How To Set Up a Home Gym and Take Control Of Your Health

If you work online at home as I do and spend long hours sitting in front of a computer, you might be feeling the ill effects of too much inactivity.

I love being able to earn a good living from the comfort of my own home, but I had become entirely too comfortable; slouching around happily in baggy sweats and munching my way through a considerable amount of food every day while I sat in front my PC.

Sometimes I ventured out with my laptop to a local coffee house to work, but I tanked up on calorie-laden frappès, muffins, biscotti and other goodies while there.

My Slide Into Obesity

There could be only one outcome to my new lifestyle as far as my weight and health were concerned, and it wasn’t good.

Not only did I gain entirely too much weight, something I was blissfully unaware of since my old favorite sweats stretched to accommodate my growing waistline; but my health suffered in several ways.

The human body was designed for movement. If we weren’t meant to be up moving around on a regular basis, we wouldn’t have been given feet and legs.

All of our systems: heart, lungs, circulatory, bones, muscles…..every part of us….requires physical exercise to function at maximum operating capacity.

When we sit around and don’t move enough, we basically stagnate from inside out and one end to the other.

I had begun feeling tired all the time and had developed various little aches and pains that were nothing more than the direct results of not getting enough exercise.

Who Is That Stranger In The Mirror?

For me, the turning point came when I got a good look at myself in a full length mirror while being fitted for a tux to wear at a friend’s wedding.

I hardly recognized the fat guy in the reflection. It was also a shock when the sales clerk who was outfitting me announced that I was a full size larger than I had been at my own wedding just a few short years before.

I vowed to get my weight under control and regain the level of fitness needed to enjoy overall wellness.

A Home Gym vs a Public Gym

Not being able to face the prospect of taking my rotund and out of shape self to a health club teeming with toned, tight bodies; I hit upon the idea of setting up a home gym.

There are a bunch of good reasons to have a home gym as opposed to joining a gym:

• Convenience
• Expense
• Comfort
• Privacy
• Accessibility
• And more

The Wonders Of The World Wide Web

The internet is your friend when it comes to making this kind of purchase. You can get on there and research to your heart’s content, gleaning all sorts of nuggets that provide valuable information about whatever it is you’re considering buying.

Here is how I went about setting up my home gym, which might be helpful to you if you decide to take this route to losing weight and getting fit:

Choose the best place to set up your home gym. Although you can buy outfits with relatively small footprints, your equipment will require some space.

So, look before you leap and determine what area of your home you will use for your home gym. Once you have decided this much, measure it to make sure you don’t buy equipment that won’t fit there.

Decide which pieces of workout equipment are best for your particular needs and then buy the best you can afford.

This is not a time to cut corners on price. I found home gyms online and bought what I thought would be ideally suited to my goals.

Smith machines, for example, offer a great workout for bodybuilding and are versatile, so you can use them for various exercises.

Besides having a power rack, or Smith machine home gym, you will probably want a treadmill and possibly a ski machine. You might also consider an adjustable bench with wheels, so you can roll it under your cable home gym when not in use.

A basic weight set is a necessity. You can include other options that are basically accessories, such as lifting gloves, wrist straps, weight belt and a lifting belt.

A sound system. This may not be a requirement for a lot of people, but I prefer to have music playing while I work out.

It just seems to go better and helps me develop a rhythm, plus some fast paced reggae or rock music helps get me in the zone mentally to work out.

You don’t need an expensive sound system, just something you can pop a CD in or attach your iPod to and a couple of decent speakers will suffice.

My home gym has turned things around for me. I’ve lost weight and I feel better all over—-stronger, more vitality, even more mentally on the ball.

If you work at home and are concerned about gaining weight and becoming unhealthily out of shape, try a home gym!