The Advantages of Exercising at Home

For people who like to exercise, there is often a choice that they make: whether to work out at home, or to join a gym or a club and use their facilities.  If you want to try working out at home, there are a number of things to think about.

The first consideration is space.  If you do not have the space to set up equipment, you have to be creative.  If you live in a warm climate, you can work out outside.  You can also work out in cold weather, but you will obviously need to dress accordingly.  Many people prefer to exercise outside, whether it is walking, running, cycling, hiking or even doing weight training.  There are numerous exercises that can be done outside in all types of weather.

Now, you may actually have room in your home if you are resourceful.  You can create space in your home by using areas for multiple purposes.  You can move aside furniture in a room and exercise there.  You can also use your garage by moving out the vehicles and setting up there.  If you are setting up large pieces of equipment, you will probably have to have a dedicated space, however.

Another consideration is cost.  There are gyms that cost as little as $5 per month, and the average American pays $85 a month or $1000 a year for a gym or a club.  You can outfit a home gym with some weights and a bench for a few hundred dollars.  If you add a rower or an elliptical machine, you will spend another $300 – $500.  So, for the cost of an average annual gym membership, you can have your own equipment at home.

Naturally, if you want to create a more elaborate set up, you can spend much more, but you can get started with the above equipment and add to it.

There are a number of advantages to working out at home. 

You can work out when you want.  You can set up a workout schedule when it is most convenient for you and change it when you wish. 

You can wear whatever you want.  Many exercise facilities have dress code minimums like wearing shoes and non ripped clothing.  At home, you do not have to feel self conscious about what you look like, you just exercise.

You do not have to wait for equipment.  If you exercise early in the morning or after work, most gyms are packed with people and you often have to wait to use things.

You can do whatever you want with your equipment.  At a gym, very often there are rules on how to use equipment, both for the safety of the people using it and also so that more than one person can use them at once.  At home if you want to use a bench for 2 different exercises, or do a “circuit”, where you go through a number of different exercises on different machines in a row and then start again, you are not monopolizing things that no one else can use. 

You become more innovative in choosing exercises.  At a gym, you have many different choices of equipment whereas at home, you will have only a few.  This forces you come up with different exercises based on what you have available to you.  For example, if you want to do a leg workout but do not have a squat rack or leg press, you could do walking lunges, not likely to be something you might do at a gym, but an excellent leg exercise, nonetheless.

Innovation makes you more fit.  One of the basic tenets of exercising is that you need to keep challenging yourself physically or you body will get used to the movements you are doing, your progress will slow down and you will see less benefit from them as time goes on.  Working out with limited space or equipment can make you do movements that might be unusual in a gym and therefore you will benefit from them because you have not done them before, and your body has not gotten used to them.

You are not self-conscious.  One of the reasons people do not like to work out in a gym is that they feel that others are watching what they are doing and even what they are wearing.  While it has been shown many times that most gym goers are concentrating on what they are doing and are not paying attention to others, it is hard for many people to be totally comfortable working out in public.  Whether is it their choice or exercise, their clothing or their attracting attention from the opposite sex, this discomfort has prevented many people from joining gyms.  At home, you can work out with a carefree feeling.

You can leave the equipment the way you want.  At a gym, you are required to put all of the equipment away when you are done with it.  It is common sense and polite.  Others need to use it and should not have to search for what they want.  At home, you can leave the equipment the way you like it AND you can even set it up for the next day’s exercise session the day before.

There is no travel time.  Simply put, you do not have to get to the gym, it is within a short distance of you at all times.  This also has the added benefit of removing the obstacle of getting to the gym and makes your workout frictionless to start.

You can workout barefoot.  It is unlikely that a commercial gym would allow barefoot exercising for safety purposes, but there are numerous benefits to working out barefoot including strengthening the stabilizing muscles of the foot and ankle and making them stronger.  It also helps to improve balance and overall athletic performance.

There are many advantages to exercising at home; it begins with identifying where you want to do it and you build on the idea with equipment and exercise ideas.