How To DoStrength Training At Home
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What a pain! Get up. Get dressed. Shove your gym clothes in the gym bag. Scrape the ice off the car. Fight the traffic; find a parking spot. Find your gym card. Then off to the locker room to change your clothes and cram your stuff into a tiny locker. Wait for a bench. And that's all before you can start your workout.
Or you can get up, grab your shorts, pick up your dumbbells, start your workout.
Which would you prefer? Obviously, doing your strength training at home. But is that really a good option? Probably not for a professional athlete. But for everybody else, it can be fantastic. Save time, gas, energy, gym fees, and frustration.
What does it take to get started? For a start, you will only need a little space and maybe a floor mat. A way to watch DVDs or online videos will be helpful, too, as many home workouts are available--often free.
Not far down the pike, however, you will want some equipment. Resistance bands/tubes are light, compact, and effective. You begin with the lightest colors and gradually acquire the darker, the stronger resistance bands as you need them. Hook storage keeps them untangled and quickly accessible.
Most likely, you will also want dumbbells. These come in graduated weights, sometimes sold as sets. You will need an increasing number of these and ever more space to keep them in.
Much more convenient than multiple dumbbell pairs are the Bowflex SelectTech 552 dumbbells or the bigger Bowflex SelectTech 1090s. One pair of these replaces at least 15 pairs of regular dumbbells--saving both space and annoyance. These high tech plate sets change weights with the twist of a dial--about 20 seconds to change it. A metal clip moves to pick up exactly what you dialed. Most non-professionals will only need this one set for all their weight training for the rest of their lives.
Barbells at home can give you a larger weight range than the SelectTech 1090s, but they take more space and are expensive and dangerous. It is easy to lose control of barbells. You need a spotter to prevent injury, and you are more likely to have one available at a gym than at home.
You will also generally need an incline/decline bench to use the barbells most safely. It would not hurt to use a bench with dumbbells and bands. You just don't need it for the smaller equipment.
Some people splurge and get home exercise machines. If you have both a large space and a large budget, you may want to examine these. But you better get a home trial option to be sure it fits your space and personality. Such equipment is widely available used--consider this option, too. Remember, there can be serious maintenance costs as well as initial purchase price for such equipment.
You can do strength training at home. A gym may have more equipment, more camaraderie, more expert advice, and more motivating competition, but strength training at home is a lot more convenient, and counting gym fees, over time a lot less expensive.
