This is what I'm concerned about. I haven't gone to the gym in over 6 months for a few reasons. Mainly because I had an educational event for which needed exhaustive preparation and I was working all the time. Something had to suffer, and it was my body.
It's my fear that I will never use the equipment if it's just sitting steps away in my basement.
I live in a small town...there are 2 gyms and they are both total shit boxes crawling with douchebags, retards and dickheads who love nothing more than arriving at the gym en masse, attaching themselves to every free piece of equipment for their between-sets bullshit carpet-bombing, and effectively ruin my workout. OR, worse, they'll try to put me on the stand and try to interrogate me about the trivialities of my daily life. I guess it doesn't dawn on them that I never ask them anything going on in their lives. Not to mention, I don't even have the Facebook, so they should be clued in by that little factoid.
Back on point..I have looked into a couple of Powertec and Body Solid units on CL. What do you guys think about these? There's other stuff I want (adjustable dumbbells...squat bar...squat rack...TreadClimber), but I think this might be a good place to start. Suggestions?
As some others have said this is a double-edge sward. Awesome to work out whenever you want, whatever music you want, etc etc. You can get lazy because instead of getting up at 3am to get the commercial gym at 4am you start sleeping in because you know you can now workout anytime during the day or evening. Unless you are accountable to yourself that can snowball into endless excuses and missed workouts.
Working out at home can cause you to lose drive due to not being in a commercial setting with endless equipment available.
Working out at home may allow you to work harder if you have the place set-up in a way that you can use efficiently. This usually means more equipment and more cash outlay. Limited equipment means compromising and compromising can cause you to lose drive and motivation. But it still may be better than dealing with the d$ck-heads at the local gym.
Determine your needs is this a full-time gig or something to be used as a fill-in 2-3 days /week when you know your local gym will be busy. This will determine the quantity and quality of products you need.
BB.com has forum called Workout Equipment that’s your largest resource for information.
The big thing is getting accustomed to lack of equipment. Ask yourself – of all the equipment at the commercial gym how much if it do you actually use? Look at the equipment you use and focus on incorporating just that into the home gym. There are workarounds for some movements - Its easy to create a dip machine by laying two pieces of 4x4 treated lumber across the power rack safety bars and doing dips you can change the angle of the wood in or out in a v pattern move them closer or wider and run rubber bands under your bent knees and up over the top of the rack for assistance. No need to buy every piece of equipment a commercial gym has.
You need a bench, half-rack / power rack / squat stands, don’t cheap on this part. A good bar. Depending on your needs 500 lbs of weights for starters. Ironmaster Super Bench PRO i highly recommend.
Used is usually the best bang for the buck. Look for businesses near you within driving distance that buy commercial gym equipment and resell to the public best bet for steel plates $ .50 -.85 /lb haul yourself. You can find benches and poweracks there they will be commercial grade. You may have a good Craigslist market around you, I don’t believe in waiting for something to come along usually I regret that; unless it’s a luxury item like rear delt machine which you don’t need; the must haves are must halves find them now.
New – Titan Fitness is the current fad for decent residential equipment. Power racks are solid. Everything else has good and bad points read BB.com for reviews. Rogue is USA made and you will pay dearly for it, not my thing but some guys treat their home gym like a fine art collection and need that high.
Cardio will be one of the largest cash outlays if you need cardio. Sometimes I have also had a cheap gym membership just to use the cardio and did my lifting at home having a variety of cardio was usually worth the monthly cost and then on some days I would use the selector pin weight machines to do isolation exercises to give my body a break from the compound free-weight movements at home; most of the gym d$ckheads don’t hang out in the selector machine area so you can avoid them that way.
A home gym is never finished you’ll constantly want to be making improvements.
Powertec – you mean one of the multi-function gyms? Powertec makes good equipment period. But you need a power rack/half rack to start with. If you see a powertec power-rack for a good price go for it. If it’s a multi-function gym? Do not do it. You are limited in the movements you can do with it and any muscle group you can work on that you can work with free weights and then 10x more. You will be bored with it in a month and it will sit collecting dust and you will be paying others to come take it away. Waste of money. Unless you already have a power-rack and free weights and you had another $500 to p$ss away on a novelty item and have the real estate to spare then grab it if its a good deal but you wont use it much. A multigym should NEVER be the centerpiece of a home gym. Body Solid is a well respected piece of equipment its considered light-commercial but dont buy new you are overpaying go used. Anything used callled Para-Body also was well respected before they went out of business. Again stay way from their multi-function gym piece.
BB.com has forum called Workout Equipment that’s your largest resource for information.
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