No need to worry about not owning a fancy set of weights or an ab roller, you can use household items to do all sorts of workouts and save the money and storage space you would need for exercise specific items. You don’t need an expensive gym membership to work out, you just need a little creativity. These tips are especially great for college students or studio-living bachelor and bachelorettes.
Laundry Detergent
A full (or nearly full) container of liquid laundry detergent is a great alternative to hand weights. To put it in perspective, a 1.17 gallon tub is equivalent to 10 pounds – making it perfect for low impact moves like squats, dead lifts, bent over rows and standing wood chops. Even just carrying it up and down the stairs a few times will get your heart pumping.
Don’t have laundry detergent on hand? These household items also work:
1 Gallon Milk Jug
Sack of Potatoes
Paint Cans
Kitty Litter
Hand Towels
Use hand towels to do various core workouts in lieu of an ab roller. You can also put them under your feet to do sets of high intensity mountain climbers. This is also a great alternative to normal mountain climbers if you live in an apartment and have downstairs neighbors you don’t want to disturb with jumping. Get in a plank position and get creative with all sorts of core engaging workouts.
All your hand towels in the laundry? These will also do the job:
Paper Plates
Paper Towels
Plastic Lids
Wine Bottles
A standard wine bottle is just under 2 pounds. It may sound low, but it is still enough to feel the burn and add a slight bit of difficulty to your workout. Try some tricep kickbacks, bicep curls, and a basic row exercise. They key with these arm exercises is to maintain control over the movement and not swing your arms, so that you don’t cheat your muscle out of the work with momentum. Try also just holding them doing some cardio like jogging in place. It forces you to add that little bit of extra umph.
Drink all your wine during that last Game of Thrones viewing? No problem.
Soup Cans
Jars of Spaghetti Sauce or Mayonaise
Bottled Water
Broom
A broom is a great home exercise tool when you’re looking for a quick core workout. Try some oblique twists by placing the broom across your shoulders on the meaty part of your back (just as you would with a barbell). Engage your core by pulling your belly button into the spine and twist your core to the right. Turn back to center and twist to the left. This incredibly simple move is extremely effective!
Your Pet
Not everyone has a pet, or even if you do, maybe not as chill to use, but cradling your cat over your shoulders adds some great weight for lunges, squats, or push-ups. Plus then you have your fluffy buddy with you while you get fit.
So don’t worry if you don’t have traditional equipment or a pricey gym membership, there are plenty of ways to get fit right around the house!
Buying an electric guitar can be an overwhelming process. After all, there are countless brands and each brand can easily have a dozen different offerings. A seasoned guitarist can scroll through pages and pages of instruments and narrow it down to a shortlist of candidates in an instant, but what if you aren’t an experienced guitarist? What if you don’t know the difference between a Humbucker or a single-coil pickup or what the heck a Floyd-Rose is? This article is for you.
Appearance
The Fender Stratocaster
Musicians may deny it, but looking cool is certainly a perk of playing the electric guitar! Fortunately, when it comes to solid body electric guitars, the actual shape has little impact on sound quality. That’s why you’ll find guitars in a wide variety of shapes, from your classic “Fender Stratocaster” look to the Gibson “Flying V”, to the star shaped Washburn made famous by the late Dimebag Darrell.
Washburn Dime Star Shaped Guitar
Most electric guitars can be used to play any style of music, so the choice is purely aesthetic. The Stratocaster, Les Paul, and ‘SG’ looks are the most popular. You’ll find guitarists of almost all genres playing guitars with body shapes that resemble these three classic instruments. The more adventurous body types, such as the Flying-V and Star were heavily adopted by hair metal guitarists of the 80s. Though there are always exceptions: the Flying-V design originated in the late 50s and was the favorite guitar of blues legend Albert King.
What should you pick? Personally, I like the Fender Stratocaster shape. It’s the “classic” electric guitar look you’re probably familiar with and you’ll never look out of place holding a Stratocaster shaped guitar. That said, it’s a matter of personal preference!
Pickups
When it comes to actual sound, the Pickups (and their placement) are the most important component of an electric guitar. These electro-magnetic parts of the guitar lay underneath the strings on the body of the guitar, between the bridge and the fretboard. As their name implies, they are responsible for picking up the sound generated by the vibrations of the strings.
Electric guitars generally have more than one pickup and a pickup selection knob that allows for various combinations of the pickups to be activated or deactivated depending on the desired sound the player wants.
There are two main types of pickups found in most electric guitars: single-coil, and Humbuckers.
The single-coil pick up is the pick up that looks like a single row of metal circles. The sound they generate is most associated with blues and early classic rock: A clean, crisp sound with well defined separation between notes. These pickups; however, are prone to hums and interference.
A Humbucker pickup by Seymour Duncan
A Humbucker pickup looks like two single-coil pickups attached to each other. This is no coincidence: it is composed of two coils! Originally designed to help reduce the hum effect of single-coil pickups, Humbuckers have become synonymous with fuller “fatter” tone. It is a favorite among heavy rock, metal, and also jazz.
