Home Gym

So, often I get to put on my organizer’s hat and help my client to design his or her own personal workout environment. This series of articles will be dedicated just to that - designing a home gym. This particular post describes some of the goals to consider, challenges to face, and the solutions to embrace while setting up your personal gym and implementing a custom workout program. I believe that the information you find here will save you time and money, as well as other valuable resources while getting you closer to your fitness and wellness goals.

Home-Gym Advantage

If you ever played or followed sports, then you are familiar with the term home-field advantage. In sports, this phenomenon is usually attributed to various psychological factors that may (or may not) affect athletes. In the case of a home gym, the advantages are more tangible and can be easily defined. I say we look at some of the benefits of having a home gym before we dive into those many intricate nuances associated with setting up our private workout area.

Convenience

I don’t think anybody will try to argue otherwise if I say that being able to work out on your own terms at your convenience is the best way to go. It is especially so true if you want to break up your daily workout into short sessions throughout your workday. I find this approach to be especially beneficial for people who are trying to offset the damaging effects of sedentary jobs or the long hours one spends studying at school. (Read more about working out on your breaks) Those of us, who work from home are especially lucky since our home gym can also be our office gym. Those, who are not so lucky and have to work elsewhere, don’t get discouraged. There are plenty of options for you as well. Just wait till you get to the section titled “Portability.”

Savings

Besides the fact that the convenience of working out at home saves you time, otherwise spent on commute, it also helps you to save tons of money.

On average a gym goer spends about $50 a month on a gym membership and drives about 100 miles a month to and from the gym. Which roughly translates into $700 a year. It seems like a relatively small price to pay for staying fit and healthy. Yet, when I tell people that about $300 will get them pretty much everything they need to work out at home, they start understanding that they have been overpaying.

A lot of people get sold on the idea that paying a small monthly fee gets them access to all that expensive equipment at their local gym. Once again, even if you train on a competitive level, you probably don’t need most of the contraptions found there. A person who simply wants to stay in shape, get toned and maintain optimal cardiovascular health possibly won’t use even 10% of all that’s available at a large health club gym.

Privacy

Although many people enjoy the social aspects of working out at public gyms, others may find gyms somewhat intimidating. This may especially be the case for people with insecurities related to own appearance, low self-esteem, and low self-efficacy.

Sometimes people find it hard to concentrate on workouts in public places and therefore may require a slightly more private setting for their sessions. While there are studios that allow you to have private sessions with a personal trainer, such arrangement usually will cost much more than a membership at a regular sports gym. If you find this option to be a cost-prohibitive alternative, a home gym may be the right way to go.

Goals, Challenges, Solutions

Everybody has a different idea about what a home gym should be. Some see it as a reclining bench with a set of free weights. Others may think of an elliptical machine in front of a TV or a yoga mat in the corner of one’s bedroom. These choices may be dictated by your interests, your financial situation, and the availability of space within your dwelling. I would like to spend a minute to discuss some of these considerations.

Budget

I’m not going to lie to you, setting up a home gym can turn into a financial black hole if you are not careful. Statistically, over 90% of people who have some type of exercise equipment at home don’t use it and let it sit collecting dust because it’s just too expensive to throw away. Most of us are not aware of the many options available to us when it comes to exercising. Therefore when we encounter a professionally produced ad that tells us that this is our if not only, then the best option, we usually tend to believe it. Before you buy anything, spend some time learning about your options. I, as a personal trainer, can attest to the fact that exercising doesn’t have to be expensive.

If you go to a large chain gym, you will notice that most of their stationary equipment is designed to target a limited number of muscles or a single muscle groups. This equipment is usually bulky and takes a lot of space. Such equipment is made to be so durable that it sustains tens of thousands of exercise repetitions each day. People move from one machine to another to work out all their muscle groups. Such an approach is not feasible for a small apartment. So, it would be smart space-wise (we’ll talk more about this in just a moment) and budget-wise to choose equipment that can be employed to do a wide range of exercises for various muscle groups and which doesn’t require much space to be used and stored. I dedicate a number of articles on this site to introduce you to some of the most effective budget exercise equipment. For now, I’ll just mention one as an example to illustrate my point. You can easily substitute most of the strength training equipment found at a large gym, by using a set of resistance bands and a few anchor points on the wall. And guess what, this setup won’t cost you even a hundred bucks.

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Space

We mentioned earlier that space (or rather the lack of) can be a valid concern for many of us. However, many don’t realize that besides the space needed for exercising, you will probably want to figure out a way to store your equipment when it’s not in use. Otherwise, you will be tripping over or bumping into it all the time. I’ve seen many homes where people hoard exercise equipment. If one is not concerned much with the neatness of his or her place, piling equipment on top of each other and other objects in the room may result in serious safety issues.

Think ahead of time about the size of your room and others who share your home with you. Once again, a simple setup with resistance bands, a collapsible bike stand for cardio sessions and a yoga mat will cover most of your exercise needs by giving your body a complete workout. And by a “complete workout” I mean - all types of exercises that will keep your body in its top shape, not only visually, but also functioning optimally. Why don’t we take a few minutes to talk about it?

Plan for a Complete Workout

A complete workout will comprise aerobic exercises that will challenge your cardiovascular system to keep it functioning optimally, strength developing exercises for your muscle, bone and joint health, as well as various corrective and restorative exercises, such as stretching, myofascial release and self-massage to fine-tune your body’s structure and function. If your plan doesn’t include any of the mentioned activities, read more on what it takes to come up with a complete workout plan.

As I get to design my client’s workout area, I make a list of types of activities (or exercises) to include in his or her program. It may look like this:

• Strength Training
• Cardio Activities
• Corrective & Restorative Exercises

Then we proceed to extend this list with particular activities and exercises that will help the client to reach fitness or health goals. We list multiple options and alternatives, then see what would be feasible for his or her case. Later, we take a look at the available space and adjust our list accordingly. The next step would be to talk about accessories and their use. As we verify that our pick covers all our needs, we proceed with the program design based on our custom setup.

Portability

In the example with John, who can easily stow away his fitness accessories when needed and even take some of them with him for a ride and enjoy open-air exercises. We see that the portability of equipment adds yet another convenience and makes one’s fitness plan flexible and more enjoyable.

Those of us who don’t work from home, may be tempted to bring something along, for example, a massage ball, or get an extra set of accessories to keep them in the desk's drawer and use them for short rejuvenating breaks. Going on a trip (something that I used to do quite often) doesn’t have to keep you from exercising. So, I tend to lean towards portable solutions that are affordable and easy to use. I continuously buy, try out and post my reviews of exercise equipment and fitness accessories on this site. If you are interested in learning more about my experiments with various fitness accessories and gym equipment, check out this section of the website - Exercise Equipment. There I post links to some of the best exercises accessories I would recommend to my friends and family members.

Using my personal experience and feedback from my clients I also often design my own accessories and get them produced in limited quantities, which I may offer for sale via my online store. The best way to get notified of my new product releases, sign up for the monthly newsletter. I’ll let you know about any new developments on this website, in our social discussion groups and my store. Otherwise, keep on reading and learn more about the practical and “lean” approach to functional exercising.