Tag: equipment

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Have A Home Gym Instead Of A Membership

Are you tired of your blood pressure going through the roof every time you step foot into your gym due to the smorgasbord of annoyances on display? There’s something to ruin the day of any appetite. Why not avoid ever having to return there by creating your own gym at home? As if you needed them, here’s seven reasons.

1. The Smell. If you’re walking into a room filled with 50 other sweaty individuals in the various stages of a workout its unlikely that it’s going to smell like you’re visiting the body shop. Unfortunately this is an occupational hazard that is associated with the gym, and unless you want to hover around every machine spraying the seat cushions with Fabreeze you might have to grin and bear it. If you set up your own gym at home at least you can bang in the old Glade Plug in Fresh and work out until your heart’s content. If you get Lavender and Vanilla you can even shut your eyes and imagine that you’re working out in a sun basked meadow.

2. The Changing Rooms. Where to start with the changing rooms? The over familiar fellow gym members strolling around the room, determined to get that last bit of water from their ear with the corner of their towel? The bags hiding just out of sight, peeking out from under a bench and only making themselves known when they cause you to trip over, sending your Lynx Africa skidding across the floor in the process? The guys who seem to just like hanging out in their, bro-ing it up with all the other bros. Bro. At least in the comfort of your own home you can have a shower and get changed without feeling like you’re living in a mixture of Top Gun and a Butlin’s Strongest Man competition.

3. Equipment Hogs. There’s nothing wrong with someone getting full use of a piece of equipment. It’s their right. They pay membership fees just like anyone else. It’s when someone feels the need to simultaneously work three pieces of equipment at once, and then have the temerity to stare you down when you ask if they need that extra dumbbell that it can try your patience a little bit. If you have your own gym at home you’re unlikely to run into this predicament.

4. Grunting. Every gym has at least one. A grunter. Lifting weights doesn’t mean that you have to attempt to suck every litre of oxygen out of the room and then scream like Maria Sharapova fighting a Silverback Gorilla. Unless it’s you that is doing the grunting. In which case you should probably stop. I’m not sure people like it.

5. Sweaty Equipment. There is nothing more irritating than getting onto a machine only to discover that it is literally dripping in sweat. Guys, I’m looking at you for this one. No disrespect, but I’ve yet to see a woman leave a piece of equipment that looks as though it’s been used as a prop in the Flashdance chair scene. This won’t be an issue if you have your own gym at home. And if you don’t wipe your equipment down after you’ve used it at least you’ll only get drenched in your own sweat. Everyone like’s their own brand anyway. Don’t they?

6. The People Who Stare. Of the many gym personalities that you are likely to encounter, this one will put you on edge the most. Lurking around the equipment, watching you workout and perspiring more themselves than you ever could. As soon as you make eye contact with them they will slink away or pretend that they have been sent a text. It’s only upon closer inspection that you realise that they are trying to read a text message from their iPod. They NEVER seem to actually work out either. When you’re working out at home they are unlikely to be there. And even if they are you can just close the blinds.

7. Hoverers. You know the ones. You’ve been on a machine for a matter of seconds and they are hovering around it, shooting you ‘hurry up I’ve got to get back to the office’ looks. Too ‘polite’ to actually ask you how long you’re going to be, but not so concerned about time that won’t move onto another machine. You can’t even grab a drink of water because they will steal your machine on account of them being serial grave jumpers. Known to loudly chat on their phones about how they’re ‘stuck at the gym’. The annoyance that they cause is reason enough to take out a second mortgage so that you can afford your own gym. They will obviously be refused membership.

This post was written by Richard Hughes on behalf of the home fitness equipment distributor Orbus Leisure.

July 3, 2012
7 Reasons That a Cricket Bat is Preferable to a Baseball bat

Hmm. What’s the best bat to keep around the house, you’re probably wondering. Well, I have both, and it’s definitely the cricket bat. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Perception. When you stroll down your nice, quiet unremarkable street with a cricket bat tucked under your arm, you fit in. To passers-by and onlookers you are that nice chap (or chapess) from number 29 on his way to participate in a genteel and respectable game which involves a break for tea, and a lunch which perhaps involves a home-made cake or two on a picturesque village green somewhere.

2. Perception. When you stroll down your nice, quiet unremarkable street twirling a baseball bat you do not fit in. In fact, you are a harbinger of evil, bristling with menace and exuding undiluted violence. Suddenly, in a scene reminiscent of a cheap western, everything will become silent. Young women shield young children behind their voluminous skirts; old women scuttle away in terror; middle-aged women…er…er…(I’ve never even seen a middle-aged women in a cheap western, why is that?); men (of all ages) suddenly become incapable of eye contact, because there’s a madman with a baseball bat on the rampage. Never mind that in your other hand you’re carrying a mitt and a baseball because the people have seen the bat and the panic-stricken-nitwits have been rendered incapable of rational thought. They will blindly assume that you’re off to break someone’s kneecaps or smash a car’s door-mirrors. And that won’t help you get an invite to your next-door neighbour’s birthday party. It may, however, stop trick-or-treaters visiting.*

3. Certainty. Cricket bats, like some of the more successful and big-headed practitioners of the game itself, are doughty, resolute and they stay where you left them. If you put a baseball bat on the dining-room floor, however, it does not. The baseball bat is an inherently flighty creature and, like a hollow-headed flibbertigibbet, it will just disappear from where you left it, merrily rolling away without a care in the world. Eventually, of course, it will turn up, usually while you’re stumbling around in the dark or when your wife is entering the room carrying a glass of orange juice, a plate containing two cheese and real-ale-pickle sandwiches and an apple. Or something.

