One of the Best Pieces of Home Exercise Equipment

A couple of years ago, I got a gift for Christmas from my mother (who, by the way, has been extremely supportive of everything I do with regards to health, and other things). I didn't use it much right after getting it, but eventually dug it out of my closet after living in college for a while and discovered just how amazing it was.

What am I talking about? A pull-up bar. Specifically, I'm talking about the Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar.

Fantastic

In my old college house, I kept this in the doorway leading to the kitchen from the living room. The frame had a door which slid out but we rarely closed, and the bar was easy enough to duck under any time we wanted to walk into the kitchen.

The real benefit to putting it here is that it's somewhere I'll always see it and run into it. Why is that important? Because it's no use if I don't actually use it. My father once told me a story about how he'd resolved to start doing sit ups, something like 5 to 10 a day. The first few days he tried doing it and it was hard because he'd never really done it before, so he stopped because he could only do one or two, rather than the 10 he wanted. After a few months of not doing several, though, he realized something. Because he could only do one or two, he ended up not doing any, and the result was that he'd ended up doing zero, rather than one each day. Even if he'd only been able to do a few, that was much better than doing nothing.

That's where this bar comes in. When I first got it, I couldn't do a single pull-up. I could only do about five push-ups, and perhaps five sit-ups. So I put it away for a while, and didn't use it until later when my roommate Tom pulled it out and we started competing. Nothing official, but we each knew we wanted to do better than the other person. So I started doing one, and then another one, and a couple hours later perhaps another. Each time we passed into the kitchen we stopped for a couple seconds and did as many pull-ups as we could. This wasn't that many when we started, and my arms definitely felt it each time.

It's worked, however, and that's the important thing. I didn't need to go to a gym, I didn't need to spend hours each day breaking a sweat lifting iron. Half a minute here and there is all it takes. What's your excuse not to now?