Join your own home gym

Even if you’re not interested in joining a health club, you may want to incorporate aspects of the gym experience into your home workouts. Adding the following health club features to your home gym boosts your motivation and sense of purpose.

• Sign-in sheet: When you go to the health club, you have to sign in at the front desk to prove you were there. If you’re the type of person who’s motivated by measuring your accomplishments, record your attendance at your home gym in a workout log or even create your own attendance sheet and tape it to the door or keep it on top of yourfile cabinet. Signing in at the beginning of your session reinforces your commitment to weight training.
• Mirror: The purpose of a mirror isn’t to develop anxiety over the shape of your body. You need a mirror to check your form, especially when you’re doing free weight and band exercises. Just make sure that you watch where you put your dumbbells and barbells. If you leave them on the floor, they may roll around and crack the mirror. The best way to avoid this problem is to invest in a dumbbell rack. Any mirror suffices as long as it’s big enough for you to see your entire body when you’re standing with your arms spread wide.
• Comfortable mat: A mat is useful for doing strength training exercises on the floor, such as abdominal crunches and side-lying leg lifts. And, of course, it’s useful for stretching and doing yoga or Pilates exercises. You can substitute a towel or blanket, but these substitutions tend to bunch up. Most exercise mats fold or roll up and can be placed in a corner or underneath your weight rack. A good mat costs $20 to $100. The differences between a cheap mat and a more expensive one are many:
• The thickness and quality of the padding
• The quality of the surface covering
• The antibacterial and antifungal materials
• The size of the mat
• The way the mat stores
• The mat should be long enough so it fits your body from the top of your head to your tailbone. The padding should be cushy enough so your knees don’t dig into the floor when you do the modified push-up and other exercises that require kneeling. Shirley recommends combining a towel over a mat for strength training exercises as the towel absorbs perspiration and extends the life of your mat.
• Rubber mat: A rubber mat, placed under the equipment, looks like the rubber mats on the floor of your car. They help cut down on noise and vibration to the floors below, and they help protect your floors and rugs from sweat and wear and tear. Mats are particularly good to put under equipment that leaks oil, such as multigyms and treadmills. Some mats are custom designed to fit under specific pieces of equipment.
• Proper attire: Health clubs require you to wear freshly laundered exercise clothing so the grime from your jeans, leather belts, and work shirts doesn’t soil the pads on the weight equipment. Follow the same rule at your home gym, too. You’ll prolong the life of your equipment. Plus, it’s a lot more motivating to work out when you’re wearing clean, comfortable clothes that allow your skin to breathe.

Investing in Weight Machines

Obviously, it’s not practical to put an entire line of weight machines in your home, unless you’re willing to take out a second mortgage to pay for the weights and for the new wing of the house you’ll need to build. A more reasonable alternative is a multigym, which combines several weight lifting stations into one frame. Most multigyms have one or two weight stacks, meaning that one or two people can work out at a time. Good multigyms give your muscles a sufficient workout, although most models don’t feel as smooth or as solid as health club machines. A decent multigym costs between $300 and $1,000. Buy from equipment specialty stores, not from department stores and certainly not from TV infomercials. Visit several stores to compare prices. If you don’t live near a specialty store, call the manufacturers and ask for the dealer closest to you. Most top brands have a dealer in every nook and cranny in the country, as well as in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. In some cases, buying directly from the manufacturer is cheaper. Good multigym brands include Parabody, Paramount, Universal, Vectra, Pacific, Hoist, and California Gym. Here are some tips for buying multigyms:

• Look for sturdy and thick padded seats filled with dense foam. Seats covered with durable material clean easily. The pad is the part of the equipment that has the most body contact, which includes your sweaty body. With a cleanable cover, you can wash away your workout sweat after each use.
• Look for machines that use plastic-coated cables as opposed to chains or giant rubber bands. Check all cables for imperfections and fraying.
• Try out every exercise station. Some may feel comfortable, while others make you feel like your arm is about to be ripped out of its socket. Look for a weight stack that moves smoothly up and down. Some machines that move smoothly at heavier weights become wobbly and sticky when you’re lifting only one or two plates.
• Make sure that the parts are easy to adjust. You don’t want to waste half your workout fiddling with the arm and seat adjustments to make the machine fit your body.
• Look for free assembly. Forget about those “easy-to-follow” directions. Trying to put some of these contraptions together yourself is like trying to build a space shuttle with a step-by-step manual.

