No exercise is bad exercise, whether it is gym work, running, swimming or team sports. But there are times in the year when it can be very easy to let things slip and allow your fitness to tail off.

Autumn and winter are high on that list. In the first instance, after a very dry and hot summer that offered loads of chances to get outdoors to walk, run, do open water swimming and even play sports like tennis and cricket without the perennial fear of getting soaked in a cloudburst, the onset of autumn may have come as a shock.

It is not just that the weather has turned, and many parts of the UK have been seeing a lot of rain. The weather conditions on any given day are not inevitable in our capricious climate, but the length of the day is. Now the equinox has come and gone and we are just weeks away from the clocks going back; those long days of summer are just a fading memory.

Time To Get Equipped For Indoor Work

That means now is a very good time to buy a new dumbbell storage rack and other means of keeping more equipment, which you can add to what you already have, to undertake new exercises and provide some extra variety to your workouts.

The reason for this is simple. Much as you might still want to get outside a lot, the weather and shorter daylight hours will often mitigate against that, especially when there’s another storm like Amy blowing in and making it unsafe.

What that means is that with less fitness work taking place outside, you need to make up for it with indoor work. This is especially true at this time of year, when there are all sorts of threats to the waistline on the horizon, including pumpkin pie for Halloween, bonfire toffee and then the binge-fest of bad food and alcohol that is Christmas and New Year.

Of course, if you are very disciplined, you can avoid stuffing yourself with party food and sweet treats in the coming months, dodge any comforting warm stodge on a cold night and bravely stick to eating only the right things. But you can give yourself more leeway if you can do more gym work to stay fit.

Having set yourself up with more equipment and storage, you can get to work this winter. This way, you can make those long nights benefit you. Instead of heading out into the dark or braving the cold in the few hours of tepid sunlight winter offers, you can get stuck into some hard work inside.

Make The Most Of Winter

Keeping more dumbbells in the rack is a great idea because extra time to work on weights means you can do more to build up your strength and lift more than you ever have before.

Of course, it could be that your priority in the winter is not about building your muscles through lifting weights. It could be a different area of your strength and fitness that you want to work on. That means you might want to get some other equipment instead.

There are loads of different weight exercises you can try at home and it makes a lot of sense to use a period of the year when you have fewer opportunities to concentrate on other forms of exercise to put more focus on these in your warm home gym.

Staying Fit In Winter And Beyond

Autumn and winter can be a bad time for fitness; that is not in doubt. All those party invites, all that bad food and, above all, the temptation to stay indoors watching TV and wondering if Die Hard really does count as a Christmas film all have the potential to eat into your fitness workout time.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself a bit when there are bonfires to burn, presents to unwrap and a New Year to welcome in, but keeping things in balance is important. That means you can benefit from new things to do, 

Best of all, by adding more equipment at home, you are making a long-term investment in your domestic gym equipment and ensuring that, should you ever use an outside gym as well, you are not left unable to train because the weather is too bad to get down there.

Moreover, it gives you lots of options for training at home throughout the year, even when spring comes around again and you can get outside a lot more. Not only will you not have wasted the winter months, but you can also train more at home if next summer turns out to be a complete washout.