We all try to eat healthily and exercise, but sometimes it can be such a chore! Some people love going to the gym to work out, but for others it can be embarrassing, expensive or just plain boring. Having to pay out each month and travel to find a gym can put many people off, but there is a solution – make your own gym at home!
While this sounds like an expensive solution, you don’t have to fork out lots of cash to get everything you need. Many items can be bought or even built very cheaply, and it’s surprising the amount of gym equipment you won’t need anyway.
The first step to building your own fitness paradise is finding the space for a gym; this may be the hardest step, as many people simply don’t have the room. I for one have an unused conservatory which provides enough room for weights and various pieces of fitness equipment, but not everyone has unused rooms in their house! Consider using the garage or shed, especially if they have windows and are fairly spacious. Log cabins are an excellent place to set up a home gym, so you could consider investing in a shed or log cabin to get started.
Next you need to think about your fitness needs – are you looking to build muscle, increase your cardio fitness, or both? If you’re planning on just working on muscle training, you’ll find it far easier to gather up equipment. Free weights are fairly cheap and easy to come by, so find out where you can get some decent quality weights and a bench. All the fancy muscle training equipment at the gym is pretty unnecessary, and many fitness enthusiasts believe they can actually hinder progress and cause injuries. Whatever your opinion, you can easily do without adding these to your collection, so don’t worry about them.
You’ll also need to invest in some foam mats, for body-weight exercises such as crunches and press-ups, and some resistance bands to work different muscle groups. Exercise balls can be good for core exercises, or even just bouncing around on when you’re bored!
If you’re more interested in cardio, or want to mix up your workouts, you’ll need to make sure the space you’ve chosen is wired up so you have electricity. If you’re not an electrician, get someone else to do this for you! You want to avoid all the hard work until you’re actually in the gym.
Once you’ve got this sorted, you need to go on the hunt for some cheap fitness equipment. Exercise bikes and treadmills can be surprisingly cheap. Elliptical/cross trainers are a bit more expensive, but well worth investing in, especially if you have any joint problems.
Once you’ve got your equipment set up, you can add luxuries like a mini-fridge for snacks and drinks, or even a TV to keep you entertained whilst you’re working out. Make sure to stock up on towels and water, and get some anti-slip mats to make sure there are no nasty accidents – then you’re ready to go!
You can avoid all this and just go running and biking instead, but then you wouldn’t really be reading this article in the first place! Remember, whatever you spend now is likely to be half of what you’d spend on a gym membership.
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