Strength Training At Home: What You Need

Ugh! Get up; get dressed. Shove your gym clothes in the gym bag. Scrape the ice off the car. Fight the traffic; find a parking spot. Dig out your gym card. Trudge to the locker room, change clothes, and cram your stuff into that tiny locker. Wait for a bench. Start your workout.

Or you can get up, grab your shorts, pick up your dumbbells, start your workout.

Which would you prefer? Is there any question? Doing your strength training at home is way more pleasant. But is that a viable option? If you are an Olympic hopeful, probably not. But for everybody else, it can be fantastic. strength training at home saves you time, gas, energy, gym fees, and frustration.

What does it take to get started? As a beginner, you only need yourself and maybe a floor mat. A way to watch DVDs or online videos will be helpful, too, as many home workouts are available--often free.

Pretty soon you will need some equipment. Resistance bands/tubes are light, compact, and effective. Begin with the lightest colors and gradually collect the rainbow--the darker, the stronger resistance. Some hooks can keep them untangled and quickly accessible.

Eventually, you will also want dumbbells, which come in graduated weights, and are sometimes sold as sets. As your strength increases, you will need an more of dumbbells and more space to keep them in.

Much more convenient than multiple dumbbell pairs are the Bowflex SelectTech 552 dumbbells or the bigger Bowflex SelectTech 1090s. One pair of these gives you as many weight options as at least 15 pairs of regular dumbbells. These high tech plate sets change weights with the twist of a dial--about 20 seconds to change it. A metal clip moves to pick up exactly what you dialed. Click and go. Most non-professionals will only need this one set for all their weight training for the rest of their lives.

Barbells at home can give you much more weight than even the SelectTech 1090s--at a cost in money, space, and potential danger. It is easy to lose control of barbells. You need a spotter to prevent injury, and you are more likely to have one available at a gym than at home.

An incline/decline bench is required to use the barbells most safely. Of course, you can use the dumbbells and bands on a bench, too. You just don't need it for the smaller equipment.

Home exercise machines, too, exist. If you have both a large space and a large budget, you may want to examine these. But you better get a home trial option to be sure it fits your space and personality. They are also widely available used from people who got them before being sure they would use them. Also remember, there is not only the purchase price, but the maintenance costs to consider.

You can do strength training at home. A gym may motivate you by having classes or competitors, but look at how easy it is to just do the strength training at home--especially in winter!