Home gyms

[Nate tha' Great]

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Buy a jump rope. Tell yourself you'll jump for at least 10 minutes in the morning and ten minutes at night.

If you can't do that, any home gym is just going to be a space-gobbling waste of money sitting around collecting dust.

Total cost for this experiment if you get the rope from a hardware store: about a dollar.

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Man Blarg, you are good.


And Nate, if you are single, I can't help but think joining a gym is a good idea.

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I belonged to Bally's for a couple of years and was fairly good about going at first but then fell out of the habit. I think just having the opportunity to work out with essentially no advance planning required is helpful to a lazy person like me. (Also, I'm not single).

[Alobar]

most people couldnt jump rope for 10 minutes even if someone had a gun to their head. Its a good point you make tho.

Me, Im old school, so Id just buy some plates, a bench, and some bars. However many of the bowflex type machines will give someone with limited exersise experience a much much better workout.

To the peole saying joining a gym is better. It all depends. Its super easy to talk yourself out of going, because its a hassle. Where if you can just go down to your basement whenever you want, you are much more likely to stick to a workout program. It all depends on what you want. If you want socilization and hot ass, then join a gym. If you just want to workout whenever you want and not be bothered, then home gym is where its at.

[Blarg]

Yeah, I just mean trying, pretty much no matter what the exercise or how good you are at it. Most people can't even show up to try.

A lot of people think gym equipment or a gym membership will make them exercise, but it probably usually doesn't, or not for long. You gotta really want to be doing it.

[gvibes]

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You need a power rack with a bar for chin-ups. You need an Olympic bar and a couple hundred pounds of weight. You need a pulley machine. The ones where you just load plates are cheaper than the ones with the weight stacks and pins. You need an adjustable incline bench for the power rack. If you have money left over buy a set of Power Block adjustable dumbells. Unless you're a monster, the 5-85 lb set will be plenty. Everything you need for about a dime.

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This is the correct answer, IMHO.

[stankybank]

shop here.

[Subfallen]

You don't need a gym, all you need is this linky.

[CallMeIshmael]

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You don't need a gym, all you need is this linky.

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How long does that take?

[Blarg]

Weights are great, but harder to do heavy exercises on alone. Doing heavy squats without a spotter is borderline dangerous, and doing the same with benching isn't the greatest either. Changing big plates without having the bar fly up on you on one end is sometimes harder than it sounds, too. And changing weights solo can be a slow, tricky business.

I love weights and especially think squats are easily one of the best strength building and over-all conditioning exercises ever invented, but I think solo, dumbbells are probably a better bet. Those dumbbell sets someone mentioned, the square ones where you can change the weights really fast, are great for that. Speed counts for a lot when changing weight. Not only do your muscles and energy cool down when you spend a lot of time changing weights, but just as importantly, so does your motivation. You can actually spend quite a lot of time when solo just changing weights.

[woodguy]

Were your kettleballs delivered to you by this guy?



BTW, I own a bowflex that is now 5 years old.
It is still an excellent strength building machine, well worth the cash, and very easy to buy an almost new one for 1/2" price off of a fat guy.

Regards,
Woodguy

[Guy Incognito]

If you want muscle, you want free weights. I have a Bodysolid smith machine, which pretty much negates the safety issues, as I can lock the bar into the rack anytime I get in trouble. Also has the pulley attachment to do the back exercises, and the bar is great for doing the "core" exercises (bench, squat, etc.). I have the bearing driven model, which isn't cheap (about 1.5K with attachments), but I'm very happy with it.

There's also a new type of bench where the bar is suspended from cables that lock in when you let go of it, which gives you more of a true "floating" bar than the Smith, but the one I saw was something like 3-4K, so it just depends on what you're willing to shell out.