Sporty bargains at Aldi

This week Aldi is having a bit of a sport and fitness jag, with all sorts of sporting clothes and equipment on sale.

What caught my eye was that they're selling inflatable gym balls for $7.99. Also known as 'fit balls' or 'Swiss balls', these are the sort of balls you sit on at your desk instead of a chair, or that you hold or lie on to do various exercises.

They come in black, aqua, lime and pink, and in 55cm, 65cm, 75cm or 85cm, depending on your needs. They take a maximum user weight of 120kg.

If you're a bit WTF when it comes to gym balls, here's a list of 10 manly exercises recommended by AskMen, and 10 exercises recommended by Weight Watchers.

Also at Aldi, a waterproof mp3 player for $29.99. I was pretty excited about this as I have recently taken up swimming again. It's suitable for water sports and activities and is waterproof up to 3m. Considering my local pool is 1.9m at the deep end, I should be okay.

It's nothing fancy – it has a 4GB internal memory and its only functions are play, pause, reset, and volume up or down. It comes with a clip, armband, USB cable and earphones. It's available in blue or black.

The pictures show the player clipped to a lady's goggles and the earbuds tucked inside a swimming cap. Perhaps it is a little ridiculous to go to so much effort. One of the things I like about swimming is the quietness of the mind it instils. But you could also just use it as a small mp3 player to wear while exercising and not have to worry about damaging your 'good' mp3 player in rainy conditions.

Cheap skating for cheapskates

It's odd, but those little retro plastic skateboards must be back. When I was a kid in the '80s, they were deeply uncool and frowned-upon (you had to have a 'proper' deck with the sandpapery surface), but maybe things have changed.

At Kmart, 55cm Southern Star "retro cruiser" skateboards are $15. They seem to come in purple with blue wheels, red with green wheels or blue with red wheels.



Meanwhile at Big Dubs, Mambo skateboards in the same size and style are $20. They come in red, hot pink, orange and yellow, again with contrasting-coloured wheels. I guess you pay an extra $5 for the Mambo brand.

The style is apparently a ripoff of Penny, an Australian brand of plastic skateboards that's been around since 1983 and seems to have a fair bit of cachet in some skating circles.



Considering Penny boards cost upwards of $150, these are very cheap indeed.

Cost-effective hydration

Would you like to take up boxing in the New Year? Big Dubs offers a low-stakes entry with $10 Everlast boxing gloves. And to stay hydrated, how about a Sodastream machine for $55 (save $9.88)? They reckon the gas cylinder is good for 60L. When my housemate Paul had one of these, it was a golden era. I drank so much bubbly water.

In other water bargains, Aldi has Brita water filter jugs for $19.99. Holds 1.4L filtered water. I got one of these when Is Not Magazine had the Vesta House office and the water came out of the tap a weird brown colour. It was astonishing how it made the water normal.