If a regular fitness ball doesn’t do much for you (I mean, after all, it’s just a ball…) and the peanut exercise ball isn’t floating your boat, you might want to try a fitness ball with handles. The Danskin Core Ball Plus is designed to be pretty much all you need to do a complete upper body workout. The “handles” of which I speak are actually balls attached to rubber tubing, so you can do all sorts of resistance exercises, such as bench press and military press, while balancing your weight on the ball. And if all that balancing just sounds tedious, you can make use of the “balance ring” that comes with it. The round tube can rest around the bottom of the ball to stabilize it (though I think that would defeat a lot of the purpose of using a fitness ball, as they’re meant to make you utilize more core muscles even when doing isolated exercises such as military presses).
Anyway, the Danskin ball costs $40 and is available from fitnessem.
Just yesterday, I found something suspiciously like mold in the bottom of my water bottle. I scrubbed it out really good and ran it through the dishwasher, but it got me thinking that maybe it’s time for a new water bottle. After all this is just some ugly purple thing I picked up at Fred Meyer’s last year for a few bucks. Considering how many places I take it (everywhere from Karate to hiking to bicycling and over to people’s houses on occasion), maybe it should look cool and reflect my personality a bit. Well, I found some water bottles online that might fit the bill.
According to the site, the Sigg water bottles are “ultra-lightweight, durable, great looking, 100% recyclable and most importantly, safe.” They come in different sizes and styles (Hello Kitty, anyone? A glow-in-the-dark skull on a black bottle?) and some are specifically designed for sports and travel use. I noticed they sell special brushes for cleaning them, which would be cool, since most sports bottles I’ve had have too small a mouth to get your hand and a rag down inside them. (Hence my mold issue.)
Prices for the bottles are around $20. I might just have to order one.
I don’t know about you, but I drop my iPod all the time. It’s not surprising, considering how many places I take it. It goes with me to the gym, hiking, mountain biking, snowshoeing, and inline skating (yes, I like to be active). I’m regularly dropping it in parking lots and on trails. My iPod still works, but it’s definitely getting scratched and dinged up. What I need is a suit of armor to protect it.
Enter the iTank, an aluminum case for protecting your iPod. This armor for your mp3 player comes with a hex wrench so you can secure and remove the front plate (though you shouldn’t need to often; you can charge your pod iPod and surf the menus with the iTank attached) and an attachable carabiner. The screen protector is made from machined lexan, so even the display gets some loving protection. Now I just need to get a new iPod so I have a player worth all that armor.
iTank via CoolHunting
If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen plenty of those fitness balance balls (I’ve heard them called Swedish balls too) at the gym. The personal trainers at my 24 Hour Fitness really like them. The newest rage seems to be doing all your weight training exercises while sitting, or even kneeling, on one of these. Something about developing core strength (which, as a karate student, I totally understand… still, they look a little silly kneeling on a ball to do biceps curls… I wonder how many of them are really thinking about their biceps). Anyway, as I was saying, you’ve probably seen lots of those fitness balls, but have you seen one shaped as a peanut?
I hadn’t until I stumbled across this one on the Amazon site. The picture looks, uhm, silly. But maybe it’s just me (it usually is). I’m not sure what the advantage is to a peanut-shaped ball, but if you want to take a closer look, here’s the link:
There you go. For only $50, you too can look like you’re swimming in between a couple of mooshed together fitness balls…
Push-up bars let you go deeper on your push-ups and really work your pecs (or triceps if you’ve got your hands in close). They’ve been around for ages, and there’s nothing really gadget-y about them, but these ones are padded for your comfort (oooh, luxury), so I thought I’d point them out. Available for $15 from Fitness Giant, the polyethylene push-up bars can support up to 350 pounds each, so you can be really buff (or really needing a diet) and not worry about busting these. They also have non-skid rubber pads on the bottom for traction, so you can do reverse push-ups without worrying about the bars flying away.
If you’re tired of doing wrist curls to buff up your forearms, you can try this gadget. The Gyroflex Wrist Exerciser sounds a bit like a psycho yo-yo on steroids. To use it, you pull the starter cord and just try to hold onto the vigorously squirming ball. It’s supposed to improve your coordination, strengthen your grip, buff up your forearms, and exercise your hands and fingers. The sales pitch even claims it will alleviate stress and strain on your wrist and protect you from carpal tunnel syndrome and other injuries. All this for only $19.95…
Are you one of those people who likes to workout in front of the television? Maybe you’ve got a treadmill or stationary bicycle parked in front of the tube. The idea is to get a good workout, while you’re entertained, right? But do you ever catch yourself “gliding” when you get caught up in the show? If so, the “EnterTRAINER” might be for you. It’s a little fitness gadget that monitors your heart rate while you work out and watch TV. If your heart rate falls below your target zone, it turns the television down. If you don’t get back on track, the little tyrant device turns the TV off until you do. The cost for this potentially annoying, bitchy product brilliant fitness motivator? $140.