I have written quite a bit over the last week about what you need as far as home fitness equipment goes but thought I would just round out this week with an overview of what you should have for equipment. So here is what I think that you should try to accumulate over the next while.

Mats – The most basic piece of fitness equipment is an exercise mat. You need an exercise mat for doing stretching as well as for doing abs and an exercise mat is always good for lying on when you are tired from a tough set or some cardio

Dumbells – Dumbells are those short bars with the weights on them. Who cares about them all matching but you want to probably have pairs of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 pounds and sometimes even a pair of 3 pound weights are good to carry while you are running or doing other cardio. These all come in handy for lots of your weight exercises

Barbell – This is just a big long bar. The barbell bar weighs I believe 20 pounds although ones at the gym will weight 45 pounds. Then of course you need weights to put on this bar. Remember that anytime that you are using a barbell you are lifting more weight and in the case of bench presses or even military presses you can get yourself into real trouble if you do not have a spotter. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Paul Plakas is the fitness trainer on the TV show X-weighted. I have written about Xweighted before and the show itself is really good from the standpoint of the ideas. Paul Plakas tries his best on the show to help people from where they are now and their attitudes about food and exercise and one of the nice things about Paul is that he is tough on people.

What tends to happen to most people it seems on X weighted is that they change their eating and exercise and of course the early returns are not great compared to the sacrifices, no one seems to get the idea that they may be gaining muscle mass so the scale does in fat lie (more on that in another post). I like watching Paul lightly berate the people about their attitudes about food, exercise, and fitness in general.

OK so here is the reason for this post, and I hope Paul does see this at some point, people email me thanking me and the TV show all the time for the help that they have seen in the show and the inspiration that the show is to them. I am not Paul but it is nice to see how people feel about the show and the questions that they have. If I can find Paul Plakas email address at some point I will try my best to forward messages as I give them but please if you are looking for Paul you should try the Slice network which was formerly the Life Network.