Have Garage? Need Health Club? – NOT!

Have you had weight-loss and fitness on your mind? Made a New Years resolution to join a gym to take off the inches? Spent hundreds on your down payment to slip into your bikini by Spring break?

Well if you are like many Americans and have a garage, you probably have everything you need to get out of inclement weather and get a good workout! What am I talking about? Surely I am not saying you have to go out an buy all of the equipment that a health club has?

In this post I will discuss why we buy gym memberships in droves every new year and will it work? I’ll show some neat pictures of my newly discovered garage setup (after the Christmas decorations got stowed) and some reasonable methods and expectations for your home gym. Here is idea of what a home gym might contain.

Before we launch into this discussion, what does exercise have to do with weight-loss? Not as much as you think in the short term as it is way easier to eat less calories than you need - then to burn off? Given an either/or choice – I would diet to loose weight.

Staying on track here for a moment, there are plenty of reasons to include exercise into a weight loss plan. Exercise has lots of good effects that will help a diet plan increase one’s overall fitness levels. Here is what I think a well balanced fitness plan should include:

• diet (eat a little less calories than your body needs)
• aerobics (low intensity while obese)
• strength building (toning is a great start – light weights – high reps)

The benefits include fat loss, increased cardio-vascular fitness, and increases stamina. But understand that to loose weight – you have to eat less calories than you body needs. Lets get to the gym thing of this post.

I have like many other Americans, spent hundreds of dollars on gym memberships, fitness equipment, videos, and books to loose weight. None of these purchases came with a guarantee and many times the effort and results were short lived.

Here is the straight dope – if you want to loose weight you are going to have to eat less. If you have dieted before, you probably already have an idea of a healthy way to cut out the calories (or whatever your diet measures) so make a plan to do what works for you!

If you pick a way of eating (diet is almost passe nowadays) that works for you and you start losing weight – wouldn’t you want to do something to speed up the results? Yes!!!

Well joining a gym has been traditionally what we have done to use all of the neat equipment (not to mention ogle at all of the hard-bodies). Often times I have thought gyms were a social thing rather than a workout. People dreaming of impressing other people and having a body like that!

News flash: Joining a gym has nothing to do with getting into shape! The desire and persistence has to come from within! If you have it – it won’t make any difference where you go do it. If you agree with me, let me tell you how you can save some bucks this year.

Create a plan that is realistic. Do not commit to losing four pounds a week like some TV shows would have  you believe is possible. Start out slow and find your way of eating that will give you a net caloric deficit.

Walk out to your garage and clean out some room. I am going to show some views of my workout space where I do my low-impact, high-impact, and toning exercise (all of them this last week since it rained so hard).

My kick-boxing bag

As you can see I was able to make lots of room. If you have ever done any kind of boxing, karate, MMA or such you will find a bag a great edition to any home gym. I have got my money’s worth from this bag I bought in 1999. When I was single for a while, the bag resided in my living room. Well now the bag is relaged to my garage but it understands! I still give it plenty of foot time.

Multi function bench

Here is a bench I bought in 2002 on one of my fitness kicks. I used it for a while an then continued to get my money’s worth by collecting dust! How many people buy a weight set only to set it aside in a month or so. Now that I am almost just overweight (that will happen at 220), I have started to split up my cardio workout with some toning. The weight bench is ideal for pecks and tricep dumbbell exercises.

Bench, dumbbells, and my bike (that is collecting dust)

I bought a hard-tail mountain bike (no rear springs) last year and found after going on a bunch of rides – the bumps are too hard on me. I have to take the bike back to the shop to get the gears adjusted (I cannot quite get it perfect) and then I will not ride on the harder trails. I will still use the bike as a change of pace workout but on the streets or fairly flat dirt trails.

Do you see all of those dumbbells? I bought them as dust collectors in 2002 but have put them back into service again.

Here is a side view of my multi use bench

The shelf on the right has my bag gloves and jump rope. You see there is no reason I cannot get an aerobic workout on rainy days.

I like to work the tricepts.

One of the main reasons to use a bench is to do some specialty exercise that are easier to do on a machine like lat pull downs. I like to do flies for my pecks but I don’t use the leg stations too much… my bag workouts and jogging take care of that.

Well there you have it, what I like to do and save some money. For a fraction of what it costs to join a gym – you can get most of the exercises in that you could at a gym. All you need is to be self-motivated. What other real kind of motivation is there really?

So if you have fitness on your mind – you don’t need to join a health club, buy too much extra equipment (even body weight exercise are all you need instead of weights), buy a new book or even watch the latest fitness video. All you have to do is make a commitment, make a plan, don’t over-do it and work your plan to achieve results! And by the way – you can join a gym if you want to but my point is you are the factor that will lead to results – not the fancy gym membership!