My Top Five.....

....things under $20 you can carry in your gym bag, besides sweaty socks and weightlifting gloves.

1. The Tiger Tail. Foam rollers are great, but might not be something you want to carry around in your gym bag. The Stick can be equally as effective, if not more, when it comes to self myofacial release work, but the Stick costs $28. Another version of the Stick, but at a lower cost, is the Tiger Tail. It's particularly great for working out those nasty trigger points in your calves or peroneals that should not be overlooked.
2. Lynx Grips. I get it. If you're a chick you don't want callouses. If you're a guy, I don't get it. But rather than wearing those silly looking gloves, how about using the Lynx Grips. In addition to preventing callouses, they will provide a bit more cushion to the grip and will fatten the grip up a bit. Working with a fatter grip can lead to increased performance when it comes to exercises such as chin pull ups or deadlifts and can help protect your shoulders.
3. A Superband. Adding some band training into your training program can add some variety to your training. It can add difficulty to an exercise such as a band resisted push up. Or it can deload an exercise and make it a bit easier. One of my personal favorites in this case is band assisted chin or pull ups. Gravitron machine no more.
4. Ab Wheel. All the fancy ab training equipment in a gym that costs thousands of dollars and I've been into some that don't even have this simple piece. Is it something I would suggest throwing in everyone's gym bag? Probably not. But it's something I feel people could or should work up to. I love ab wheel roll outs as an exercise. They work the abs in the the function they're supposed to work, anti-extension and spinal stabilization.
   
5. Blender Bottle. Not a bottle to hold water in, but a bottle to mix your post-workout shake in. First thing that should be done after a workout is to down that post-workout shake, not check Facebook. The sooner post-workout the better. Protein synthesis goes up. Insulin levels go up. Cortisol levels go down. Recovery is enhanced. All good things. All good things not enough people are doing.