dragonflies – to find out.
My racing performance over 3000m and 5000m has plateaued over the last few years. I’ve consistently run just under nine minutes and 15.30s for these disciplines, so began looking for any advantage I could find.
Given nearly every competitor I was up against had some super shoe, I thought “if I can’t beat them, I’ll join them”.
