First off I have no clothes you’d ever wear to a gym. I wear jeans and a t shirt pretty much daily (think Hank Hill). Second, I don’t get what you do there. I hated gym time in school (workout gym, not like throwing balls and running around gym, thats fun) and I don’t get what you do. Run on a treadmill and lift some weights? I feel like I could do all of that at home. Gym memberships are insanely expensive. Are home workouts actually effective? Does one even enjoy gym time?
Thank-you all, this was actually super helpful and motivating. I’ve been doing what I can at home and maybe looking into a gym membership but I still feel that may not be for me as I don’t really want to be around others while working out. Im going to keep biking and keep looking for some gear for the basement
You can jog on the treadmill for 30 minutes and that way you don’t have to be out in the blistering sun.
Weightlifting can require insanely heavy weights, they take up a lot of storage and cost a lot of money. Gyms also offer the benefits of having specialised machines that focus on specific muscles. I used to go to a commercial gym then built a home gym, I’ve spent over £2,000 and I’m still not close to finished.
Sure you can do bodyweight stuff, or limited exercises with adjustable dumbbells and resistance bands, but you won’t get nearly as strong as a good gym, training plan, and diet.
I have spent years using public gyms and now have a home gym. Home gyms are better in every way if you have the motivation to push yourself. At a public gym its easier to find that motivation because everyone around you is focused on the same task.
You have all the things you need in one space and you can’t leave easily and go home.
If you’re motivated at home you can run on street/walk/trails, you can do core body workouts, you can get some cheap equipment that will get you most of the benefits of a gym at much less cost. You can always find cheap used equipment for sale from people cleaning out their houses
Going to the gym gets you better equipment, more equipment, and helps establish a routine to keep you going when motivation isn’t enough.
If you get home equipment similar to what you’d use at a gym, the payback time is much longer, it may be difficult to move or store, and you can’t get rid of it when it’s time.
At home I have a good set of dumbbells, an Exercycle, and exercise mats I never use. However I’ve never really been able to establish a gym routine so that’s a waste of money. My brother has a good half ton of exercise equipment he’d give me free of charge but I have no way to transport it and it would cost too much.
I actually am considering getting more home exercise equipment. At least my teens would use it and maybe I would too. It’s expensive but it’s not continuous cost like a gym would be.
I’ve seen plenty of jeans at my rural gym. Just don’t wear them on leg day.
Otherwise, you might exercise too hard and end up like The Hulk.
Run on a treadmill and lift some weights?
Yes, that is exactly what you do at a gym.
I feel like I could do all of that at home. Gym memberships are insanely expensive.
Absolutely correct.
Are home workouts actually effective?
Yes.
Does one even enjoy gym time?
Yes.
Yo could do that at home. I do.
For many people a gym is a matter of discipline. To force them go and do it.
But for me it works the opposite way, the extra time going to another place dissuades me from going at all. So workout at home works better for me.
I like being able to turn on a movie or TV series I enjoy while doing some exercises at home.
Having to go somewhere with that annoying workout music blaring 24/7, needing to wait for equipment to become free… just not for me.
That’s what I’m hoping. After many years of not going to a gym and not using crappy home equipment, will I use nicer equipment more conveniently at home? I can hope so and at least you only buy it once
Something tells me you don’t own a treadmill at home, so Im not following how you’d do that at home.
I personally really like lifting weights and running an the gym. You can do it all at home but having a barbell, squat rack, bench press, weight plates, dumbbells, treadmill, pull down machine, rowing machine and so on at home would take a lot of space at home.
Having it at a different place also helps a lot with motivation IMO, there’s a strong “at the gym I work out” effect instead of being at home where I can take a break and “continue later”.
When I was a kid, we got a cheap barbell set and used it regularly. As a parent, I’m horrified they were allowed to sell cheap rickety dangerous equipment and would insist on heavier duty with more safety.
A squat rack is a great example. You don’t need it and I never used one as a kid, but it will save you from accidents getting the bar onto your shoulders and back down when you’re exhausted. I would not allow my kid to do squats without one
A lot of exercises you can do in the gym you can also do at home with a pair of dumbbells or even just your body weight.
The benefits of the gym for me is having an air conditioned environment, with machines that can guide my exercises and help enforce proper form, a good space to meetup with personal trainers, opportunities for group classes, and somewhere where there’s people around in case anything goes wrong in one of my exercises.
Not all gyms are the same too. There are climbing gyms, kickboxing gyms, mma gyms, gyms with pools, gyms with basketball and volleyball courts, gyms with tennis, squash, and badminton courts, etc. A lot of those you can’t do from home.
