Chest Expander
If you are just beginning on your journey towards a better physical condition, you needn’t break the bank with high-tech machines. Sure, you can move on to more sophisticated pieces of equipment later, but when just starting out you will be surprised by just how far you can get just on the cheap. Of course, one major benefit of doing it cheaply when you start out means if you lose your enthusiasm for fitness you aren’t stuck with a lot of bulky equipment and you aren’t out of pocket. If this appeals to you, then why not take a look at one of the most enduring and simplest pieces of equipment you can use to get started – the humble chest expander.
There are a variety of chest expanders on the market, but the most common is the spring variety (several strong springs joined by 2 handles) or, rubber tubing as is more common these days. Chest expanders provide resistance by being pulled apart, and the further they are pulled apart the more the resistance grows.
Although it’s name would suggest it’s for the chest, it actually has a variety of uses, and you are more limited by your own imagination and anatomical knowledge than the piece of equipment itself. Therefore, the more you know about which exercises and movements work which muscles, the more imaginative you can get with your chest expander. For instance, you can even work the biceps using chest expanders by standing on one handle and ‘curling’ the other upwards with the bicep. You can also work the triceps in a variety of ways.
If you are big into weight training then the idea of using a chest expander may seem ‘weak’ to you, but you would be shortsighted to dismiss them so easily. Chest expanders can be a great way to warm up, recover and rehabilitate injuries, improve flexibility and even work the rotator cuff muscles inside the shoulder which are essential for shoulder stability and building powerful presses. Also, they take up so little room they can be packed into a small bag and taken on your travels.
A similar piece of equipment to the chest expander is the Bullworker, which also allows pushing/squeezing as well as pulling; something a chest expander doesn’t.