Most home gym workout articles in mainstream fitness magazines approach the idea of exercising at home from the perspective of overcoming the perceived disadvantages of limited equipment.
They say things like, “You can still get a great workout at home even if you only have a few dumbbells and a bench!” or “Can’t get to the gym? Try this killer bodyweight only exercise routine!” Yay, thanks.
Got news for you Sparky
My home gym workout has several ADVANTAGES over training in a public box on rented equipment that’s halfheartedly maintained by college students with more interest in picking up girls than making sure that all of the collars can actually STAY on the bar instead of sliding off as soon as there’s a crisis.
Advantage #1 of the home gym workout
Giant sets and circuits are easier –
Ever tried to do a superset in a crowded commercial gym? Ever wonder why most mainstream fitness articles avoid listing more than two similar exercises in a superset? Because other patrons WILL inevitably take over one of the pieces of equipment you painstakingly set up so you’d have minimal rest while doing your superset. Now imagine that you’re doing a mechanical triple drop set of wide grip Smith Machine press to the neck, incline dumbbell bench, high angle machine chest press and finishing off with incline flyes for the chest.
Wait, I’m still using that!
That phrase does not exist in a home gym environment. Even if you and a partner are both going through a home gym workout at the same https://test.garagegymlifemedia.com/relationship-goals/time, you’ve communicated so each of you KNOWS what the other is doing.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2TMPuDOAcE[/embedyt]How do I know? Because my family and I are often exercising at home at the same time and we do it in every one of our home gym workouts.
Advantage #2 Frequent Training is Easier
I’m a big fan of things like “Greasing the Groove” where you hammer technique on a movement with low rep, low intensity, frequent training. Say you suck at pull ups. You can barely get three reps but you want ten. You can either try to add a rep to every pull up workout or simply do one rep of a pull up every time you come inside a room or leave it. I taught my son to do pull ups this way. He had to do one rep every time he came home from school and one rep before leaving for school. In two months he was banging out a set of ten with no problem. I
I’ve also used Greasing the Groove successfully for deadlifts with a loaded bar set up at 50% of my max and left in a corner of my garage gym. I did a set every time I entered or left the garage. That, my friends is a LOT of deadlifts on a Saturday when you’re doing yard work!
There’s more but you get the idea
One of the things we are striving to do with the Home Gym Quarterly magazine is to write our fitness articles from the perspective of CELEBRATING the ADVANTAGES of the home gym workout rather than being making people feel as if they’re missing out by owning a home gym. It takes time to change that paradigm, but that’s to be expected when you’re changing the world.