Keeping fit during COVID-19 - Using Household Items as Equipment

Photo by Allec Gomes | On Feed on Unsplash

When you don't have access to a gym, either because everyone is stuck at home by government mandate, or because you just don't want to or can't pay the fees, you can use normal household items to keep yourself fit and strong. All it takes is a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking.

Standard chairs can be used for a variety of things. You can use the seat of the chair to do tricep dips, or the backs of two chairs for full body dips. You can also use the seat of a chair to do hands-elevated push-ups.


If you have a couple of chairs and a broom (or something similar) you can put the broom handle across two chairs, lay underneath and do inverted rows (we covered these in the post on pull-ups). You can also do this with the chairs against a wall (so they don't move away from you), leaning forward with your hands palms-down on the handle about shoulder width apart. Then lower yourself down with your elbows still in front of you until your head goes below the handle. That can be a great triceps exercise.

If you have a countertop in your kitchen or bathroom, you can use that for hands-elevated push ups. If it has a corner that you can fit in, that's a great place to do dips. If you face toward the corner of the counter, you can lean forward a bit to focus more on the chest. Turn around with your back to it, staying more upright, and you hit your triceps.

A table can be great for inverted rows, as well. Lay down beneath the table and grab the edge, pulling yourself up to the bottom of the table. Doors can be used for an improvised version of a pull-up, but be sure you put something under the open side of the door, otherwise you are putting your entire weight on the hinges and can cause damage. We don't want that. It can help to put a towel over the top of the door to avoid splinters or just a somewhat painful grip.

Stairs, if you have them, can always give you a good place to do cardio. Plus, you can use them to do hands-elevated or feet-elevated push ups. You can also use them to do rear-leg-elevated Bulgarian split squats. Those are great for the glutes and hamstrings!

Any open area of the floor is good for all sorts of other movements; burpees, push-ups, mountain climbers, leg raises, jumping jacks, planks, etc. Of course, there are a number of variations of some of these and they pretty much all can be done in the same open floor space.

Beyond these types of things, using backpacks, milk jugs, bags of rice and/or beans, and even small children can be brought into consideration in order to increase the resistance to many of these different movements.

Hopefully, this will give you some idea of how to look for, and find, things around your home that you can use to keep yourself in tip-top shape while you are stuck at home.