Five,
six,
sev- It's slipping!
This does not feel very secure-
Hey, guys, it's Tyen.
A very Happy New Year to everybody!
A while ago, I did a Beginner's Guide to Home Workout Equipment and since then
I found a lot of new equipment and I'm gonna try them out today.
Over here, I have a weighted hula hoop. So I saw this on TikTok.
I really don't know how effective the hula hooping is,
but they show these amazing before and after videos.
I don't know if it's from the hula hooping, who knows?
But you know, this device is interesting.
It has this pink color weight attach to it.
It even comes with this timer over here so it can show how many rounds the weight went.
So as compared to normal hula hoops, those drop and require a lot of technique.
I reckon that this is great for people who actually don't really know
how to hula hoop because it fits around your waist and it won't fall down.
Okay so I have the weighted hula hoop strapped to my waist
and going to start.
My goal is to hit at least 50.
I think just money aside, this looks like such a ridiculous contraption.
There's no way I'm going to do this in private or in public,
I feel embarrassed doing it by myself.
So how it is marketed, it looks as though it helps you to get a smaller waist?
So it's almost be like a waist, ab strengthening sort of exercise?
I don't think it really does that.
For me, I think it's more of like a cardio.
I feel like normal hula hoop is way more difficult
and it's going to challenge your abs a lot more
because you're really forced to balance the hula hoop up,
and you're supposed to train your speed.
I think that something like this, you feel that sensation
of having weight around your waist, but it doesn't necessarily mean
that you are engaging the right muscles necessary for a core exercise.
And guys, if you wanted a smaller waist,
remember that you cannot spot reduce your fat loss.
If you want to reduce your belly fat,
you have to make sure that you are reducing your overall body fat,
and that is through the age old principle of calories in versus calories out.
Make sure that you are expending more calories than you are consuming.
And if you want to strengthen your core muscles, then planks,
crunches and good ol simple ab exercises will do the trick.
This is a leg clamp trainer and it has a lot of great reviews online.
I would liken this to a gym equipment called the Hip Abductor,
so it's this exercise where you sit, you close your legs together.
It's one of those very weird exercises that you don't want to be making eye contact with people with when you're doing.
It says on the website that if you get the form down, you can do this during daily activities
like studying or working or watching TV.
In terms of quality, it does feel pretty durable so let's try it out.
So this equipment actually comes with a video
that shows you how you can use it in all different kinds of positions.
But today I will be trying the bridge and seated workout.
So I'm going to be trying the bridge position.
And in the video, it's meant to be this way
like pointing upwards, but kind of seems a bit counter-intuitive
because I thought it will just kind of follow the lines of my legs
but let's try it this way.
Two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
sev- It's slipping!
This does not feel very secure-
I think this feels like it's going to be a lot better if I just do it this way.
I definitely feel the burn
in my inner thighs because this is a muscle that is very hard to target.
I can literally feel my inner thighs shaking.
The next one is a seated abductor. I'm meant to put it between my inner
thighs and squeeze like that.
Make sure you lock your door.
You don't want someone to just randomly walk into your room
and wonder what you're doing.
And I feel like it's going to pop out.
It's going to pop out my inner thighs.
Don't think that this is the right way,
you should just put it this way.
Much better this way.
But it's also quite painful.
I think because this foam is not very soft,
it's pressing into my skin.
So it's not a very pleasant feeling,
I feel like I'm not really working the muscle,
It's kind of tugging at the skin.
I was really excited
to try this piece of equipment because it does help with your kegel exercises.
And for those of you who don't know what kegels are,
they are your pelvic muscle exercises.
This is an area that a lot of women, and even men, I feel neglect.
You want to strengthen those muscles because, you know,
a lot of people have weaker bladders as they grow older.
So I actually learn this from like my gynecologist a long time ago.
Imagine that you are putting a coin between your butt cheek
and you are squeezing the coin with your two butt cheeks.
So you can do this that when you're
sitting down at your desk or at, you know you're driving a car or whatever
and you just like squeeze.
And you just squeeze and you hold for maybe three to five seconds and you release.
Squeeze and you hold for three to five seconds and you release.
And it's really important to strengthen this area
because it is an area that gets weakened over time.
I mean it's a five dollar piece of equipment, so you kind of get what you pay for.
There really isn't anything super fancy about it.
So if you want to try it out, then maybe you could just have
this as a little something you keep next to your couch or your desk.
But I personally wouldn't buy it.
I think beyond the bridge exercise,
which I feel like I can get the
same kind of sensation if I just put a ball between my legs,
or if I were to use the resistance band and do those abductor exercises,
I think it could do something very similar.
This is a foldable push up board, and it's a board that helps with your form.
Over here you see all these colourful lines
and it comes with these two handles,
so you're meant to work different muscle groups according to the different colors,
and you can train the different variations of the push up.
