How to Get Fit in a Tiny Apartment on a Budget

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I am writing from Texas for the first time! Hurray! Noe and I moved here last week for graduate school. Some call it the "Land of Cockroaches" the "Land of Humidity and Heat" but I've taken to calling it the "Land where the A/C never turns off and the fans never stop running." It's pretty hot and pretty humid, when comparing to living in the cold, crisp air of Idaho for so long.

We had a really rough time getting here....hit a deer, killed some birds, drove 1500 miles...but if you want to know more about that and about our life, you can check out Noe's blog at noehmorales.wordpress.com. I know he's using some of the pictures we've taken along the way.

So we arrived in Texas and of course didn't know anyone in town, so we found a place to live. To be completely honest, it's not that bad. It's an older building that's been remodeled a fair amount of times. We are paying for a two-bedroom apartment because we need the space.

In order to have room for exercise equipment and a study desk, we just need two rooms. We had a pretty sweet spacious set up in Idaho, but things aren't as Texas-sized here as we expected! So, I have completed three workouts so far, and this is how I do it in our apartment.

1. First To-do: I always try to workout first thing in the morning. The neighbors are still snoring away and won't hear me as long as I hit it early. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and helps set the tone for the rest of my day. Also, my husband won't be up studying or needing to use our spare room that early.

2. Free Weights: When you are short on space, you don't generally have room for weight machines, treadmills, or exercise bikes (or money for that matter!! We are paying for college here!) I use free weights for most of my workouts. I do dynamic HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts most of the time. Free weights are not only better for your core, but you can shove dumb bells under your bed (which I have done in the past) if needed.

3. Investments: For my entire collection of workout equipment, I have just a few things...you will probably be disappointed if you were expecting me to have fancy high-tech stuff. I've got a dip station (which I can dissasemble into a few pieces if I need to), a gymboss timer, a sandbag (full of sand), dumb bells, a medicine ball, jump rope, and kettle bell, sometimes I use kitchen chairs to jump up onto as well.

So instead of doing workouts that consist of sitting on an elliptical that takes up a lot of space for thirty minutes, use your weights, do some burpees, jump rope, and do body weight workouts. There are no excuses!