Everyday exercises on a budget

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Using your own body weight with push-ups or sit-ups is one way to help not breaking the bank.

Is the only exercise you get dragging your ass out of bed and walking sluggishly to class in the morning? Maybe it's time to start on your New Year's resolution and shed those pounds. If you're on a tight budget, there are ways to exercise in and around campus without using the gym or spending a ton of money.

Use Your Own Body Weight
"If you're confined to a small space and you don't have much to work with, you're probably going to be using your own body weight," said Rick Melo, fitness consultant at Fitness 101 on campus. Use your own body weight to your advantage; sit-ups and pushups are common exercises that can easily be done in a small space. Depending on your skill level, there are many variations of the two common exercises. If you struggle with push-ups, you can always perform "modified pushups," which are performed on your knees instead of toes. To make push-ups more difficult, you can balance on one foot. If you have limited floor space, you can use something that's about waist height to perform standing pushups. Place your hands on your sink, bed or desk, so your body is at a 45-degree angle and perform pushups this way.

Pull-ups are another easy way to exercise, said Melo. "You can always grab above a doorway and do pull-ups and that will work your back."

Got a Soup Can?
Instead of spending money on weights, use items you already have in your room. You can use soup cans, fill empty water bottles with sand, or use a basketball as a medicine ball. You can even fill a laundry bag with laundry to replace a sandbag.

"People don't wrap their head around it; they think they have to be in the gym to work out. If you're doing resistance training, all it means is that you need weight. It doesn't matter if it's a 45-pound weight plate or a bag of potatoes; it could be anything. If you're going to work on your chest, lay down on your back and push something," said Melo.

"Once you learn the movement and what it works in the body, all you have to do is add any kind of resistance to it," he added.

Get Creative with Cardio
"With cardio, you can get creative. There's a gazillion ways to do it," said Melo. "With cardio there's only a couple things you have to remember: it's gotta be continuous and repetitious in body movement, elevating your heart rate."

It may be routine for you to take the elevator, but remember that every residence and building on campus has stairs you can use for a cardio workout. "I have my students running in the stairs in the SC building and there's never anyone using them," said Melo. "The cardio workout they get from that is amazing — they're breaking a sweat rather quickly, their heart rates go up fast and they're getting an incredible workout and leg workout as well because they're using a lot of their quads to get up the stairs and their hamstrings to sustain the movements up and down."

Don't forget about running and walking. There are tons of places to run in London and near Fanshawe. You can run around the college. You can head to the Fanshawe Conservation area, which is only a five-minute drive away — or you can just walk there. If you're near Western University, there are tons of trails along the Thames Valley River as well. Melo had one tip when it comes to running: "Running in general, you get health benefits, absolutely, but to make it more interesting and to turn it into a habitual thing, you want to have it timed. You want to have some sort of a goal."

One trick is to use songs on an iPod to time your progress instead of a standard stopwatch. "The bottom line is that running is one thing but if you don't track your progress, you're going to have a hard time keeping yourself motivated to improve consistently. Let's face it, it takes a lot of motivation to run unless you love it," said Melo.

Breathe, Stretch, Pose
Stretching is one of the most forgotten about but important parts of exercising. "A lot of people need to work on their flexibility, a lot of people don't realize that," said Melo. It's important to make sure you stretch before working out and make sure you're warm before stretching, he added.

A rez room is the perfect spot to practice some yoga or Pilates moves. Both involve breathing, stretching and relaxation, which are great stress relievers. There are tons of exercises you can do from beginner to advanced. If you've never done yoga or Pilates before, use the Internet for ideas — there are many YouTube videos for different exercises.

Buy an Inexpensive Piece of Equipment
There are several pieces of workout equipment you can buy that won't break your bank. Melo recommended a Bosu Ball because "once you have one of those you can do a million different things on it, and they are really inexpensive." You can also use tension bands. "Physiotherapists use them all the time. When you have to do exercises, you can sometimes make the tension tighter by a) buying a tighter band or b) tightening it around your wrist. The more tension, the more resistance you can get."

No Excuses
"In terms of being on a budget, I've never bought that as an excuse, because all it takes is getting creative," stressed Melo. Remember, you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on fancy work out equipment, simply use the tools and equipment you have around you and get to it!