Starting a home gym

A little background info on the reasons for this post: I was once a poor college student.  I had very little money and time, and going to the gym got very, very hard.  As someone who lives in an area where it gets pretty cold in the winter, that made it that much harder to get my butt in gear when it was time to work out.  The easiest and most affordable solution was to start up my own home gym by investing in a few pieces of equipment. I had no idea where to start, but after going online and doing some research on how to start your own home gym, I found the pieces I needed, threw down a little money, and suddenly had convenience, ease, and privacy.  I have to say, nothing beats being able to go into your basement to work out instead of having to drive or walk there.

You might think it's going to be really costly to start up your own home gym. Truth is, I spent more on my own gym memberships over the course of two years than I did when I bought my first few pieces of home equipment.

However, there are a few important things to know when you get started.  First of all, you need to figure out your fitness goals; for most of the people reading this blog, bulking up is probably one of the big ones.  Weights are going to be your priority.

In the next few posts, I'll detail the equipment I used to start up my home gym.  The first thing I recommend is dumbells.  My favorites are the Bowflex SelectTech series; these are inexpensive, easy to use, last a LONG time, and have a nifty selection dial adjustment system so you can easily increase or decrease their weight.  I bought these a couple years ago (2006, I think) and they've lasted me til today.


I wrote a more in depth review of this set which you can see here.