Many guitars have both, and the option to switch a coil off in the Humbuckers to make them act like single coils. If you aren’t sure which sound you’re going to like, pick a guitar that has both a Humbucker and single coil pick up.
The Neck
The pickups have the biggest impact on actual sound, but as a guitar player, you’ll be spending most of your time using your fingers on the fretboard and your hand wrapped around the neck. The most important components of the neck are the number of frets and the action.
There are other components, such as neck shape, wood type, and scale length, but while these features matter, they are mostly a matter of preference and unlikely to make a large difference to all but the most experienced guitar players.
For example, I spent at least a decade playing the guitar before I even knew that different guitars had different scale lengths and never once noticed my playing impacted by differences in this feature.
The typical guitar has 22 frets, which is sufficient to play most electric guitar music; however, some guitars go as high as 24 frets, if not more. Usually guitars with 24 frets are more costly, but the 24th fret is a convenient two full octaves higher than the open string, quite useful if your interest lies in guitar solos and improvisation.
Action describes the distance between the fretboard and the strings. Low action (a low distance between the fretboard and strings) is easier to play since one does not have to press the strings down as much distance. However, ‘fret buzz’ is possible if the action is too low. This is caused by the strings being too close to the fretboard such that they strike the metal of the frets. Ideal action for play-ability is as low as possible without fret buzz. Note that the action of the guitar can be adjusted.
The Bridge
The metal piece near the bottom of the guitar body where the strings connect is called the bridge. If you never use the whammy bar, bridge decisions are likely not of significant concern; however, if you want to mimic the sounds of guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai, you’ll need a tremolo bridge, and ideally a locking or Floyd Rose tremolo bridge.
A Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo System
One disadvantage of using the Whammy bar in a typical tremolo bridge is that large movements of the bar can put the guitar out of tune. The Floyd Rose (or similar designs) allow for extreme Whammy bar bends and tugs without impacting guitar tuning.
Price
A PRS Custom24
If money is no object there are plenty of high end guitars such as a $4000 PRS Custom24 which you can’t go wrong with. However, not all of us can afford spending $4000 on an electric guitar, and a beginner isn’t going to appreciate the nuance of such an instrument. A borderline playable electric guitar can be had for as little as $100, though you won’t be able to have much of a say on the feature set. At around $300, plenty of reasonable options emerge, and a great pro-level electric guitar can be had for under $1000.
The Wizard Not The Wand
Choosing the right guitar is an important step on your guitar playing journey. But, it’s always important to remember “it’s the wizard, not the wand”. What is going to be responsible for a great sound isn’t just the guitar, it’s mostly you! So no matter what guitar you pick, the perseverance you put into your guitar playing is what matters most!
Announced yesterday, Target has unveiled a new next-day delivery program for “household essentials,” currently testing in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Available only to Target REDcard holders, this nifty new service allows customers to order their groceries and toiletries online by filling up a “box” and having it shipped to them for a flat rate of $4.99. This new genius program is called Target Restock. It is the latest move in an attempt to take a stab at Amazon’s grip on the grocery delivery market, as well as other grocery delivery services like Instacart.
Target’s goal with Target Restock is to offer a convenient low priced service for their customers who loyally shop at the red themed store instead of being sucked into the ease of Amazon. “Target Restock is all about making the Target Run easier–and helping our guests save time in their busy lives,” said Mike McNamara, Target’s chief information and digital officer. “We look forward to seeing how guests in our hometown market respond to this new offering.” To use the service, customers must have a valid zip code and verify that they are a REDcard holder before accessing it on their Target account.
Customers can choose from over 10,000 items (WOWZER BOWZER), and fill up a limited “box” in a similar fashion to Prime Pantry. Once that box is full, you may not add any other items. A local store the fulfills the order and ships it to arrive next day to the customer. This service is still in beta, so shoppers should be cognizant there may be some flub ups here and there at first, and maintain patience while it is still new. If you want to give this new service a shot, be a pal and contribute any comments to Target so that they are able to improve it and roll it out full time and not just in beta.
No More Brick-and-Mortar Stores?
Other department stores are going to want to follow suit with Target and offer these various one-day shipping or grocery services, since Amazon is really taking the cake lately with all of their affordable speedy options. Especially since Amazon just acquired Whole Foods, it’s only a matter of time before Amazon Fresh is available nationwide, meaning certain death for traditional grocery shopping. The only competition would be from small store loyal shoppers. Although with groceries, and specifically produce, I personally don’t think everyone will be willing to sacrifice the grocery store experience, but more and more people are just leaning towards what is convenient nowadays. Only time will tell.
Stay On Your Couch & Give It A Try
So if you live in the Twin Cities and want to try out Target Restock, give it a try and see if they deliver you guacamole ready avocados or the equivalent of tennis balls, but with either one you won’t have to leave the comfort of your own couch.
