Equipment workouts

Whatever your fitness goals, equipment workouts will likely form a large part of your programme. Equipment workouts can cover everything from weights to cardio, gym routines to exercising at home.

Among the many types of equipment workouts you might encounter are the following:

• Free weights
• Weights machines
• Cardio machines
• Swiss ball
• Resistance bands
• Exercise videos and DVDs

While it is possible to exercise without any types of props (running, swimming, yoga) to get any variety into your programme you need to use various types of props to make your exercise time both more enjoyable and more efficient.

Look around any gym and you'll see people using free weights and machines to build muscle, steppers, treadmills and rowers to improve their cardio fitness.

Learning how to get the most from these will improve your fitness dramatically - for example, though many women avoid them, using weights is one of the most efficient ways to not only improve your fitness, but also to burn off excess fat.

So click on the links below to learn how you too can improve your fitness by utilising everything that's available to you.