Gym Equipment For The Home Gym

Sometimes it is very inconvenient for people who want to work out to go to a gym. Perhaps they live far away from one or it may be that they go to their workplaces at odd hours or have their offices at home. There are many reasons why it might be their best option for some people to set up their own gym so that they can work out in their own time at home.

If you are one of these, you do need to know how to go about your workout program. Most people who buy, for instance, an orbitrek, work out on that alone. Certain muscles are indeed exercised, but the concentration is on cardiovascular. No doubt about it, cardio exercises are good for you, but you won’t lose much weight or build muscle with that alone.

While calories do play a part in weight gain and weight loss, burning calories with exercise is the tip of the iceberg. Experts will tell you that in order to lose one pound of fat, you need to burn 3500 calories. The average, unfit, overweight woman needs to eat 2000 calories or less a day just to maintain her weight. Any more than that adds to it. But the sad truth is that eating less than that does not always make the person lose weight!

I knew a middle aged lady who was so obese that she couldn’t walk, and moved around in a wheelchair. As her health started to break down she was hospitalized, her jaw wired and she was fed on a drip for two weeks. At the end of that time she weighed slightly more than she had at the start, since she was no longer dehydrated. She hadn’t eaten a crumb, or lost an ounce.

So what happened? Her metabolism shut down. Metabolism is the rate you burn calories. She had a lot of fat, but just the barest minimum of lean muscle. One pound of lean muscle burns 50 calories a day, just to maintain and feed itself, even if you are sitting watching TV. This is called your ‘basal metabolism’ the energy your body uses, just to stay alive. If your body has lots of lean muscle, you will burn up to 80% of your calories that way.

It has been found that lean, fit people can eat just about what they like, and as much as they like and as often as they like without gaining an ounce – with a proviso! It has to be healthy, unprocessed, balanced meals, covering all the nutrients you need every day.

So, following the logic of this, the answer to losing weight, or maintaining a fit healthy body, is to build up as much lean muscle as you can. With this in mind you can go about setting up your home gym.

If you go online or buy yourself good books on exercise, you will get a good idea of which exercises build up which muscles. You need to work out all the muscles of your body for optimum results and a great shape. Some top fitness experts online will provide you with books, CDs, and even one on one monitoring, for a reasonable fee.

Although it is quite possible for you to do a lot for your body without a gym, it is far better and easier if you have a few weights, some resistance training equipment, as well as some cardio equipment. This will give you a broad range of workouts, and possibly require less expertise on your part. Most of these machines concentrate on multiple muscle groups, and many of them are adjustable so that you can target different regions on one machine.

There is a growing amount of home gym equipment on the market these days. Like everything, your investment will last longer if you buy good quality gym equipment.