We built a home gym this week or started to. I’m thankful it survived the great flood of 2019. Our basement survived some awful flooding due to 11 in of rain in 72 hours (5 inches in about 4 hours) and serious rain wrap and cloud rotation.
Last week, I realized self-care needed to be a priority. I am doing the “second shift” at our house daily. I’m the single earner right now and also the only cook. I do all of our financials. I take care of a lot of cleaning. I am going to post a little about this later but the short end is I’m not doing a good job of getting away.
We have belonged to a nice gym. It was the first “want” we fulfilled after moving. And the gym is now 5 minutes from our house. But, all of a sudden, we were paying about $80 a month for full services and using almost none of them! Husband no longer had time to take R with him between job search and preschool and he was mainly using it for a break for his sanity. Now, with preschool, he gets that time.
So, we talked about it and discovered all I do anymore is use a really old Lemond spin bike in a sad hallway and lifting hand weights. Since we already had resistance bands and bikes. We determined that getting a trainer for our bikes and getting so weights when our tax returns came was more cost effective than the gym membership.
So, I decided to buy a $25 trainer on Facebook marketplace at the recommendation of one of my bike crazy students (who admitted to using that same sad bike all the time before he bought a trainer). Shoutout to him for giving me some tips! Well, here we went.
I determined in this process that my barrier to the gym was it was in the middle of traffic hell, didn’t fit into my schedule before work or even really after since I had to go late and I was usually too tired. The bike is in our basement. I’ve been training this week and have already got on it 4 times!
There is no way I would have time to get to the gym to spin for 45 minutes before work! But here we are!
I’m going to update you on the costs of this gym along the way.
So far, we have the hand-me-down trainer that was $25.00 and set of resistance bands I got as a prize at a 10K I ran which probably run $20.00 (they’re a latex free set).
We had a mirror already from target we paid $10 that we need to hang up!
So far, $55.
I needed to do this even at a time finances were tight. It’s been good for me.
And I’m proud of myself for not only maintaining my weight loss through all of life’s changes but also losing 4 lbs the last month due to my focus on cardio and cutting out basically all takeout. So, even when you don’t get to the gym every day, remember that every little bit helps. And anything that can lower your barriers to maintaining or improving your health is worth the time and money to invest in.
Maybe you keep that gym membership but only go twice a week and add in a YouTube HIIT workout with resistance bands? You can do it in a hallway or the kitchen (this is what I used to do at our old place when we had no space in any of the bedrooms. But it gets you there.
Or maybe it’s walking at lunch! I do this when it’s not under 20 and raining or snowing. Moving is moving no matter the speed.
There are more posts coming with good food! I promise! But with grant applications due, I struggled to find time to update this week.
The Mama Politic 