The Towel Workout: Four Exercises, One Everyday Household Item

As personal trainers, we encourage our clients to move a little bit every day. We're also human; we know that time is precious and we might not have the luxury of spending it at the gym most days.

We ALSO know that just because you can’t make it to the gym, it doesn’t mean you can’t get SOMETHING in!

Exercise does not have to be 60 minutes, all or nothing. Exercise is movement, and movement can happen any time, anywhere (so, even at home), for any amount of time.

We have plenty of ordinary objects at home that can be turned into surprisingly effective exercise equipment. Some of the TruFit trainers do or used to train people in their homes; Izzy remembers a day when she needed to improvise in someone’s kitchen, only using objects in that room: "Other than bodyweight, we used a gallon of milk (8 lbs), soup cans (2 lbs each), and towels."​

We’ve demonstrated a few of our favorite things to do with furniture sliders (especially useful if you have carpet) here and here. But here are four other moves you can try out with towels, something every home has! 

You can even put them all together to make a quick towel workout circuit! See? We love you all so much we took away any excuse NOT to move. ;)

Enjoy the four towel exercise videos below!

1) Towel Mountain Climbers

• ​Get into a high plank position with both feet on separate towels.
• Keep your hands right under your shoulders the whole time you do this exercise.
• The slower you go, the more challenging this will be on your core and arms so resist the urge to do this quickly.
• If this starts to go into your low back, it’s OK to hike up your hips up just a little bit.
• Work up to doing 10 on each side.

Watch the video to see the variations!

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2) Towel Reverse Lunges

• If this is too challenging on its own, feel free to hang onto a chair or couch for balance.
• It is common to keep the back leg straight, but do bend at the knee if you are able to.
• Work up to doing 10-15 on each side.

Watch the video for the rest of our tips and demonstration!

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3) Towel Russian Twists

• ​Sit on your sits bones and hinge your torso back ever so slightly.
• You can keep your heels on the ground as you do this or, to make it more challenging, pick your feet up off the ground.
• The twist happening here is in your mid back and NOT your low back, therefore there should be no movement in your pelvis. Not sure if there is or isn’t movement? Take a look at your knees: They should stay totally still.
• Work up to doing 10 slow rotations on each side.

Watch the video for the rest of the instruction!

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4) One-Arm Sliding Towel Pushups

• ​Izzy is demonstrating this one on her knees because she cannot do it on her toes [BTW, this is Izzy writing and I approve of this message] but if YOU can, go for it! Izzy would like to think this variation will finally put an end to calling pushup variations on knees “girl" pushups.
• Get into a pushup plank position with your knees down, making sure your body is in a straight line.
• Be careful not to arch your back here, which is really easy to do.
• Squeeze your glutes nice and tight, and keep your gaze straight ahead. 
• Inhale as you lower yourself down and exhale on the way up.

​Aim for as many as you can do with proper form. That might mean 1/4 of one rep and that's OK. We all start somewhere.

We hope this towel workout was helpful, and inspires you to play around with movement in places other than the gym. 

If you try these towel exercises, or do the full towel workout, let us know in the comments below!

​Have questions? Don't hesitate to get in touch at [email protected]!