weight machine

Buying a gym bench

If you have a dedicated space for your home gym and want to buy a bench, your best bet is an adjustable incline bench — one that adjusts from a flat position all the way up to vertical. Make sure that the incline mechanism is secure and easy to manipulate. With some cheap brands, the pin that holds the backrest upright tends to slip out or, even worse, break off. The decline feature shouldn’t be a high priority because you won’t use it very often, if at all. Before you buy a bench, sit on it, lie on it, drag it around, adjust it, and inspect it. Look for a high-quality Naugahyde, leatherlike material used to cover all seat and back pads.

Figuring the cost
Good flat benches start at around $100 and run upward of $500 for extra-thick padding and high-quality hardware. Adjustable incline and decline benches range from $200 to $600. Good bench brands include Hoist, York, Icarian, Paramount, and Tuff Stuff — the brands you’re likely to encounter at the gym —along with Galileo, Cybex, and Body Masters.

Storing your equipment
Storing your bench is nearly impossible. Benches that fold up and go under your bed or fit neatly in a closet don’t exist. For this reason, you should have a dedicated space for your home gym that’s roomy enough for a bench (and all of your equipment). If you can only fit in the weights, skip the bench.

Buying barbells

Unless you’re related to the Sultan of Brunei, you’ll probably find it too expensive and too space consuming to buy a whole array of fixed-weight barbells, as recommended with dumbbells. It’s more practical to buy an empty bar and clip on the weights yourself. You can buy bars that weigh 15 to 45 pounds, although the most popular bars are the heavier bars used in health clubs.

Figuring the cost
Barbells cost about the same per pound as dumbbells, but if you’re lucky, you may find them as low as a nickel a pound. Most stores sell variety packs, often called Olympic packs, which come with a whole assortment of plates weighing a total of 200 to 300 pounds.
We also recommend buying collars to keep the weight plates from sliding off the bar. MCR makes the sturdiest and most user-friendly collars. You slip the collars on the bar and twist a small lever, locking them in place. They cost $20 a pair.

Storing your equipment
As with dumbbells, we recommend buying a barbell rack. Vertical racks ($100 to $200) take up less space and cost less than horizontal racks ($300 to $700). However, it’s more awkward to place a bar on a vertical rack. Store your plates on a weight tree — a contraption that has several rungs. Weight trees come in an astonishing variety of shapes and sizes and typically cost $75 to $200.

Storing your dumbbells

Buy a rack to store your dumbbells. Racks save space, and they keep your house looking tidy so your mother won’t have to step over your weights if she stops by unannounced. Also, a rack can save you from injury because you don’t have to constantly bend over and lift the dumbbells off the floor. Don’t be surprised if a rack costs more than the dumbbells you’re storing. A $200 to $300 rack is adequate, but you can shell out up to $800 for a three-tiered, chrome rack.

Figuring the cost of your dumbbell

So what’s all of this going to cost? The answer depends on how fancy you want your weights to be. Dumbbells cost about $.50 to $2 per pound ($150 to $300 for the women’s set and $300 to $600 for the men’s), depending on which part of the country you live in, where you buy them, and whether you catch a good sale. Hexagonal dumbbells (called hexes or hex heads) tend to be less expensive. Plastic-coated dumbbells are cheaper, but the plastic tends to rip over time.
Liz once owned a pair of dumbbells that started to leak; every time she pressed the dumbbells overhead, a few grains of sand fell in her mouth or eye. The most expensive dumbbells are the shiny chrome ones with contoured handles. You can see your reflection in the ends of the top-drawer ones. You find chrome dumbbells in ritzier health clubs and in home gyms that try to emulate ritzy health clubs.

Buying dumbbells for your home gym

The biggest mistake people make when buying dumbbells is investing in a pair of 10-pound weights and then using them for every exercise. We suggest that you start with eight pairs. If that seems overwhelming, buy up to four pairs on the lower end and add the heavier weights as you become stronger.
For women who’re beginning lifters:

• Buy dumbbells weighing 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 20 pounds.
• Look for brands of dumbbells with narrow handles (so you don’t have to buy as many weights). This way, you can hold two dumbbells in one hand, for example, a 5-pound weight and a 3-pound weight to create 8 pounds.

