Getting a gym membership can be costly. If there’s not a cheap gym near you, you can be paying quite a bit of money per month to have access to the gym. Even then, it may not be a 24 hour gym, so you have to work with their hours to get your workout in on time.
Building a home gym saves you a lot of money in the long run, but it doesn’t have to be expensive at the start anyway. People are sometimes put off by home gyms because the equipment can get expensive if you buy it new.
Things like treadmills can cost hundreds of dollars, and weightlifting machines can cost even more. Gyms can afford them because they have hundreds of people paying for memberships, but you’re just one person.
Instead of buying all of your equipment new, look towards the secondhand market. It’s not uncommon for people to sell exercise equipment or even give it away because they’ll try to build up a home gym and then give up on it, leaving them with these items that are taking up space.
You can find all kinds of essentials using websites like eBay or Craigslist, and usually for a much better price than you’d find brand new. It’s also important that you don’t buy equipment that you don’t need.
Certain things like machines that drive up the cost of a home gym aren’t really necessary if you can learn how to do those exercises with free weights – meaning things like dumbbells and barbells.
They almost always have a free weight counterpart, so you only need to buy those.A good set of dumbbells can be acquired for just around $250 or less, and those can be used for just about any kind of workout and will get you in shape.
That’s if you decide to get a set with different kinds of dumbbells going up to around 50 pounds. If you want an even cheaper option, you can get an adjustable dumbbell, which allows you to use one pair of them and change the weight through a wide range.
This helps save space and money.Another good essential to get is a bench and barbell. Naturally, this allows you to do bench press, which is a common exercise, but it also enables you to do things like overhead press and squats, all for next to nothing. A bench is almost always less than $50, and a barbell can be picked up for around $20.
