As health club membership fees continue to increase every year, gasoline to travel to and from the gym become more expensive and less and less free time is available for the commute, home gyms are becoming an increasingly popular choice for the health-conscious individual. At the heart of any successful gym setup is an appropriate assortment of home exercise equipment. Despite the overhyped claims of late-night television hawkers, no single piece of home fitness exercise equipment will provide a comprehensive workout routine. Several different pieces will be required for complete fitness, and the best home exercise equipment for your gym will depend largely upon your personal preferences and what you hope to accomplish with your exercise regime.
Both cardio and strength training are equally important to get yourself into shape and maintain good long- term health. Ignoring either of these twin pillars of successful exercise will lead to the ultimate failure of your quest for fitness. Cardio exercise stimulates the heart and lungs and can be achieved through a large number of exercises, any one of which can be as successful as any other. Strength training requires applying strain to individual muscles, or groups of muscles, for a prescribed length of time with periods of rest in between.
Anything that gets your heart pumping and lungs breathing hard qualifies as a cardio exercise. Stationary bikes are excellent for this type of exercise, as are stair steppers, also known as stepper exercise equipment, treadmills and elliptical machines. If you would like the added benefit of strengthening your leg muscles during your cardio workout, bikes, stair steppers and treadmills are preferred since they derive virtually all of their cardio stimulation through working of the legs. If you would like to strengthen both legs and arms, an elliptical would be a better choice, since you can alternate effort from legs to arms and back again, or a combination of the two, to keep your heart rate up. If you would like to target your back, arms and legs, something more exotic like a rowing machine, would be an excellent choice.
If your budget is limited, any one of these items of home exercise equipment is all you need to maintain good cardiovascular health. If your pockets are deeper, two or even three different machines would provide excellent cardio stimulation while avoiding the monotony of a single exercise. Of course, if the weather is good, a simple jog can do the job with no machine at all.
The key to an effective cardio workout is precisely controlling your heart rate throughout the duration of the exercise. Therefore, your cardio machine(s) should accurately monitor your pulse and adjust the intensity of your workout to maintain and adjust your heart rate as required. Pulse-sensing handgrips will do an adequate job but, for the greatest accuracy and freedom, try to find a model that utilizes a chest strap monitoring system.
Strength training is more straightforward, with fewer types of machines available to do the job. Your basic choice comes down to whether you prefer to use free weights or a tension-style machine. Free weights are inexpensive to purchase, but there are some significant trade-offs involved. First of all, you are more likely to injure yourself with free weights. To counter this, it is always best to work out with a partner when using anything other than dumbbells. The kinetic energy involved in a 150-pound barbell falling from overhead can easily break a bone, so it is better to be safe than sorry. Secondly, the impact of free weights hitting the floor can cause damage to both your flooring and the structure underneath. Handle your weights gingerly and use a very heavy energy-absorbing rubber floor mat.
Tension weight machines are safer to use alone, take up less space, and create virtually no shock to the floor when used. Tension can either be created by bending pre-stressed composite or carbon fiber shafts, or by stretching elastic bands made of various high-tech materials. Both systems have their advantages, and proponents of each are vocal and resolute in their opinions as to which is superior. Either way, choose a machine that offers the greatest variety of exercises to arms, legs, and torso as possible.
When it comes to choosing specific equipment, budget, quality, and personal preference should be the deciding factors. Home exercise equipment reviews and critiques are widely available on the internet as well as various publications, and you should carefully research what others are saying about any piece of equipment you are considering buying. A home gym is a considerable investment, both in terms of money as well as your continued good health, so it is important to buy good quality equipment that will hold up for many years of use. If the choice comes down to a cheap feature-heavy machine versus a quality bare bones machine for the same price, it is usually best to go with the better-made machine and forego the extra bells and whistles.
Some additional articles that explore in more detail specific exercise equipment for the home include information on the elliptical workout machine, treadmill hire and the fitness step, a really simple but very effective solution for staying fit.
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