Wednesday, August 25, 2010

There's no place like home

I have belonged to many commercial gyms in my life (Gold's Gym in Provo, 24 Hour Fitness in both Houston and Katy, Texas, Gold's Gym in Bryan, Texas and now Gold's Gym again in Hagerstown.) I really love belonging to a gym because they have such great equipment and I enjoy taking the variety of classes that are always offered too.

But I also really like having the ability to workout from home if the need arises. On those days when I am short on time, have a sick child, or am snowed in (like this past winter!!), I like having the ability to go down into our unfinished basement to get in a good sweat session.

Here is what our home-gym currently looks like (we have collected various fitness paraphernalia throughout the years)...


Our weight bench.
We picked this up at a yard sale this summer. It also came with 250 lbs of weights. Yard sales and Craigslist are great places to pick up inexpensive and barely-used fitness items

One of our newest purchases, a Bosu balance trainer (you can get a great stability workout with this and it helps to make traditional exercises like squats, lunges, planks and push-ups even tougher!)

Our only piece of cardio equipment so far...a stationary bike. This is usually where I warm-up and cool-down.

Our tiny TV corner. I have a few workout DVDs that I enjoy doing at times. Right now it is mostly used to play music while I workout to my own routines, but I hope to add P90X and/or Insanity to my DVD collection for this winter!!

Last but not least, our collection of weights. We have 1, 3, 5, 10, 15 and 20 lbs dumbbells,
two ab balls (8 and 10 lbs) and two kettlebells (10 and 15 lbs). We also have a stability disk, some perfect push-up stands and a pull-up bar that needs to get hung up eventually!
We also purchased some foam flooring to make the concrete a bit more comfortable to work out on. I really do love my home gym and hope to be able to add on to it soon. My goal is to be able to do personal training sessions from my own home someday. A girl can dream!!
Talking Point: What kind of equipment do you have at home to workout with? Any favorite workout DVDs?

2 comments:

  1. Chris got me a stationary bike for Christmas/birthday a couple years ago and we also got cable so that I could watch but workout at the same time. Since then I got rid of the cable but don't use my stationary bike very often. I much prefer to go out and ride my bike around somewhere. When I lost my 63 lbs I would ride my bike to basketball MWF mornings for an hour and then T,TH,S I would do "The Firm" DVDs. I have kind of gotten sick of those DVDs though.

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  2. I have a treadmill, stationary bike, and elliptical cross-trainer up in our bonus room. I also use five pound weights and a 10 pound kettlebell and resistance bands. My home gym has served me well for a number of years, especially when my kids were small. The other half of the bonus room is a playroom with lots of toys, so I could watch the kids and workout at the same time. They are pretty good about staying off of the equipment side. After awhile, I did get bored of the same old equipment, so I joined a Fitness 19 gym (very basic--equipment-only gym). It's only $15 a month and is nice for when I want more variety. I still miss taking classes though, so I'm thinking about buying a punch card for a nearby yoga/pilates studio. It would be a nice way to break up my cardio sessions and add some variety.

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