How To Start Working Out At Home
Wanna know how to start working out at home?
Maybe it’s because you don’t have time to commute to the gym. Or maybe you want to save money from having to buy a membership. Or maybe you have a fear of exercising in front of people because you’re so full of yourself that you think people even care enough to give a fuck about what you’re doing.1Trust me, people are too wrapped up in their workout to cast judgment on what some overweight or out-of-shape person is doing in the gym. That is, unless you’re doing something absurdly wrong with an exercise or piece of equipment that draws attention to yourself. Or maybe there’s a zombie virus and officials have called for the closure of schools, bars, restaurants, and gyms to contain the spread of the undead. Or maybe you hate people and simply don’t want to be around them more than you have to be.2Who can fucking blame you?!?! I sure as hell can’t!!! Whatever the circumstances for your decision, working out at home is a viable alternative that’s growing in popularity.
Here are a few tips to get started…
LOCATION
The first step to working out at home is designating a dedicated space for your full-fledged home gym or workout area. Depending on the amount of room that’s available given your living conditions, this designated space can range from an entire bedroom, basement, or garage to a separate corner in a room that already has an existing purpose.3Wherever you decide to exercise indoors should have good air quality and a reasonable temperature. If not, look into purchasing an air filtration system, space heater, fan, or air conditioning unit to eliminate the excuse of not working out because the environment isn’t conducive to it. If you live in a temperate climate or it’s a warm part of the year, your patio, backyard, or driveway may also suffice as options. In here, you might want to hang up some motivational posters and a full-length mirror or two to help enhance the sense of space, as well as for monitoring your form. Albeit not necessary, it might also be a wise investment to purchase mats or foam tiles to provide cushioning and traction, in addition to protection for your flooring from sweat and equipment.
EQUIPMENT
What you equip yourself with is primarily going to come down to your budget and the type of exercise you plan on doing. If you’re a multimillionaire with lots of room to spare, then you can deck out your home gym with commercial-grade cardio and strength training machines, squat racks, power towers, barbells, and sets of weight plates and dumbbells and kettlebells of varying weights. However, if you’re not a multimillionaire, then you’re more than likely only going to want or be able to start off with the bare essentials. Such items include a weight vest, resistance bands, one pair of 3-8 lbs dumbbells, and another pair of 12-25 lbs dumbbells. An exercise mat, stability ball, doorway pull-up bar, ab wheel, and jump rope or agility ladder for cardio may also come in handy.4A little bit pricier, a suspension trainer and adjustable dumbbells may be considered from the beginning for their multiple benefits. Concerning suspension trainers like TRX, a variety of resistance training exercises can be performed with them. As for adjustable dumbbells, they’re versatile in their use because they offer the poundages of multiple dumbbells in one single dumbbell, which can save money in your wallet and space in your home.
The inexpensive items above are more than enough to meet your most basic needs.5Want to work out with equipment but that relatively cheap stuff is still too pricey for your liking? Well, get creative with everyday household items!
For example, a 1 gallon jug of water equals around 8 lbs, so you might want to fill up one or two empty milk or water jugs as a substitute for dumbbells. Canned goods and paint cans also work in their place. A book bag is something else you can use, as well as books. However, you don’t strike me as the literate type, so you very well might not own books. If you do happen to own books, what you can do is place several of them on your bathroom scale to weigh out however many pounds you need and then put that amount in your book bag and then use it in place of a weight vest. You can also use your bathroom scale for the 1 gallon jug idea to weigh out 5 or however many pounds if 8 lbs is too heavy for you.
Other analogues include towels or folded blankets in place of exercise mats; furniture sliders as a replacement for gliding discs; a stool or single step from a flight of stairs as a standin for a step platform; and, if performing yoga, a shoebox and belt or necktie as an alternative for yoga blocks and straps. When more space or your finances allow, then you can look into plopping down cash for an exercise bench, barbell, weight plates, and more dumbbells, as well as a cable machine, treadmill, stationary bike, rowing machine, and whatever else tickles your fancy. Towards that end, there’s always reasonably priced used exercise equipment on second-hand shopping sites like Craigslist, OfferUp, and Facebook Marketplace, which can help cut down costs, especially when it comes to shipping and handling fees.6It doesn’t hurt to also keep an eye out for gyms that are closing, as they might have a liquidation sale. Further, some gyms like mine here in San Diego regularly swap out their old equipment for new shit. When that happens, that might be a good time to negotiate with the gym owner and snag a piece of equipment at a discount.
EXERCISES
The exercises you can do at home will be largely dictated by the type of equipment you have and your experience. For instance, anyone who’s spent enough time in the gym can immediately think of a variety of cardio and resistance training exercises to do with the bare essentials. For someone with a smaller knowledge base, there are instructional videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other online platforms that demonstrate the execution of various exercises. Moreover, there are numerous accounts and channels that are specifically tailored to working out with minimal equipment. Also available are videos on how to do exercises with your body weight, which you may want to incorporate into your home workout routine or be an exclusive part of it if you don’t have plans on plopping down cash on fitness equipment because you’re too broke to or don’t intend on working out at home that often and only need something to hold you over during a jam because of your schedule or rampaging zombie virus.7e.g. burpees, planks, wall sits, air squats, jump squats, pistol squats, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, bear crawls, lunges, crunches, push-ups, donkey kicks, single-leg deadlifts, floor hyperextensions, etc.
The provided resources should be more than enough to have an effective workout in your home gym or workout area but if additional help is needed on what to do with your equipment or body weight, then it might behoove you to shell out a few bucks for an online personal trainer. Hiring a remote coach is usually cheaper than a personal trainer and not only will they take the guesswork out by providing you with a routine of exercises to do with what’s at your disposal but they can also hold you accountable so you don’t slack off from working out at home, where it’s extremely easy to get distracted and push off exercising because you always have the built-in excuse that you can get to it later.8Having a home gym or workout area helps eliminate the excuse of not having time to go to the gym. But the ability to fit a workout into your day regardless of the time presents its own excuse. However, as easy as it is to not work out at home because you can always lie to yourself that you’ll do it later because you essentially live in the gym, that excuse doesn’t seem to be that prevalent. According to a poll conducted by CivicScience, people who work out at home are 21 percent more likely than gym-goers to work out once a week or more. That means that having a home gym or workout area leads to more, not less, frequent exercise.
*BONUS*
Much like dressing like you’re going to the office can increase productivity when you work from home, it’s just as important to dress like you’re going to the gym when you work out at home because a change of clothes helps shift your brain and get it ready for the task at hand. So when it’s time to work out, change into clothing that’s comfortable and functional. Doing so will make you more inclined to go through with your workout and give better effort than if you were to remain in the clothes you were just lounging on the couch in.
Working out at home eliminates the inconvenience of commuting to a gym and is highly cost-effective in the long run. It’s due to these reasons that more and more people are expected to join the crowd of people that already work out at home. Given the information presented here about how to start working out at home, you may very well be one of those people in the near or distant future.
…but then again, you may not and instead have second thoughts about working out at home because doing so eliminates the gym as a possible cover for where you are when you’re doing extramarital shit!
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