For novice men:

• Buy 8, 12, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 pounds.To get good results you need to lift precisely the right amount of weight for each exercise.
• Another alternative to buying so many dumbbells is to buy adjustable dumbbells with weight plates, similar to barbells.

If you’re short on space or money and buying eight pairs of dumbbells is impossible, consider an adjustable dumbbell kit. You get two short bars and a number of round plates that you clamp on with collars. Just beware: The plates tend to rattle around, and you may find it annoying to constantly pop off the collars and add or subtract weight plates. Making these adjustments can add precious minutes to your workout. Worse, you may be tempted to skip the adjustments and use the same weight for several exercises.

Strength training on the road

If you’re looking for an excuse to skip your weight training workout, vacations and business trips won’t cut it. You can keep your muscles strong no matter where you go, whether your destination is Caribou, Maine, or the Mongolian desert.
Of course, you may not always find a health club with 16 shoulder machines and aromatherapy baths. While touring Micronesia, Suzanne worked out at Yap Island’s only gym — a tin shack where the locals hoist rusty barbells while chewing betel nut, a mild narcotic that stains your teeth red. In Nairobi, she lifted weights at a club where staff members had to boil water on a stove in the weight room because the water wasn’t safe to drink. The bottom line: You can always make do.
Strength training on the road is well worth the effort. Even fitting in one short workout a week can help you maintain the strength you’ve worked so hard to build. Here are some tips for getting in a strength training workout away from home:

• Book a hotel with a gym, if possible. Some hotel gyms have facilities that rival those at regular health clubs, including personal trainers, towel service, and massage. And these days, even many of the less posh hotel gyms offer a decent array of free weights and weight training machinery.
• Look for a gym in the neighborhood. If your hotel doesn’t have a gym, ask the concierge, or simply open up the phone book and look under “health club” or “fitness.” Expect to pay $15 to $20. Some upscale Los Angeles and New York clubs charge as much as $35 or more.
• Stick to free weight exercises and machines that you recognize. If you’re in a gym that’s foreign to you, unless you ask someone on staff to help you, this isn’t the time to test whether you have a knack for figuring out how weight training contraptions work. When you work out away from your home club, expect to sign a waiver essentially saying that any torn muscle, broken bone, or smashed toenail you sustain is your fault and yours alone. By the way, one of the best reasons to find a local gym has nothing to do with your muscles. “You get to meet the locals and find out about the least crowded beaches, and the best place to go for a beer,” says Alec Boga, an avid traveler from California, who’s lifted weights in Thailand, Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Fiji, just to name a few countries. “The equipment might be good or bad, but you just ad-lib and enjoy talking to the people.”
• Pack an exercise band. If you have no access to weight equipment, you can perform dozens of exercises with a single band, which takes up about as much space as your travel toothbrush. Shirley never travels without exercise tubing and a stretch strap. See Chapter 24 for band exercises.
• Lift your own body weight as a last resort.

If you get stuck without even a band, you can do equipment-free exercises such as push-ups, triceps dips, crunches, back extensions, squats, and lunges. Shirley creates outdoor circuit workouts in local parks, combining walking with stops at trees, stairs, and park benches for push-ups, dips, lunges, and squats for a workout that combines aerobic training and toning. Outdoor workouts are a great way to see the sights and experience local flavor, enjoy the outdoors, and keep up your fitness program.

How to Choose Free Weights for your Home Gym?

If you’re just starting out, dumbbells are a more practical purchase than barbells because they’re more versatile. You may want to save barbells for your next shopping spree. In terms of quality, where you buy free weights — a sporting goods store, department store, specialty shop, or garage sale —doesn’t much matter. A specialty weight shop may offer the best selection, but prices may be higher. For great bargains, check out stores that sell used sports equipment. In many cases, the equipment is almost brand new. Before purchasing weights online or through mail-order catalogs, be sure to check the shipping price. You may be better off buying products from a local store that includes free delivery or where you can bring the weights home on your own. Shipping costs for weights are expensive.

