Fitness Equipment - How Much Do You Need For Your Home Gym?
Lots of people have considered setting up their own home gym, but they think they don't have room for lots of fitness equipment. I mean, I need a multi-gym machine, and a treadmill or elliptical, then a weight bench, dumbbells, room for bars and weight plates, a place to stretch, etc. etc., right? Where will I ever fit all that stuff?
Well, the truth is, you don't need all that stuff. You actually don't need any of it. Of course, a few of those items would be nice to have - but you can get a great workout without them. First of all, you definitely don't need a multi-gym. If you have lots of extra money in the bank (NOT waiting at Visa or MasterCard), and you have lots of room, it wouldn't hurt to have one of these - but you don't need it to get a good workout.
You also don't need a treadmill or elliptical or exercise bike. A jumprope, or jumping jacks, or exercises like bear crawls and mountain climbers will get your heart beating just as fast AND build a little muscle - killing two birds with one stone.
If you have a small extra room such as a bedroom or den and want to set up a home gym at low cost, consider this. Get a sturdy weight bench and some weights, and maybe add in some selectorized dumbbells like those from PowerBlocks or Bowflex if you can afford them. Also get a mat for doing stretching and other exercises like crunches, and a chin-up bar that installs in your doorway in five seconds and stores away when not being use (the original brand was called Door Gym) Now you have everything you need. If space is still an issue, you can do away with the bench and do pushups and other bodyweight exercises like that. If you're thinking that these are too easy for you, buy a weight vest and wear that while doing squats, pushups, pullups, etc. There are weight vests that can add 75 pounds to your bodyweight, and even if you can squat with 300 pounds on a bar, you'll find bodyweight squats with a 75 lb. vest to be 'challenging', to say the least. You can do all your aerobic exercise outside by jogging or riding a bike, but we all know mother nature doesn't always cooperate with our workout plans, so if you have room, a spin bike (like that used in spinning classes) is a great aerobic machine and doesn't take up much room. I have one in a condo that's less than six hundred square feet (and my place doesn't look like a gym). Otherwise, as mentioned before, try stuff like mountain climbers, bear crawls and jumping jacks. They work into an interval program just fine. Do moutain climbers for forty-five seconds, rest for thrity to sixty seconds, do jumping jacks for forty-five seconds, rest, do bear crawls, etc. You'll find ten to fifteen minutes of this will do as much for your endurance and health as a half-hour or more of steady state jogging, and give you more time left over to boot. So you can see that it's not necessary to buy out the fitness equipment superstore just to escape the tyranny of the commercial gym. You can have your own gym at home and it can fit in a closet when you're not working out.
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