The humble gym towel can actually be an extremely effective training tool!
When you get done putting these quick and easy methods to the test,
you’ll never look at your towel the same way again.

The towel is your friend…

And to prove it to you, I’ve got 10 ways you can use your gym towel to get a great workout (not counting mopping up sweat, of course).

1. Towel Chin-Ups

Throw a towel over the chin-up bar and grip the ends. Now pull yourself up! Gripping and holding your entire bodyweight up on a loose towel is GREAT for the grip and will activate a lot of muscle fibers in your lats because of the instability.

2. Towel Calf Stretch

Lay on your back on the floor and loop your towel around the forefoot area of one of your shoes. Now pull HARD towards you, stretching the calf. This technique works extremely well because you can very easily adjust the tension of the stretch. Forget fancy stretch straps – just throw a towel over!

3. Abdominal Sit-Ups

This is a GREAT abdominal exercise…roll up a towel, lay down on the floor and slide it under your lower back. Now do a sit-up. The rolled-up towel braces your lower back so that instead of using hip flexors and putting stress on the lower back, all the tension of the exercise goes directly onto your ABS.

Be sure your not pulling on your head – you can also make it easier by holding your arms across your chest or at your sides.

4. Towel Bodyweight Tricep Extensions

Throw a towel over a railing or something else a few feet off the ground. Now hold onto the ends. Set your feet back a few feet. Now, keeping your body stiff, bend at the elbows ONLY then extend back up. The instability of the towel grip will set your triceps on fire!

These pics show the exercise done on a bar – just loop a towel over the bar and grip the ends. Move your feet closer to make the exercise easier.

5. Towel “Fat” Bar/Handles

Thick bar and thick handle training is GREAT for the forearms and grip strength. You can accomplish this cheaply by simply wrapping a gym around the bar or the dumbell handles and then gripping around THAT as well.

The padding and “squeezability” (I sound like a toilet paper commercial…cripes) of the towel around the bar activates a tremendous amount of muscle fibers in the forearms and hands.

6. Towel Pushdowns and/or Pulldowns

The easiest way to set this up is to attach a single handle to a high pulley then loop a towel through that. Grip on the ends of the towel and do a pushdown or pulldown (depending, of course, on what exercise you want to do)! It’s just like using a rope attachment but without the solidness of a rope (or the knots on the end to brace your hands).

7. Towel Pull-Up Rows

This exercise gives you some excellent options for training your back in pretty much any situation you find yourself in. As long as you can loop a towel around a solid object, you can grab the ends and perform a rowing movement…two hands on the ends or even one hand gripping both ends to do one arm at a time rows.

8. Towel Cable Face Pulls

This is a great rear-delt exercise. Attach the single handle to a high pulley and loop the towel through. Use a light weight to start with. Grip the ends of the towel then take a couple of steps back so your arms are directly forward, out in front of you.

Now, pull the cable towards your face, bringing your hands out to the sides of your head, trying to pull the towel ends out to the sides as you do so. This one is excellent for the Rotator Cuff.

9. Towel Cradle Sit-Ups

Lay on the floor with the towel end held in your hand and with the towel itself across your upper back (like you would hold it if you were drying off your back with it).

Now perform a sit-up…instead of trying to pull yourself up using your abs, though, pull yourself up using the TOWEL. Come up and to the right by forcefully pulling on the RIGHT end of the towel, while bracing with your left. You’ll be surprised at how strongly this hits the abs.

10. Neck Training

Using a towel is a great way to do isometric training for your neck. Basically, you just put the towel around your head (any direction – front, sides, back) and pull on the ends, resisting that pull with your neck muscles.

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And that’s just the beginning! Take these techniques and try and think of other ways you can take the common gym towel and come up with multiple uses for it.

I told you you’d never look at your gym towel the same way again!

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Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 18 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding eBooks including “Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss,” “Muscle Explosion,” “The Best Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of,” “Gluteus to the Maximus – Build a Bigger Butt NOW!” and “The Best Abdominal Exercises You’ve Never Heard Of” all available at (HERE). He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

You seriously do not have to have an expensive gym membership or super expensive “home fitness equipment” because if you are in over 96% of the society that doesn’t work out you are just fooling yourself and loosing hard earned money.

Honestly, how many people you know that own some sort of “home fitness gadget” and never use it?

Can you say 5 people? 10, 15?

I bet you know quite a few.

With Online Personal Training you don’t have to spend tons of money on your workouts. You don’t have to buy expensive machines and you don’t have to rely on your gym hours of operations.

