The Perfect Home Gym

There are plenty of good reasons to invest in a small gym for your home – or even just buy a few items to help keep you in shape.

But before investing in home gym equipment, ask yourself some questions. Do you work out well on your own? Do you have the space? Is your situation stable? Nothing sucks worse than having to move all your gym equipment, accept perhaps having to buy all new equipment because you couldn’t take it with you.

To which level do you want to go? Duplicating the equipment in even a small gym could cost you 10 grand easy. In reality, the perfect home gym is only that for you – each person’s needs are completely different. But everyone has some common ground and a few basics are both cheap and super effective.

Before rushing out and buying equipment, you may want to check out our article on Burning Fat on the Cheap. You may not need any equipment at all!

That said, most people can benefit from the basics. The most usable item has to be a set of dumbbells. The problem is that you tend to grow out of them quickly if you are really trying to build muscle – this is ok, just go out and get a heavier set or add more weight to the ones you have. Unfortunately, this is expensive and cluttering to your home or garage. But there is a really cool solution: Power Blocks.

Power Blocks are special dumbbells that can quickly be converted to any weight desired just buy pulling a pin.

There are different sets ranging from 3 to 24lbs up to a whopping 130lbs per dumbbell! The cool part is the way they work – a pin on the side allows you to change the weight just like on those expensive machines at the gym. They save a ton of space and are much cheaper than a huge collection of normal dumbbells.

Prices run from $129 per pair up to $840 for the
serious muscle head.
check: www.powerblock.com

The amount of exercises you can do with just a pair of dumbbells is truly amazing.
See this link with animated examples: www.sport-fitness-advisor.com

Even if you’re a diehard at the gym, sometimes you just can’t make it – a pair of good dumbbells can give you a killer workout right at home. If nothing else, you don’t lose the progress you’ve made.

Next on the list might be a good bench. Not the kind to do bench presses, just a simple padded bench – when combined with some dumbbells, you can do most of the important exercises.

If you want to go further – let’s say you have family that’s athletic or are too far from a gym - you may want to consider getting some type of resistance machine or a full weight set. There are many and they vary widely in cost and quality.

A good place to look for this stuff is at garage sales – people often load up on this stuff and then end up getting rid of it latter for all kinds of reasons. You can get some real bargains – just don’t be put off by the sometimes ugly appearance. Your muscles can’t tell the difference.

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