4. Arms-length. Ever had to pick something up that you really didn’t want to pick up? Something that you wanted to keep at further-than-arms-length? Something with many legs, perhaps, or with steam emanating from it. A cricket bat is ideal for such an eventuality owing to its flat blade. A baseball bat is not. In fact, there’s no way that you’ll be able to carry your friend’s pet “hamster” that you’re looking after or that god-awful smelling bowl of onion soup on a baseball bat.

5. Flour. I have never returned home to find my cricket bat covered in flour. I have, however, returned home to discover my baseball bat covered in flour on several occasions. And, as I’ve tucked into the pie that my wife has prepared for me, I’ve often thought, funny that. I didn’t leave it anywhere near the flour cupboard.**

6. Air-guitar. Try miming along to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or Led Zeppelin using a baseball bat and you’ll look like a pillock. Do it using a cricket bat and you’ll look like an eminently sensible and respectable chap (or chapess), suitable for a post in the foreign office, perhaps, or as a school governor. No matter how bad the music or the miming, if you use a cricket bat you’ll always maintain a thin veneer of respectability. Until you fall off the table.

7. Visitors. When you entertain foreign guests from non-cricketing nations in your house, a baseball bat is just a bat for baseball. A cricket bat, however, is a strange thing of wonder which they will enquire about. And fairly soon you’ll find yourself explaining – at length – to your blankly-incomprehending friends the finer points of the game of cricket. And they’ll love you for that. Really. And, after several hours talking about cricket, you may even find that they close their eyes in concentration as you explain the finer points of leg-spin.

*Topical top tip.

**The flour cupboard is not exclusively for flour. It contains other things such as; homemade blackberry vodka, homemade limoncello, half a packet of raisins, three packets of linguine, a jar of treacle that may or may not pre-date the Crimean war and a sake jug.

October 18, 2010
7 Reasons That the Summer 2010 Lakeland Catalogue is Amazing

The Lakeland summer 2010 catalogue only arrived at our house yesterday. I don’t know how I’ve survived the early part of the summer without it. It provides us all with a glimpse into the future. In fact, it’s amazing. Here are seven reasons why.

1. The Dishwasher Smellkiller. This amazing device kills dishwasher odours stone-dead. I’ve never used one before, so the inside of my dishwasher must stink to high-heaven. I’ve always foolishly assumed that the only way to remove smells effectively is to sterilise the cause of them. And the only device I have that’s capable of sterilising things on a large scale is my dishwasher. And I can’t very well put my dishwasher into that, can I? But now the people at Lakeland have solved the problem of pungent sterile environments with the dishwasher smellkiller. They’re amazing, they think of everything.

2. Improved: Fridge & Freezer Defroster. It’s not just a fridge and freezer defroster; it’s an improved fridge and freezer defroster! I feel like a caveman. This may surprise or appal you, but I’ve been defrosting my freezer by just turning the power off and wandering away from it. I must be backwards.

3. The Metallic Shelf Liner. Because nothing in your kitchen will say homely and wholesome more than lining your cupboards with a detailed industrial diamond plate metal texture. It’s what Mad Max would do. It’s repositionable too, enabling you to move it about within your cupboards, making it both stylish and fun.

4. The Three Pan Protectors. Sometimes, due to space issues, you may be forced to stack pans inside each other. With a heavy heart and nagging conscience, you’ll place a pan inside another pan, knowing, just knowing, the devastation that your reckless action may cause, but wait…just wait! The good people of Lakeland have the solution to all pan-damage. They will provide you with three machine washable pan protectors for only £4.99! And they don’t resemble sanitary towels in the slightest.

5. In The Bedroom. There comes a point, later in the catalogue, when the lettering changes to pink and the “in the bedroom” section begins. I must say, I felt a frisson of excitement when I saw this. Ah, at last, the bedroom. What wondrous, sensual gadgets do Lakeland have in store for the bedroom? The Lakeland goose-feather-erotic-tickler? The Lakeland hand-held telescopic five-way mirror? The Lakeland ambient cellulite-flattering nightlight? No. More unexpected than any of those things. Brace yourself. It’s the Lakeland padded trouser hanger.

It’s not a device for hanging your padded trousers on (I fervently hope). It’s a padded device for hanging your ordinary trousers on. Because they need insulating from the harsh, cold, metallic bars of the conventional trouser-hanger. Otherwise, what are we? Savages?

6. The Perfect Tear Kitchen Roll Holder. It’ll banish ‘unravelling roll syndrome’ from your kitchen forever. I know I feel relieved. The catalogue picture demonstrates how it works: You just tear off the metal knob at the top with one hand, and that will put a stop to the problem of kitchen-roll-unravelling. It’s a wonder of the modern age. There’s even testimony. Frances S of London has “…suggested it to many friends…” presumably before they attempted to drown themselves in their soup, but wait…Frances S isn’t the stupefying dullard that she might initially appear to be, as she goes on to reveal that, “…you really can tear off one sheet, while juggling pans, babies, cats or whatever else you need to deal with.” Wow! She’s awesome! Frances S is a cat-and-baby juggler. Who wouldn’t pay to see that? I wish they’d put a picture of that in.

7. The Over-Door Storage Rack. “Oh No!” I can hear you thinking. “He’s going to make fun of the over-door storage rack“. Not bloody likely. After all, the giant has one of those in his kitchen, as this lady discovered.

And that’s it. I’ve reached seven reasons. And I didn’t even get the chance to mention the castor cups which “stop unsightly dints” or the willow stair basket. I’ve left the pictures so that you may marvel at them both.

July 27, 2010