How to Design a Home Gym?

Exercise equipment lasts a long time, takes up space, and serves a variety of purposes. Put some time and thought into creating your home gym. Keep in mind that this is a long-term commitment. You’re investing in a healthy lifestyle and a better quality of life for years to come. You want to create a space that you’ll enjoy and look forward to using regularly. This section deals only with weight training equipment; you need to consider separately any cardiovascular equipment, such as a treadmill or stationary bike. Shirley recommends that you purchase a jump rope for a great investment in cardio equipment. You can find one on sale for as little as $5 and it can last a lifetime. Jumping rope regularly improves endurance, agility, and coordination and helps keep bones strong while burning as many calories as cycling. Quite a bargain for a few dollars!
Before you purchase any equipment, consider the following questions.

• How much space do you have? If you have virtually no space for weight equipment, your best bet is a set of rubber exercise tubes that come with door handle attachments. However, we think that you build greater strength and size by using dumbbells and a weight bench, so make room for these gadgets if possible. Conserve space by buying clever dumbbell products such as power blocks, smart locks, or plate mates, which are all described in the “Nifty dumbbell products” sidebar in this chapter.
  
• What are your goals? Make sure that you buy equipment that helps you reach your goals. If you’re a big guy and you want to build some serious muscle, a couple sets of dumbbells aren’t going to cut it. In fact, you may need to buy a dozen pairs of dumbbells and purchase a free weight bench. Just make sure that your goals jive with the amount of space you have available: If you live in a tiny apartment but want to live in a body like Sylvester Stallone’s, you may have to get rid of your bed, coffee table, television, refrigerator, and stove in order to make space for your weight equipment. (We know people who’ve done this.) If your goal is to develop moderate strength and muscle tone, your best bet is to buy an adjustable weight bench and several pairs of dumbbells.
  
• How much money can you spend? The cheapest (and smallest) weight training gadget you can buy is a rubber exercise band, which sets you back about $5. But your development of muscle strength is limited to the price of a McDonald’s Happy Meal. On the other hand, you don’t need to raid your retirement account in order to build a firm, strong body. For $200 to $500 you can buy an adjustable weight bench and more than enough dumbbells. You may be able to find equipment at an even cheaper price if you search used sporting goods stores or shop on eBay. If you have an extra thousand or two lying around, go ahead and purchase a multigym for variety. By the way, if you’re tight on money, don’t even think about buying any weight training gizmo off of the TV. Most of the gadgets are gimmicks that don’t offer any training advantages over traditional equipment.
• Will you be using videos or DVDs? If you plan to use weight training videos or DVDs, we suggest that you invest in dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench (or at least a step aerobics platform, which doubles as a bench). Many videos and DVDs also use rubber exercise bands, ankle weights, barbells, or stability balls. So when you buy new tapes or DVDs, make sure that you have (or are willing to buy) the necessary equipment.

Lifting Weights at Home

Exercising at home is the perfect solution for many people. Here are the main reasons why working out at home makes sense:

• You live too far from a gym. Although more than 13,000 fitness centers exist in this country, not everybody lives near one of them. If you don’t live or work within ten minutes of a club, lifting weights at home may be your best option. Or if you can afford it, not only join a club that you can get to on days when you have time, but also invest in some basic weight the drive (preferably choose an active way to get to the gym; that way you’ll already be warmed up).
• Your schedule. If your club doesn’t have childcare or you can’t leave the house for some other reason, buying your own equipment makes sense. The same applies if you work unusual hours and the gym’s schedule doesn’t jive with yours. If your den is equipped with dumbbells and a bench, you can exercise at 6 a.m. on Sunday if you want.
  
• You’re self-conscious. If you can’t bear the thought of exercising in front of other people — or just need a little time to get used to what you look like in a pair of athletic shorts — by all means, work out at home. Videos, DVDs, or personal trainers give you instruction and help keep you motivated. However, don’t let self-consciousness keep you away from a club for too long if you have other compelling reasons to go. For the most part, health club members are too busy looking at themselves in the mirror to notice what you look like.
• You don’t like crowds. Some people simply like to be alone with their dumbbells.