Must Have Home Exercise Equipment

The idea sounds cool, isn’t it? But why do you need a home gym in the first place? You might need one for numerous reasons, especially because of the hefty price that you are supposed to pay for a gym membership. Also, for some, the distance between the gym and home is a major turn off. There will be days when you cannot devote time for workout. But that doesn’t mean you sit back and do nothing about it; sometimes a home gym is all you need to reach your fitness goals. There are numerous basic exercises that can bring amazing results. Besides, you get to enjoy some perks like save the commute time to gym, save money, do not have to struggle amidst the crowd and thus no pressure plus get some extra time to spend with family and friends.

Before you kick off, you need to choose the right set of equipment and set your goals. It is very important that you believe in yourself, you can easily achieve the fitness targets at home with little patience and consistency. As a popular saying goes- ‘Rome was not built in a day’, similarly you will gradually proceed towards your perfect body structure with some hard work and a balanced diet.
An important consideration is to have a convenient space for your workout. You should be able to choose an area which is spacious as you need plenty of room for equipment and exercise. If you are low on budget and do not follow very liberal rules then you can consider using the living room.

A complete workout must have the mentioned exercises:
1. Aerobic Training
I personally feel that every day you should do some cardio-vascular exercises at least 4 days a week, but to begin with you can do it twice and catch up slowly. The basic idea is to pump up your heart rate for an extended period of time. This helps to reduce body fat and makes you stronger and healthy.

The best exercises to pump up your heart are Stretches, jogging, jumping rope, cycling and stair-climbing.

2. Strength Training
Use your body weight, free weights or machines to stress your muscles for eventual growth and strength gains. This helps in power building.
The very effective and easily doable exercises which don’t need any machine are – push-ups, chin-ups, chair-dips, squats, crunches.

Equipment You Can Buy For A Home Gym:

1. Power Tower
There are wide varieties of power towers available in the market; while choosing one, you should go for the equipment which offers various benefits mentioned below:

A low cost machine, lightweight and works for moderate exercises, moreover this works on core and helps build strength. This does not offer huge variety of exercises and is not suited for die-hard builders who want a bulky body.

Highlights:
Pull-up station: Work your biceps, forearms and wings.
Push-up station: Work your biceps, shoulders and core.
Dip station: Work your triceps, chest and shoulders.
Vertical Leg/Knee Raise: Work your core to get lean abs.

2. Body-solid Sportsman Gym
It is smaller, low height home gym equipment that fits in all places. This is best suited for athletes who have petite body built and for those who want to maintain lean body. It does not support taller, heavier exercises.

Similar to body solid sportsman machine, there is another option that might be a tad expensive. It is the short assembly home gym multi-machine and is more versatile and durable. These two serve similar purpose and are geared towards moderate exercises. You get different varieties, weight-stacks in these machines varying from 150 pounds to 200 pounds. One should see the budget and the weight stack needs when opting for either of these.

Highlights:
Chest: It has a natural arc to work as if a free weight bench.
Lat and back: High pulley with wide grip lat bar.
Arms: A low bar at the bottom to work on bicep curl as well also for lat and back.
Lower: Leg raise, leg curl, leg extension, quads and seated calf raise.
Shoulder: Work your shoulders by shoulder press and shoulder shrug.

There are other options that come in more weight stacks and are appropriate for bulkier structure, hard core die-hard body builders.

3. Strength tech home gym multi-machine
4. Revolution home gym multi-machine
5. Dumbbells and barbells
6. A basic flat Bench

For a start you can get a basic machine like power-tower that would require you to spend $100-200 initially. Get extra weights only when you feel that you need them. Plan your workout and do not forget to work on each and every muscle of your body; upper and lower both are equally important.

Once you start, keep a regular check on your BMI and change your diet habits depending on your goals, as per which, you may want to gain weight or lose weight. Eat right and avoid fatty or high cholesterol foods so that you compliment your body after doing all the hard work out.

A few big brands that manufacture home fitness equipment:
1. Precor
2. Life fitness
3. Star trac
4. Cybex international

You can grab the necessary stuff from online stores like Dick’s sporting goods, Sears, Walmart, Amazon.com, eBay, Best buy & more, these are the places where you will get all the stuff you need to start your own gym at home.