Gym Bag Essentials: 10 Must-Haves In Your Gym Bag | Workout & Exercises slideshows | Physical activities center

Yoga Mats Aren't Just For Yoga - Use Yours For Warm-Ups and Stretching Too

Take your yoga mat whenever you go to the gym. You should have one whether you do yoga or not. Yoga mats provide a small amount of protection from the floor's hardness for yoga moves, but they also protect you from the dirt and sweat of the gym floor, and give you a mobile warm-up, stretching or foam rolling station to put wherever you like. So if the padded area of your gym is non-existent or full, you can use your own portable yoga mat. Just wipe it down with antibacterial cleanser when you get home, and your yoga mat will protect you from bruises, grazes and rashes for years!

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www.livestrong.com/slideshow/552284-the-23-best-fitness-gifts

A Water Bottle Is a Great Investment for Your Gym Bag

A water bottle is a must have. While the importance of hydration can be overstated - you don't really need to take a sip right now, you just don't fancy doing any more pulldowns, tell the truth - it remains a major issue in sports performance and safety. A reusable waterbottle won't break or crack, you're less likely to lose it and if you make carrying it a habit you'll never be without it when you need it. Bottled water can be expensive, so a reusable waterbottle can pay for itself several times over in just a few weeks. Make sure you don't go to the gym without yours!

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Appropriate Footwear and Footwear Care Products Are a Must

Appropriate footwear can be a pretty wide field. Olympic weightlifting shoes are a good choice if you're on your way to try for a clean and jerk PR; not so great for a circuit class. If your sport requires specific footwear, you're going to need to get it, label it and store it; some gyms won't let you train barefoot, or in socks, but if you can it's often the best choice for many fitness activities. Whatever you need to carry with you, get some antifungal deodorant and use it regularly, and make sure your gym's OK with your choice, or you might find yourself cooling your heels!

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Heart Rate Monitors Let You Push Yourself Accurately

A heart rate monitor allows you to push yourself to just where you want to be. You can gauge the effectiveness of your fitness efforts by checking your results against your heart rate monitor first thing in the morning, to find your resting pulse, or you can use the monitor to determine what a heart rate of 120 - the beginning of aerobic training for a thirty-year-old man - actually feels like. With your training on a scientific footing you'll be in a better position to pursue your goals, and you'll be able to structure your sessions to train exactly how you want.

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Stopwatch As Interval Timer - Never Miss a Rest Period Again!

Stopwatches are designed to be small and easy to use interval timers, allowing you to set rounds or intervals and just wait for the beeps to alert you when it's time to change. Intervals are a great way to add some intensity to a cardio workout or to make a circuit more challenging, though with the added pressure of time form can deteriorate so make sure you pick safe exercises if you're going to try it. Whether you're shadowboxing for rounds or doing fast-slow circuits on a treadmill, the stopwatch offers great timing performance.

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Gym Balls Can Be a Great Item to Slip Into Your Gym Bag

Gym balls can be an invaluable addition to your gym bag. They can increase the range of motion you use in exercises like sit-ups and they can provide an unstable surface for exercises like push-ups, meaning that you activate more muscles and get more from your workout. Gym balls are famous for their ability to make any training session either harder, by offering support, or easier, by taking away stability.

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Jump Stretch Bands For Easy Loading Changes

Jump stretch bands allow you to alter the loading of your exercises easily. For example, it you attach them to the bar when you do pull-ups, they provide the most assistance at the bottom of the pull, where you're weakest, and the least assistance at the top of the pull where you're strongest. Turn them the other way, though, and attach them to the floor, and it's a different story: now they provide more resistance at the top of the pull, where you're strongest, and less at the bottom where you're weakest. You can use them by themselves for resistance exercises like pull-aparts too.

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An Exercise Journal Is One of the Most Vital Pieces of Equipment You Can Have

Your exercise journal is for three things: Plans, news and history. So take it with you every time you train, and write down what you plan to do before you get to the gym. That way you're less likely to get distracted, especially at the end of a long day. It's also for news: write down what actually happened. Then you'll know how your session went in terms of figures. Write down how you felt about it too - were you tired? Was it hard, or did your workout fly by? Were there any issues or did you have any pain? Finally, after you've been training a while you can go back through your exercise journal and look for patterns, seeing how you've always got shoulder pain a week after a certain exercise, or you always do 5 minutes' less cardio than you set out to do. That will give you a great basis for planning your future sessions.

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Jump Rope Like A Champion - You'll Be Amazed At The Results

A jump rope is one of the most reliable and effective ways to work on cardio and balance, and to develop some mental toughness and alertness, all at the same time. Be careful when you start out: many of us have such weak calves that we can't skip for long without injury, while others will find it's the cardio element that flattens them - and it takes a little practice to get the knack, too. Persevere, and you'll haver an easy warm-up and finisher tool that can be slipped into the gym bag as an afterthought; a tool whose effectiveness is out of all proportion to its sizer and cost.

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Let A Calorie Tracker Application Count the Calories For You

Calorie Tracker Applications keep track of calories consumed during exercise, so you can see just how long it really takes to work off that donut! Other uses include figuring out how intense you'll need your workouts to be to meet your goals, and even finding out exactly how much you need to be eating to hit your targets. Even better, calorie tracker apps are convenient and often free. When you need them, they're right there on your phone, laptop or tablet!