The holidays are upon us and for me, several extra pounds soon will be as well. So in an attempt to combat the girth that will inevitably encroach around my midsection, I’ve already begun making some adjustments to my home gym that should provide some nice core exercises. Our Florida home is not close to any commercial gyms so trying to trick myself into believing that I’ll actually “go to the gym” while we are here is futile at best. Fortunately we have enough garage space that we were able to turn one bay into a Crossfit style work out space.
In that space I’ve added a giant tractor tire for flipping, dragging and pounding with a sledgehammer. I’ve also added a power rack with a pull up bar, an Olympic barbell and bumper plates, a set of kettlebells, some plyometric boxes (a couple different heights), a set of dumbbells, a jump rope, a weight bench, a medicine ball and a heavy bag. The best part about most of this stuff is that I picked the majority of this up for pretty cheap. Craigslist is a GOOD thing.
The latest addition to my home gym however is a slosh pipe. Ever heard of it? If not, you’re in for a good ass kicking. Let me start with a brief description. A slosh pipe is nothing more than a 4 inch diameter PVC pipe (mine is 10 feet long but they can be any length) that’s capped at both ends and filled about 2/3’s full with water. As you can imagine trying to control ~40 pounds of water “sloshing” around inside this pipe is very, very difficult. The movement of the water inside the pipe forces your stabilizer muscles to work overtime just to keep your body upright and for me that’s the core workout that I was looking for.
The beauty of this beast is that you don’t have to get fancy with it. I’m told that any number of simple motions are perfect for getting great results from using this tool. So to be clear, I’ve only used this thing once and that was just to try it out after putting it together. I just picked it up, held it close to my chest and walked up and own my driveway (which is about 50 yards long) twice. I was amazed at how hard it was number one but the next day I was actually sore from that simple test drive. (I know, maybe that just means I’m soft and flabby already.)