Home gym equipment could help you to improve your workouts at home. However, you need to be sure that it’s a worthwhile investment. Below are a few questions to ask yourself before buying home gym equipment…

Will you use it?

This is the most important question. You don’t want to buy a fancy smart treadmill or a set of competition kettlebells only for them to sit gathering dust in the corner. 

Consider your training goals and the types of exercise you enjoy. If you don’t like running, then there’s no point buying a treadmill. However, if you run outdoors almost every day but are sometimes put off by the weather, a treadmill could be the perfect solution. 

Would it be better to join a gym?

With all the gyms currently shut due to lockdown, buying home gym equipment is the only way right now to access such equipment. However, soon the gyms will be back open again. If you previously enjoyed going to the gym, it might make sense to wait until it reopens rather than buying equipment for home that you may end up abandoning in a couple of months. 

However, if you’re not a fan of the gym, then home equipment could be a good choice. There may also be cases where you want to access specialist equipment, such as specific standard barbell plates that you may not get at your local gym. In these cases, purchasing such equipment yourself is worthwhile.

What’s your budget?

You can buy some home gym equipment very cheaply. This includes dumbbells, skipping ropes, resistance bands, and exercise balls. These types of equipment aren’t going to set you back financially – and if you don’t get good use out of them, it’s not a big waste of money. However, when it comes to big equipment such as cross trainers and rowing machines, you’ll usually have to pay a lot of money to get something decent. In these cases, you need to be sure that you can reasonably afford such equipment and that you definitely will get use out of them. To put things into perspective, a £400 treadmill could cost the same as an annual gym membership.

Approx Cost of Home Gym Equipment: 

• Skipping rope = £10-£20
• 10kg adjustable dumbbells = £60-£80
• Weights bench = £80-£150
• Squat rack = £200-£1,000
• Olympic BB set = £400-£1,000
• Kettlebells (depending on the weight) = £20-£150 per set 
• Gym Mat = £15-£20
• Medicine ball = £20-£80

What are your goals? 

Do you have a clear goal that you want to work towards? 

And also, do you know what type of training you need to do to achieve those goals? For example, if your goal is to lose weight, you don’t need any equipment. You can walk, jog and do lots of bodyweight exercises. 

If your goal is to build muscle or achieve a body transformation, you’ll need weights that stimulate muscle growth – For example, investing in a pair of adjustable dumbbells, weights bench, and barbell set. You’ll also need to do a specific type of training, i.e., TUT (Time Under Tension) training, and progressively overload your body with more resistance as each week passes. 

Instead of spending hundreds of pounds on gym gear, you may want to wait for the gyms to reopen on April 12th. 

Have you got the space?

Another important factor to consider is space. If you live in a tiny apartment, you need to be sure that you have enough space both to use and store the equipment. Skipping ropes, for instance, are easy to store, but can you realistically use them in your home if you don’t have a garden. 

As for big equipment such as treadmills and exercise bikes, you need to be sure that you have the space to store this equipment. Some equipment is very small, making it easy to store and doesn’t require a lot of space to use – such equipment could be suitable for a small home. However, you probably don’t want to be buying skipping ropes and treadmills unless you’ve got a good amount of free space in your home (if you’ve got a whole spare room that you can use as a home gym, space shouldn’t be a problem!).