Your Very Own Home Gym – for less than £55/$75
It is a common misconception that the more you spend on gym membership the better results you will get. Gym membership can be very expensive and still come with no guarantees. There is no doubt that what the gym can offer as far as equipment goes is usually far better than any home gym you could hope to create. However I have helped to design and set up many a private gym and in all honesty you can build a very good one that can cover all muscle groups with only two purchases. Not only are these two pieces able to train every single muscle in your body but they are not expensive either. In fact you could pick them up for less than £55 brand new.
… but money can’t buy motivation
Before I go into which two pieces of equipment I am talking about you have to understand that we are going for the cheapest option here. If you have a bit more money available to you then of course you can buy a bit more, but remember: you can buy masses of equipment, but if your desire to train is not there then you will simply be throwing your money away. Before you start you have to be focused and want to get results because home training motivation can be very difficult, especially with so many distractions.
What to avoid
When you are trying to get together the cheapest home gym you can, there is one group of equipment you can avoid altogether and that is cardiovascular equipment. This is not because it isn’t effective but because there is a free gym that offers really good cardiovascular exercise and the best bit is that it is very near to where you live. If you haven’t guessed already this gym – free of membership costs – is called the great outdoors. That’s right, don’t waste hundreds of pounds/dollars on cardiovascular equipment when you can go outside and jog, cycle (if you already have a bike) or play a sport. Being able to avoid paying out for expensive cardiovascular equipment allows you to save a lot of money.
The first essential purchase
Adjustable dumbbells are without a doubt one of the most versatile pieces of equipment money can buy. They are relatively inexpensive, take up hardly any room and allow for a variety of weight combinations. It is important that you get the adjustable dumbbells and not the fixed ones, mainly because you would have to buy a lot more fixed dumbbells to replicate all the different weights that adjustable ones can achieve. With your set of dumbbells at the ready you can train the majority of muscles in your body; shoulders, arms, back and legs. You may have noticed that I left chest out of that and while you can train your chest with dumbbells by lying on the floor, it doesn’t allow for a full range of movement in your chest like the bench allows. However the bench is boring and gets in the way, so why not replace the bench with the second essential piece of equipment…
The second essential purchase
Swiss Ball, Fit Ball, Gym Ball or Exercise Ball (you get the idea – Beeble) is your second and final essential purchase as it can train so much more than a simple bench, yet can replicate a bench so that you can perform all your chest exercises with ease. Combine the Swiss Ball with your dumbbells and there isn’t a muscle in your body that can escape from your new training regime. Plus if you use the Swiss Ball correctly you will work your core muscles harder than any other piece of equipment.
Summary
So there you have it: two purchases and you can tell all your friends that you have your own home gym and best of all it takes up no room at all. Deflate your ball, take your dumbbells apart and they can fit under your bed. Before you complain that you don’t want to pump your ball up every time you train, remember that it is a very good warm-up and you should never try and avoid hard work when you are in training. If you want to learn more exercises that you can do with just dumbbells or a Swiss Ball then please visit the links to our Exercise Library below. We are adding to the exercises all the time and we are planning a full arsenal of Swiss Ball exercise coming soon.
