Ideas For A Homemade Gym

You might prefer to do such things in the privacy of your own home or are simply put off by the high price of membership at a commercial setup – so why not put together or build your own homemade gym?

Fit – at half the price

There’s little doubt that keeping fit is good for the body, mind, and wellbeing.

There’s probably something to be said for the discipline of regular exercise at fixed times of the day in the orderly environment of a gym or fitness club. But exercise is also something you’ll want to take as and when the mood or motivation takes you – so the ability of being able to do so at home has added benefits.

There’s the even bigger bonus, too, of a homemade gym likely to work out considerably cheaper than any paid fitness centre subscription.

The kit

There’s little you’re likely to need in the way of kit or equipment for your homemade gym – and what there is can be bought or acquired cheaply. What’s more, you’ll not need it all at once but can add elements as you go along – and discover what pieces of equipment suit you and serve you best.

Here are some basics to kick off:

• a small selection of free weights and body weights will give you plenty of scope for all-round fitness exercises;

• Amazon, for example, offers a range equipment for your home gym including equipment for particular muscle groups you might want to tone – arms, chest, stomach, legs and bum, or your whole body;

• weights can help to add the resistance you need to your preferred circuit training routines;

• circuit training is a great way of adding discipline to the exercise you take, providing some structure and order to ensure that you are getting the benefit of a whole-body workout;

• to put together your own circuit training routine, group together anything between four and ten exercises to make a single series set back-to-back over a set period of time.

Circuit training

Some circuits might include breaks while others don’t – and the intensity of your workout can be tailored towards whatever your body can take or the results you’re after, points out Women’s Health magazine in an article on the 16^th of July 2021.

The great thing about circuit training is that you need no or very minimum equipment – and, in your homemade gym, of course, you can fit in a circuit or two whenever you choose.

Even if you’re new to any kind of physical training exercises, circuit training is a great way to boost your heart rate – without necessarily noticing it. By changing your exercises regularly and refining the circuits, you’ll soon find that you’re working out for longer periods of time.

Self-defence training

You might even want to combine your fitness regime with exercises and training specifically oriented towards self-defence – boxing and kickboxing, for example, are effective ways of maintaining peak fitness and can easily be incorporated into your homemade gym.

Once again, the range of equipment you’ll need for this kind of self-defence training is minimal – especially in the beginning rounds. To get some idea of the range of affordable kit that is available as you steadily progress, you might want to browse the kickboxing equipment advertised on Amazon.

The great outdoors

Although you’ve proved to yourself how easy it is to set up a homemade gym, don’t forget that there’s still the great outdoors just off your doorstep.

Fresh air and exercise are readily available to anyone of any age, of course, but if you want to turn up the pressure just a little, why not try a spot of rucking ? Once again, there’s no special secret to it and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg. Rucking is simply walking – or running – with a weighted bag on your back so that you have increased the resistance and strain on your body.

Rucking has long been used by the Royal Marines in their own arduous training routines. In their case, it’s a timed run over 30 miles or so carrying a rucksack weighing around 55 pounds. The exercise goes by various names, including rucking, tabbing, and yomping.

Venturing out from your own homemade gym, you might want to make a somewhat gentler beginning! Nevertheless, rucking represents a great way of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of any outdoor walking or running you do – as Runners World puts it in a posting on the 11^th of May 2021, rucking is like weight-lifting for runners who don’t like the gym.

Further reading: The DIY Gym: Equipment To Get You Strong

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