In the pursuit of new fitness equipment I'll be looking towards the new Westfield shopping centre that opens it's doors tomorrow in the west of London.

I know that the shopping centre is aimed towards the high end fashion & high street fashion market, but I'm sure there will be some good fitness equipment or gym clothes to invest in.

I need a good selection of gym clothes for the winter and am certainly going to head to this mall, it's also offering healthy shopping, with massage for weary shoppers! Sounds like the perfect place for my Christmas shopping! But this is another reason for me investing in some spanking new gym kit...

Yes that's right! The time has come that I am FINALLY joining a gym, it's been a while now but I have managed to maintain my fitness levels from working out, running, using my dumbbells from home, and general up keep with aerobic fitness all without using a gym, but as the nights are here now by 5pm it's time I joined a gym, fortunately for me I found a perfect place that's £40 a month but NO contract! Which is fantastic! It has everything I want from a gym and more, to cap it off it also has a selection of "Power Plate" machines so I can finally put these to full use and give you a full comprehensive review.

I will be tracking my new routine with a gym log / log book and keeping track of everything I do in my pursuit of ultimate fitness :)

Stay tuned!

Today I found that you can get a “Powerball” for under £20! They are said to really help to improve many different sporting activities and general fitness. As I am a keen indoor rower I think it may make a difference to my rowing stroke when working out on the concept two indoor rowing machine. Once I'm up and running with my gym membership through work I can put it to the test and let you know if I’ve seen any improvement on my personal best rowing times.

The Powerball requires no batteries, has no motor and works solely off of “gyroscopic” power. It just requires spinning your wrist while held tight in your hand to start the device off, the Powerball can then get up to spinning 15,000rpm at which point it's exerting almost 40lbs of pressure on your limbs and is travelling at nearly 250 revolutions per second.

You can use a Powerball as a fitness product to either tone or help build substantial power and strength in the wrists, forearms and shoulders. The Powerball is also a great rehabilitation product to mobilise and gently rehabilitate the lower forearm arm.

At the weekend I received an email from a reader of the blog Kelly. She wanted to know where to buy or where to find an exercise wall chart to maintain and follow a good exercise routine.

As I’ve been a subscriber to many different fitness magazines I’ve managed collect a fair few of these “wall charts” during my subscription base, many of which proved quite useful when working out at home.

Fitness magazines such as Men’s Fitness (this is the best by a long way for wall charts), Men’s Health and many other fitness magazines always include these handy wall charts in their monthly magazine, and if no wall chart is included then you will always get an exercise routine with photographs in the back few pages.

I’d advise leafing through this month’s fitness magazine editions in WHSmiths to see if you can find a fitness wall chart with a program that will suit you.

The dumbbells I recently bought online also included a large wall chart which helped with my exercise routine. Most home gym fitness equipment includes wall charts and wall planners to help you with your home fitness routine. The wall chart I got with the dumbbells was more of a large list of exercises you can do with dumbbells, rather than an exercise program, but it’s still proved helpful.

I also found a website that sells the fitness wall charts online:

Fitness Wall Charts

If you cannot find any that are what you’re looking for here, or not willing to pay a premium for a fitness wall chart, I’d recommend buying a large wall year planner to track and write up your fitness program. You could buy a few fitness magazines, cut out many of the different exercises they demonstrate and compile your very own customised fitness wall chart!

Track your fitness with a long book!

A log book is one of the most vital pieces of gym kit in your home gym equipment arsenal! If you're writing down your sets and tracking everything you're doing both in and out of the gym then you can track your performance gains and increase in fitness levels.

Just simply log what it is you're doing, it's just getting into a habit of doing so and after a week it'll be second nature.

A log book is good for tracking what you've done, but also, it will inspire you to keep up your routine and track your goals. You can see what you did in past sessions if you've felt bad, or good afterwards and you can target why and what perhaps you've done differently.

You can log your weight levels and exercise repetitions, session length and aerobic activities. All in all a log book is one item you should always carry about if you're serious about fitness, weight loss or getting into shape.

After reading a lot of articles and participating in online forums, it seems some people are making assumptions that the advancement in technology within the new swimming costumes are to be accredited for the huge advancement in swimming and the breaking of all the world records.

Having swam at top levels myself I can say, that the costumes have a very small impact on your performance, yes they are defiantly a help, and actually help by holding your muscles tight rather than create less friction through the water as most people think. They also aid performance as a mental boost, but all in all the new swimming suits don't help out as much as people are making out! The swim suits give just fractions of a second off your times where as just the development and progression in the sport and performances within the pool along with training advancements and training equipment makes up for the bulk of the improvements.