The importance of physical exercise to one’s health cannot be overemphasized. Traditionally, such exercise took place at a gym away from home. A growing number of people are, however, moving their fitness routines to their home by setting up a gym in their house.
Some have credited the proliferation of the Internet as the cause of this trend. It’s now much easier for the average person to access a wide range of exercise routines available on video sharing sites like YouTube. However, home gyms have a number of compelling advantages that have made them so attractive. Here’s a look at these benefits.
- Easier to Adhere to Routine
As countless broken New Year’s resolutions have shown over the years, it’s one thing to pay for a gym membership and completely another to develop the discipline required to attend the gym religiously. A key reason for this inconsistency is there’s a lot that goes into preparing for and going to a gym. There’s the commute to the gym’s location, the bag containing a change of clothes and the queues you have to endure when waiting to use the most popular equipment.
With a home gym, these challenges cease to exist, thus greatly reducing the barriers to your regular physical exercise. You know the fitness routine will only take the 30 minutes you dedicate to it, as opposed to a professional gym where a 30-minute work-out really takes up an hour or two of your time all things considered.
- Eliminates the Weather Excuse
Bad weather is a common reason for people to pass up on going to the gym. Sometimes, it’s a weak excuse, but at other times, there may be legitimate safety fears. Of the millions of car accidents that occur annually, a substantial proportion are weather-related. These are caused by wet pavements and slippery roads from sleet and snowstorms. Thousands die from these types of crashes.
With a home gym, the weather outside is irrelevant. There’s hardly any weather-related danger to your safety, except in the extremely rare instance of your home being in the path of a tornado or hurricane. You can, therefore, stick to your home work-out program without endangering your safety.
- Allows for Privacy
Exercise stimulates the production of feel-good hormones – endorphins, and helps relieve anxiety and stress. Yet, the gym environment can be intimidating as you look around to see people who seem to have it all together and have bodies to die for. You worry about what they may think of you and get sucked into a vicious cycle of anxiety that negates the hormonal benefits of the exercise routines.
The fear of being judged is one of the top reasons people avoid the gym. And it’s not just anxiety over body weight and shape, but also using equipment incorrectly, wrong exercises, wrong attire and looking awkward when exercising. A home gym grants you the privacy you require to exercise to your heart’s content without a care in the world. Wear what you want, huff and puff as much as you want and watch whatever it is that interests you at the moment.
- Get the Entire Household on Board
There’s no age limit for exercise – only perhaps with the exception of the newborn. From kids to seniors, everyone in the household needs an age-appropriate degree of exercise. It’s already difficult enough to get you, an adult, to the gym consistently. Now imagine trying to get the other members of your household there.
It’s not just expensive in terms of gym membership but is also difficult, given that each person in the home likely has a different schedule of activities they follow on any given day. With a home gym, you get everyone on board the fitness bandwagon while providing the level of flexibility required for everyone’s schedule to be accommodated.
- Choose Your Design
At the gym, what you see is what you get. You have no choice but to work with the available equipment and sometimes, this won’t be in your best interest. With a home gym, you can pick the equipment that works for you. You can choose from, for instance, The 9 Best Power Racks Under $500 for Your Home Gym and accommodate to your needs and budget accordingly. When a piece of equipment outlives its usefulness, you can sell and replace it with a more appropriate one.
It’s not just equipment choice where you have flexibility, but also the space you choose for your gym and what area of the space each piece of equipment goes to. If you are not sure where to begin, liaise with a fitness professional or a gym design consultant. Enlist their help with finding the best possible solution for your equipment arrangement and work-out sanctuary.
This list would seem to leave out what’s supposedly the most obvious benefit of a home gym—savings on gym membership fees. That’s because the savings are largely canceled by the sizeable cost of acquiring your own exercise equipment. Nevertheless, the benefits of a home gym are persuading a growing number of people into canceling their gym memberships. If you are a fitness addict and considering to build one in your home, these benefits will surely convince you of canceling yours.
A professional writer with over a decade of incessant writing skills. Her topics of interest and expertise range from health, nutrition and psychology.