Essential Fitness Equipment for Active Duty Military

It is imperative that the active duty Soldier, Marine, Airman, or Sailor maintain mission readiness at all times. This means continuing to maintain or improve physical fitness leading up to, and during, a deployment.

Whereas most military installations have a gym on premises, it is always nice to have some at-home fitness equipment you can use while enjoying the company of your loved ones and/or the comfort of your own home.

Bodyweight-only exercises can be effective, but there are only a certain amount of movements you can perform without any equipment.

Large fitness equipment is often impractical to have at the home of an active duty military member due to the frequency of deployments and relocations.

Here are some of our favorite recommendations for effective, easy-to-use, travel-friendly workout equipment to keep you physically fit at all times. If you need more information on which fitness qualities are important for becoming the ultimate warfighter, be sure to check out our article on the Tactical Athlete here.

Best For Muscular Strength/Endurance

PowerBlock Elite EXP Adjustable Dumbbells

The best strength gains will be made with quality equipment, such as dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, etc. But, as aforementioned, it is often impractical for an active duty Military member to have large, heavy, hard-to-move equipment at their home.

That's why these PowerBlock Dumbbells are perfect for this situation. These dumbbells adjust every 5 lbs up to 50 lbs (70 lbs with this attachment), but take up the space of only two dumbbells. Essentially, it's a whole, condensed dumbbell rack!

TRX Tactical Gym Suspension Trainer

The TRX Suspension Trainer is an extremely versatile piece of fitness equipment that is travel-friendly. It can be used from any weight supporting structure, including a sturdy tree branch or a typical door in your house.

One of the greatest challenges without access to gym equipment is performing upper body "pulling" movements that challenge your body enough to create adaptation. The TRX Suspension Trainer more than solves that problem, enabling you to perform upper body, lower body, and core exercises with ease.

One advantage of the TRX Suspension Trainer is that the difficulty of any movement can be easily manipulated by changing the angle of the cables while performing the exercise.

To give you an idea of the versatility of the TRX Suspension Trainer, here are a couple of our favorite exercises you can perform while using it:

Best For Aerobic/Anaerobic Power

Crossrope Get Lean - Weighted Jump Rope Set

One important aspect to any fitness training, especially aerobic fitness training, is varying the mode (type) of exercise you are performing. When it comes to developing cardiovascular endurance, too many of us turn solely to running. We then complain about achy knees, shin splints, or stress fractures.

The only way to prevent overuse injuries like the ones listed above is to reduce the amount of that training you are performing. In fact, an estimated 50-75% of running injuries are attributed to overused muscle groups! Luckily, this doesn't mean that you have to stop training your aerobic fitness.

Jump roping is a fantastic alternative to running that does not place as much stress on joints such as the knees. Research shows that you can even continue to improve running performance through jump roping by improving stamina, technique, and coordination.

Crossrope is our favorite jump roping brand. Not only do they offer a variety of quality, highly responsive ropes and handles, but they offer several articles and video tutorials for jump roping beginners. They even have their own jump roping app to help you with your workouts.

These are our favorite Crossrope Jump Ropes.

Wahoo Fitness TICKR Heart Rate Monitor

One of the most wide-spread problems with aerobic fitness (cardio) training is the intensity at which most of us perform it. Consider this quote from Ben Greenfield, who is a prominent fitness professional and author:

“We endurance athletes simply accumulate the majority of training time at one single speed—the not-too-hard, not-too-easy, slightly-near-threshold zone that makes us feel like we’re working pretty hard, but not too hard, and perhaps just hard enough to get us a little bit fit. Sound familiar? I call it black-hole training.”

The National Strength and Conditioning Association recommends that "Athletes must avoid falling into the “more is better” strategy of intensity training. The majority of training (as much as 100 percent for the beginning athlete) should be aerobic (at an easy pace) in nature; even the most experienced athletes should be doing 10-15 percent of their work at high intensity.

If too much high-intensity work is performed, the athlete will not have adequate recovery.

Many athletes -  both novice and experienced - make the mistake of training too hard during the low-intensity workouts, which inhibits their ability to go as hard as they should for the higher-intensity work."

How are you supposed to know if you are in an aerobic training zone? What if you are "black-hole training," and thus killing the potential gains you could be making?

The Wahoo Fitness TICKR helps you track the intensity of your cardio training, allowing you to target specific zones of intensity, based on your heart rate. Proper management of how much, and how intense your training is, will ensure that you are maximizing your gains while minimizing unnecessary fatigue.