For those skipping the gym to work out more often at home, purchasing equipment can cost a pretty penny. Keep costs down by making your own medicine ball from a basketball, sand and good old liquid nails.
Photo by Kalleboo
The Washington Post, in detailing a gym dubbed Hard, takes a gander at the facility's classic equipment, including a DIY medicine ball, which can run well over $20 per ball if purchased from a retail store.
The 20-pounders at Hard start life as cheap basketballs that go under the knife and then get filled with sand. Schuler heals the cuts with Liquid Nails ("It shuts it like a Band-Aid") and then duct tapes the heck out of them. The end result is an improvement over most commercial brands because they don't bounce, hence they can be used for an exercise called "slam ball," which involves smacking a ball to the ground with all of your power, scooping it up and repeating.
We're guessing that if you headed down to your local second-hand store, you could come up with a few flattened (or almost there) basketballs just waiting to be snatched up. That is, of course, assuming you don't have one or two floating around in your garage already.
Got your own DIY exercise equipment how-to to share? Drop it in the comments.
For Some Trainers, Making Barbells and Medicine Balls Comes With the Job [The Washington Post via DIY Life]