Based on the appearance, it looks very useful for beginners,
especially people when they do push ups, they say that they have a lot of pain in their wrist,
I think that having handlebars definitely helps to alleviate those issues.
And because it has these different colors,
so I think it's great for beginners because they might not know what variation of pushup to do when they're first starting out.
It comes with this instruction sheet,
but I think this is pretty self-explanatory, so let's try it out.
So I've laid out the push up board and I'm going to start off working my chest and these are
the blue lines laid out over here I'm meant to follow.
So for your chest, you'll want to start off with a close grip and then work your way out.
Oh, I'm scared.
So the problem here is that I can't put the board on the yoga mat
because I feel like it's going to crack. It's uneven.
And if I put it on the floor,
it feels really slippery and it does not feel safe at all.
So what I'm going to do is put this on top of the yoga mat for some friction
at the bottom and then my knees and my body will just not have the cushioning.
It's still not even.
I don't think it's a good idea for me to do pushups in this position.
I feel like with the wider grip,
the board is just not going to hold the weight and it's going to fold and crack.
With a closest stance, it does work.
But at the same time, you know,
it is not good
because I still have to have like some weight underneath my knees,
especially if you're doing a lot of push ups.
And I feel like if you wanted to do this, you have to have like two yoga mats.
I'm going to move onto shoulders now.
Okay, I'll tell you what it is.
I don't like this.
I feel that everybody's body proportion is different.
I felt that this is way too close grip for me to be working my shoulders.
I felt this a lot in my chest, and I don't think that
I need to be doing my pushups so narrow.
It is more challenging, but then I'd rather not suffer my form in order for me to do
something that is more challenging.
When I'm doing push ups that targets my shoulders,
I'd rather it be more like parallel to where my biceps are
so that I'm working my shoulders and my biceps.
It's not like a one size fits all when it comes to pushups.
That is why when you have pushup bars, you are able to adjust it for yourself.
And I think that this is too restrictive.
This position is meant to be for your back.
This is so weird guys.
In my eight years as a personal trainer, I have never, ever gotten
or even personally done a pushup that looks like this.
Like, how do you even like, how do I grip it? Like do I grip it like this?
Like this? Like why would I do that?
I think that that's just a very strange variation of a push up that I'm keen to know more about,
But I reckon that
if I was going to work my back, I'd rather do like a pulling exercise,
like a lats pulldown or use a resistance band and do a row.
My overall assessment of this is that I would not recommend anyone buy it.
Firstly it's just super flimsy. If you don't use this properly,
you can actually brake this because it's made of plastic.
It also comes with very strange variations of push ups, which I personally don't do myself,
and I think there are better exercises for it.
Just do your good ol pushups.
Just practice your normal pushups y'know.
Floor push ups, by your side, can try wider, can try narrower,
try against the walls if you're a beginner, try against a table or the bed
if you don't feel too confident doing it on the floor.
Yeah, and that's how you work your way up to a full pushup.
If you buy this thinking that, "Okay, I'm going to train my push ups with it,"
it's going to be a disappointment.
This is a multi functional portable pilates bar.
This can substitute various gym equipment like barbells, weights and even cables.
This is suitable for people of all fitness levels, and you can really get a full body workout from using just this.
I have seen older people use this equipment.
I know that this particular product was very big in the ninties or something like that,
so it is quite a dated equipment that I'm rediscovering now.
With this equipment, you can adjust the intensity level based on the length of the resistance band.
It has these two handles at the side for you to hold on to with your legs or even your hands.
So I've attached the bands to my feet and I'm going to put these two together.
There are some photos on the listing showing a bunch of exercises
that you can do, and I'm going to try some of them out.
This exercise I'm going to try is actually a ab exercise, and they are leg raises
but to make it more difficult, I'm suspending my legs on these resistance bands.
I don't know if anything actually this makes the ab exercise easier
because with the resistance on my legs, I feel that my legs kind of spring up
faster than if I were to just use like bodyweight.
This is another exercise and it's a glute kickback.
Honestly, there is not much of a resistance.
Alright now I'm going to try some back squats
and I'm going to use this as a substitute for my barbell.
Overall, I do not feel any resistance from the tubing.
The bar is good and keeping my back straight.
But other than that, this little to no resistance.
And if I wanted to adjust the resistance, I would have to tie the tubing over here.
And then if it's too tight, then I'll have to adjust it.
And it's just way too troublesome for something that really doesn't
have much of an effect on my exercise.
I would say that if you are doing a exercise that shoulder presses,
you know, I do feel the resistance against my shoulders and my arms
so I can see the benefits of this for this particular exercise, which is the shoulder press.