I went to the gym for a couple years and managed to increase my PR’s consistently and doubled my bodyweight at the same bf %.
Then i decided i was disciplined enough for a homegym as the gym attracted a crowd of generic fools instead of the old club of bodybuilders and powerlifters…i wasn’t disciplined enough.
I really need that: “since i’m already here, might as well go balls to the wall”.
My old gym cost about €13, now generic shit gyms cost more than twice as much. I won’t be going back at those prices because food and rent also tripled, i don’t grow money from a tree or something.
Increase my PR’S
I don’t see how gym makes you better at coding
Bending in gymnastics helps bend the rules in PRs.
Clearly they were increasing their public relations. /s
I did say i was going balls to the wall, right?
I was actually studying during cardio but not coding, lol
I went to the gym for a couple years and managed to increase my PR’s consistently and doubled my bodyweight at the same bf %.
What weight did you start at? Doubling your weight in 2 years maintaining the same bf% is a very hard equation to solve, without the use of steroids, which I assume you didn’t use since you didn’t mention it.
you pick up heavy things and then you put them down so you can pick up heavier things later.
People don’t have space for a home gym, so it’s either pay the membership fee, or don’t work out.
Noooo, there are soooo many exercises that take nothing extra. … ok maybe you can double or triple the number of exercises you can do with even just like… a playground within jogging distance, but still.
The vast majority of muscles can be exercised either with body weight, or a few heavy items that are easy to grab. Add a sturdy bench you can lay on or put weight on without it flexing too much or falling over, and you can cover basically any muscle.
It is purely a lack of knowledge of anatomy that drives someone to say you NEED a gym’s amount of equipment. Muscles are dynamic, but you can only move your body in so many ways.
This is going to trigger people who just forked out for “insanely expensive” gym memberships, but it’s obviously true.
I can think of two caveats:
- body-weight exercises are clearly healthier than pumping iron, but they will only get you toned, not jacked (personally I think being jacked is ugly as hell, but whatever)
- presumably many gym-goers are there for the same reason that sociable people do all kinds of things in groups - because otherwise they would not find the motivation
The funny thing is, you can get DAMN jacked with only bodyweight. You just won’t look like a steroid-addled meathead, which far too many people assume is just time in the gym.
Yea, even personal motivation changes a lot when you go to some other location to do something. Don’t have much choice but to procrastinate or do something if you’re standing in the middle of a gym in just shorts and a shirt.
Depending on where you’re at in life, gyms with machines can be really useful. It forces certain muscles to activate and if you’ve lived a sedentary lifestyle, it’s very useful.
Otherwise, yeah. The only thing you need is body weight and a set of dumb bells.
After that gets meh, get a squat rack/ bench press combo as well and you’re set
I don’t go to the gym either but know several people who do and the equipment lets you strength train with a lot more weight than your body weight if that’s what you’re going for. You can use water jugs and stuff at home but that can be janky and potentially dangerous.
Also there’s probably something to be said about traveling to a dedicated location for your workout to help you get out of the house, in the right mindset, etc. I’m sure it’s similar to how some people love working from home while others prefer to go to the office to help focus better and socialize.
The vast, VAST majority of people do not need weight that is greater than bodyweight.
Exercising in a unique place is huge for at least removing distraction and easy excuses to not exercise, though. For some people I can see that being important enough for the membership.
Like how my buddy went to college just to learn some programming when there are a million quality tutorials/books/guides/docs out there for free these days. He wanted the forced structure and push to do homework.
He now regrets paying college prices for that knowledge.
You can do this at home. Everything here is under 2000 dollars spent total because we bought from bankrupted gyms liquidating during covid and a couple home gym people after covid who preferred going to a gym and were offloading equipment for next to nothing.
Outdated pic but same rack today:
You need the space to begin with, but besides the rowers (can be stored vertically) and rack, the space waste isn’t that huge. George Hackenschmidt’s abridged/edited down by me workout routine is pinned to my back wall there. An old world strong man from an era before steroids existed. He didn’t do focused muscle training, instead all-round balanced and, this is key, a very minimal amount of equipment is needed. You can look up how he looked, I think it’s aesthetically pleasing.
But yeah that’s really it. Lift heavy things, row, and I run or bike. I do not enjoy it. I don’t pretend to. I’m not doing this for enjoyment, I’m a big nerd who never enjoyed physical activity ever. It’s simply to stay in good shape because that was noticeably slipping in my 30’s.
So I’m doing this entirely out of self preservation. Importantly, I also do Yoga. Flexibility is important too.
Gyms are indeed predatory with their obnoxious membership programs and cancelation antics. I’m lucky to have some space in my ugly basement.
