Best Home Gym – Your Own Body

As a skilled fitness trainer, I usually get asked what’s the best type of equipment for a home gym. In the past I’ve informed the individual that such and such a make is good for a range of reasons. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great quality pieces of inexpensive home gym equipment that will get you in fantastic shape, but lately my reply to people as to the best piece of equipment for a home gym has been.. your own body utilizing bodyweight exercises.

When one thinks of bodyweight exercises they often think of pushups and perhaps chinups. They also think that bodyweight exercises are good to “just stay in shape.” Nothing can be further from the truth.

Bodyweight training can absolutely make over your physique when done accurately. If your objective is weight loss, bodyweight training can get you to that goal. If your target is to develop muscle, bodyweight training can do that as well.

One of the benefits of bodyweight training is that the gym is always with you. Everyplace you go, you have access to “the gym.” I’ve done chinups on park monkey bars while my daughter plays. There is always something accessible to push off of or pull up on.

If you have the space in your house, I highly suggest a piece of equipment typically called a “power tower.” This is a self standing piece that allows you do chinups, dips, pushups and leg raises for your abs. This one lone piece of equipment, which doesn’t take up much room, can transform your body.

It is the one key piece of equipment I utilize in every workout session. As a matter of fact, I’ve sold most of my home gym equipment and rely predominantly on my power tower for a complete upper body workout. In my opinion there is no other exercise that compares to dips and chinups for the upper body.

What about exercising your legs you may ask? Bodyweight squats are great for your legs and for a challenge you can do them one leg at a time. There is another little torture apparatus I own called the Roman Chair Squat Bench that allows for amazing bodyweight squats to be done with modest space. That is for another discussion however.

Although all you need is your bodyweight to get a fine workout, there will come a moment when your own bodyweight doesn’t offer adequate resistance to make the workout challenging enough to elevate muscle building for example.

Certainly you can just keep doing more and more reps each workout but if your purpose is to build a little muscle you will need to keep the reps less than 15 and if your bodyweight is not enough, you’ll need to add resistance by some means.

This is where a weighted vest and/or dip belt comes in handy. A dip belt is just a leather or fabric belt that hangs round your waist with chains in the front to support weight plates. This will allow more than enough resistance to be added to make dips and chinups more taxing. The weighted vest can be used for pushups and squats.

So for a few dollars you own all you need to get in fabulous shape. I can hear some people now wondering where are the curls, the tricep exercises, and so on. How will I get enormous biceps if I don’t do my million curls?

Believe me, if you can do chins with your bodyweight plus an additional 50lbs – 100lbs round your waist, I can promise you will not have small biceps.

All that’s left is to plan a routine based around pushups, squats, dips and chins. Although there are other great bodyweight exercises, these are the most fundamental for most folks to do safely and without difficulty. Other bodyweight exercises like handstand pushups will blast your shoulders but that is a bit more advanced and out of the scope of this article.

A routine can consist of bodyweight squats, dips and chins done 2 – 3 times a week. Just like any weight training routine, more is not better. You require time to let the muscle recover so 2 – 3 times a week is more than enough. Especially when you start to add resistance to the exercises.

If your goal is weight loss, bodyweight training can do the trick while still building some muscle along the way. All you want to do is take less time between sets in order to start the fat burning process in your body.

For instance, if you do bodyweight squats for 5 sets of 25 reps with very little rest between sets, I guarantee your heart rate will be up and you’ll be burning fat. Similar thing goes for dips and chins. Take less time between exercises for fat burning and take extra time to recuperate when muscle building is your goal.

I trust you can appreciate the advantage of bodyweight training in terms of complete fitness and cost effectiveness. You don’t require the most recent home gym or infomercial product to get in fabulous shape.

Now go and pull yourself up on something.

Find realistic tips to how to loose weight – this is your personal knowledge base.