Overall cumbersome, troublesome,
And if I'm being very honest, I rather use my resistance bands,
the No Sweat ones to add resistance to my legs or my upper body
because it's smaller, it's compact, it's versatile
and I can bring it everywhere and not have to bring these two baton-looking stuff.
Bala was started in 2018 after the founders, a husband and wife pair, noticed how dated
some fitness equipment had become, and how nobody uses them because they are ugly.
So they came up with Bala Bangles, stylish, weighted bands for your wrists or ankles.
These Bala bangles have been highly raved on Instagram and news articles with a lot of good reviews.
They can be worn during your workouts or even recreational activities.
So I have actually watched them, I think they were on this TV show called Shark Tank,
and I thought they had a really interesting idea
because I do agree that sometimes the heavy weights
can be kind of like cumbersome and a bit intimidating to start with.
I remember in the last video where I reviewed the home workout equipment
we did those ankle and wrist straps.
They can be kind of bulkly and not as aesthetically pleasing,
but if you wore something like this,
it looks pretty unassuming and looks just like a big bangle.
And if you were to do activities outdoors like going supermarket shopping or just walking your dog
it doesn't look like you are wearing weights.
They come in 1or 2 pounds in a variety of colors.
but today I'm trying the 1 pound version in black.
Each pack comes with two bangles, and it's made of this
very soft silicone material with a strong velcro at the back.
In general, my first impression is that it looks very sleek and cool. Can't wait to try it.
All right, I have the Bala bangles on, and I've got to say
that they are really lightweight.
I am not going to use them as my conventional dumbbells,
so I'm going to need them for my bicep curls on my presses.
In fact, I'm just going to be leaving them on as an add on.
Instead of just doing my workout completely body weight,
I'm going to be leaving these on the whole time.
And I'm going to be testing this out with a workout from the No Sweat app.
First exercise, air squats.
It doesn't seem like very heavy weights, and after a few repetitions,
I can kind of feel a bit of a resistance against my arms.
Next up, I'm going to do the jumping jacks, so I have my timer over here.
30 seconds on the clock.
So it's a light weight, but when you start using it for your cardio and jumping jacks,
you can feel the resistance.
I'm going to try some air boxing, which is another cardio intensive workout
and it's also going to work my upper body.
My overall assessment of these Bala Bangles is that they are great for giving you resistance
when you are doing cardio workouts.
I wouldn't say that they are the best in terms of strength training for your upper body,
so I still do recommend you use like resistance bands, which gives you more
which gives you more that weight
or even with like dumbbells or heavier objects to really build your strength.
I would say that for the price point is like $73.
I personally find it a bit too steep for 1 pound weights,
but the look and feel is super premium.
It belongs on one of those premium yoga sites like Alo Yoga.
If you are considering something light to add to your cardio,
then this could be something that you might want to try.
My overall thoughts after trying all these products is that simple is really a lot better sometimes.
I had very high hopes for these equipment, especially the push up board.
I was like, "Oh wow! There's a way that people can improve your pushups if you're a beginner."
I realized that simple is a lot better.
If you know the form of the workout and you just have like mini supplements.
I feel like with No Sweat, we've come up with
No Sweat resistance bands, and like the small massage balls, and even the yoga mat,
I feel like things like that are simple and accessible and easy
to store and versatile, whereas these are very specific to
like a certain part of the body and just very difficult to put together.
And it takes up way too much space. It's too much of a barrier to exercise.
So I think out of all of them, the only one I would personally
use is the Bala Bangles maybe?
Price point aside, because some of these equipment were really affordable and
doesn't seem that much of an expense, but I just know after trying them out for a couple of times for my workouts,
they're going to turn into white elephants in my house.
So yeah, be very discerning you know.
Even if you're watching TikTok and then you see these girls spin the hula hoops for 100 days,
then suddenly her waist so small,
just know that it wasn't the hula hoop.
And I can tell you that it wasn't the hula hoop.
That's all I have for today's video, I hope you enjoyed seeing me try on all these cool contraptions.
And if any other fitness related things you want me to try out,
please do leave it in the comments section down below, I'd love to hear from you.
And if you're looking for a fuss free, simple workout to try, then go and check out the No Sweat app.
With the No Sweat app, you'll get personalized workouts that tailored to your fitness goals.
You'll get one on one fitness assessments from me, and yes, I do personally respond to each and every
single one of you, so if you have any questions about your own routine or your diet, then do drop me a message over there.
You'll get access to livestream chats
and workouts and even exclusive invites to our meet and greet sessions.
The app is completely free to download and comes with a seven day trial.
After your seven day trial is over, you have the option of signing up for a one year, three month, or one month plan.
And if you sign up for a one year plan,
you'll also get a free set of No Sweat resistance bands.
We also have other supplements for your home workouts so head over to
our No Sweat merch store to check them out.
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