Fitness for Gym Haters

Fitness for Gym Haters

For many people, the gym is an intimidating place. You walk inside, and there’s a bunch of in shape people that you feel may be judging you immediately. You walk around the maze of complicated-looking equipment, loose weights, and machines that you’ve never seen before, and it’s overwhelming.

Immediately, you can feel disheartened and lost on where you should even start. Gyms aren’t for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still get in shape without one. One common solution to this problem is to build up your own home gym.

Obviously, this is a bit difficult to do in an apartment, unless you have an extra room or space saving equipment. You can dedicate your garage or any ground floor room to be a home gym, and over time you can steadily buy more equipment to help you get in shape.

Start with a small bench, a dumbbell rack with varying weights, and a treadmill, then you can work up to more equipment like a power rack or cable machine. Making your own home gym has multiple benefits, but also some drawbacks.

It costs more to start out, because gym equipment isn’t cheap. Machines can cost hundreds of dollars if not more, and they can be difficult to transport without a truck. However, there’s obviously no monthly fees, and you have the whole thing to yourself, so you’re free of the problems that a normal gym has.

Another option, and a much cheaper one, is to start out only doing cardio and bodyweight exercises. This can also be done in an apartment, because it doesn’t require any equipment.

For cardio, you can go for walks at a local park or around the street, and for muscle work, you can do push-ups, squats, lunges, pull ups, crunches, and more. This is great for beginners because it allows you to build up some strength and get decently toned, which may give you more confidence to try the gym again if you so choose.

If you want to work out at home, but you’re not sure what to do, you can either follow premade instructions online, or hire a personal trainer to train you over the Internet. Hiring a personal trainer may help you more, because they’ll know how to adjust your workouts to suit your strengths, weaknesses, and needs.

They’ll let you know which workouts you should be doing, how to improve your form, and more, which is all very helpful for a beginner. Having the right guidance and equipment to get started is only half the battle – the biggest obstacle will be making sure you’re motivated enough to show up and work out every day.