Exercising With Soup Cans

Usually, most of the exercise one should be doing is by weights that are 5Ilbs or less. There may be instances where one might want to isolate a major muscle group and exercise with far more weight than 5Ilbs though. For example, my biceps get just about nothing out of a 2Ilb work out, no matter how long I exercise for. Also, for the purpose of rehabilitation, it might be desirable to isolate a specific muscle. However, for the vast majority of people, soup cans are an excellent source of weight for exercise.

Save yourself the money and don’t even bother buying weights that are less than 5Ilbs. Use canned food as weights instead. Also, it is always better to use 2 separate weights if you are exercising, such that the weights that you are using aren’t connected by a bar. Bars make it so you can lift more, but the problem with using a bar, such as in a standard bench press is that the bar helps stabilize your arms, so your minor muscle groups, the one’s primarily used for stabilization, don’t have to do as much work. That is, when you are working out, you might be lifting more weight as you practice with a bar, but you won’t have any more real strength. Real strength requires that it is not just your major muscle groups that are fit, but also your minor ones as well. The thinking: 2 soup cans = no bar.

Minor muscles groups by nature can’t lift as much weight. Even some weight lifters that can lift hundreds of pounds might find themselves stressing to get 20 repetitions with a 1Ibs soup can. What’s more, if you don’t exercise minor muscles and just exercise your major muscle groups, your body will look odd. People will be able to see that you have not approached your discipline with a holistic spirit of attaining fitness. In my opinion, if you don’t use the minor muscle groups, you are perverting your body, and it should not surprise you that you don’t look as good as you could if you had spent some more time taking a holistic approach.