You can workout whenever you want, wherever you want (with the laptop) and as often as you want.

The point is. You just must make a one minute decision to start. Enough said.

You and only you are in control of your life. 20 minutes a day could make a difference between healthy life and a misery of disease.

Jump IN

If you have a new years resolutions this time of the year, January first is the best day to start.

Don’t wait until you realize that it’s too late again to start working on improving your health and fitness.

Life is too short to be unhealthy, unfit, out of shape and unhappy. It only takes 1 second to make a decision but the rewards can last forever. Today is day 1 Let’s start.

What does it mean?  Does it mean that being unhealthy and unfit is just normal?

It must be. If you watch the TV for just about one hour in a prime time you can easily notice that every few minutes there is a medication ad which shows super happy people (always moving in slow motion). Their lives are sooooooo good now because of this or that drug they told their doctor to prescribe.

What a nonsense.

Unfortunately taking drugs becomes a norm.  It’s so easy and convenient now, you can buy your favorite drug along your candy, pop, and other nutrition free “food” in your grocery store.

Nice.

I remember talking with one prospect about importance of taking care of herself. She replied that she was taking really good care of herself by taking all the medication. (just 7 different pills per day)

I guess it is revolutionary to be fit and healthy. One of my client (who is 63) went to a doctor the other day and first question he was asked by the nurse was. (What medications do you take?) He replied… none. I don’t take any medication.

She (nurse) did not believe him.  You are 63 and you are not taking any drugs? What’s wrong with you? You must be one of those revolutionary people.

I’d say if we can’t beat the system let’s join the REVOLUTION.

Here is the revolutionist himself.

Personal Trainer Columbus from Greg JASNIKOWSKI on Vimeo.

The order in which I outlined them in is crucial for reaching your goals in a safe way.

Why sleep first?

First of all sleep is your body’s natural restoration process.  Try to run your cellphone for more than a week without re-charging it. Let’s see how long it will last.  Got the point?

If your body is not in a state of homeostasis (natural balance) it won’t let you perform well during your workout.

Sleep helps to decrease level of stress hormone (cortisol) which is one of the main hormones next to insulin responsible for accumulation of fat in your body.

If you have lot of stress in your life, adding an intense workout (physical stress) to overload your body may increase level of cortisol and it can result in decreased fat utilization efficiency.

Eat.

If you want to drive a race car you’ve got to get high octane fuel.  Try to pour the diesel gasoline into the formula one engine. You wont’ stand the chance to win the race for sure.

The same applies to your body especially when you put your body into  athletic regimen.  The falls idea of “exercise more and eat less” can  result in fainting,  dizziness, low blood sugar, vomiting, passing out, discomfort. embarrassment.  and malnutrition.  No wonder there is word DIE in DIET.

Okay if you eat 10.000 calories a day, eating less would make sense.  However too often I come across people who restrict themselves from eating food to lose weight.  Those are the cardio maniacs that will run on the treadmill for 1 hour a day and take 2 zumba classes while on 600 calories per day DIE -t.

Yes they will lose weight but….. really what they are doing to themselves is they are  allowing their muscle mass (metabolically active tissue) to decrease and at the same time to slow down the metabolism.

It’s like replacing big, strong, engine in formula one with a little, small, weak engine from Fiat 126p.

Fuel your muscles with right nutrients and right ratio of nutrients so you won’t suffer a muscle loss.

Train.

No question about it. Training will help with many things.  Strength, balance, coordination, flexibility, functionality, agility, posture, etc etc.

It’s is important part of the process, however many people and (advertisers) focus only on exercise as a remedy overlooking the importance of two other components.

Why?

Mostly because of bad habits.  We have a bad habit of watching TV late at night instead of sleeping and resting. We have bad habit of eating in fast food restaurants instead of cooking at home healthy and nutritious meals.

And bad habits are the most difficult things to change.

So the promise of easy and convenient exercise program seems like an worth trying quick fix. Who has a time to cook? Who has a time to sleep?  But 3 minutes on this machine to get me in shape doesn’t seem like too much to ask.  After we find out that 3 minutes may not be effective we extend the time to 60 minutes (most classes at the gyms are 1 hour long)

We start exercising more and eating less.

Hmmm ???

That is just my observation after working with many clients at my gym and over the web.

I highly recommend you check out the following publications.

Killer at Large DVD

Symbiotic Diet – website

Burn Fat Feed The Muscle – book