With so many of us cutting out the expensive gym memberships and looking to home based fitness programs, investing in some items of home fitness equipment can be a motivating way to get you on the road to slim, fit and toned! Here are a few tricks and tips for getting you thinking about what you would like to create at home.

Even if you do not have much room there are ways to maximize your floor space to squeeze as much in as safely and effectively as possible. There are many choices out there from rowing machines, treadmills, elliptical machines and bikes and it can be rather overwhelming.

All in all there are three areas to think about when designing your home gym. First, consider what your physical fitness goals are for your gym. Is your aim to tone, build cardiovascular fitness, build up muscle or lose weight? These factors will depend on your sex, age and your health and fitness levels and social factors like whether you have a partner or family. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: cardiovascular equipment, home fitness equipment

A fast, fun and varied treadmill workout is a fantastic way to keep you motivated and keep up your exercise routine in the cold winter months along with having you burn a serious amount of calories! Many people think of treadmill training as monotonous and boring but it really does not have to be. And despite this bad reputation, the trusty treadmill is the most common piece of home fitness equipment. People love them!

But you may ask, why not pay a visit to the great outdoors and walk, jog or run outside? Well, treadmill workouts have some distinct advantages over going outside and here’s why.

People generally like running for the large amount of calories that inevitably get burnt. Running engages a huge amount of muscle groups in the body and is also weight bearing, serving to keep your joints in healthy condition. So it comes as no surprise that running is the best form cardiovascular exercise to burn fat and calories.

Interval Training

Interval training on your treadmill is the optimal method to keep you enthused and inspired and also get the best all over body workout. And, you don’t need to be a top runner either. Interval training is an intensive method of burning fat and increasing your cardiovascular fitness so it is at its peak. This is because it allows you to run at an intensity higher than you usually would for a longer time period. Stints of lowered intensity are interspersed with stints of heightened intensity. This leads to a serious boost in your metabolism and an optimal cardiovascular fitness training effect for about 3 to 4 hours after the workout. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: EPOC, home fitness equipment, runner

You know why people make excuses? Whenever the mind figures out that it needs to do something different than the routine, it is filled with doubts, fears and apprehensions, which in turn culminate into excuses. If you are excusing yourself from buying a home fitness equipment, you are not alone.

However, you need to understand that excuses won’t take you anywhere. I can give you a variety of reasons why you should buy an exercise equipment, but unless you really go and buy the equipment and do that damn workout, you are neither going to lose weight nor acquire a toned-up body as per your desire.

Here are some of the common excuses people make for not buying a home-based exercise equipment.

1. Lack of company: There are many people who quickly get bored of workouts if they have to exercise all alone, day after day. Such people prefer to hit the gym simply because there is some company for them. However, you don’t need to workout alone even if you use home fitness machine.

Convince your family regarding the importance of fitness, then buy a couple of extra fitness equipments for your other family members. This way, you won’t have to workout alone and at the same time, it would help keep your family members fit and healthy.

Another way is to let your family play their favorite sports while you workout in the background. For example, if your family members are interested in table tennis, buy them a table for playing tennis. On the other hand, if football is their passion, you can buy them a football goal instead.

2. Insufficient space: Are you worried about space for setting up the fitness equipment at home or storing it for later use? If the former is the case, then it might be a valid reason for not buying the equipment. People living in small flats barely have any space left after installing tables, beds and large couches; if that is the case with you, you either need to get rid of the couch and setup your fitness equipment in its place, or forget about buying a home-based equipment.

If however, you have enough space for setting up the fitness equipment at home but are worried about where to store it after the workout session is over, there is good news for you. Most manufactures today understand the needs and demands of the common man. They know that not everyone who buys a fitness equipment lives in a king-sized flat.

Modern exercise machines are becoming more and more portable and compact than before, so as to make it easier for you to store them after use. Most fitness machines can be folded and tucked away safely at a corner of your house after you are done with them. As such, you don’t need to worry about it.

3. Absence of professional guidance: Many people excuse themselves from buying a fitness equipment because they feel they won’t be able to make proper use of it in absence of professional guidance. While this is a true and valid objection, it is equally true that if your workout routine begins at early dawn or late night, you are not going to get a fitness trainer who would be at your beck and call.

So your best option is the internet. You may or may not be aware of it, but these days you can get custom workout and diet plans tailor-made to your needs and equipments, all for a small monthly fee. If you subscribe to any such program, you would get professional guidance not only on fitness but also diet and nutrition; let’s face it, every one knows how important dieting is in the sphere of weight loss.

Tags: exercise equipment, favorite sports, Fitness Equipment, football, home fitness equipment, home-based exercise equipment, table tennis, Tennis

Who should buy a home fitness equipment? If you are lazy and feel that you can lose weight on autopilot, please don’t waste your money on exercise equipments because you are never going to use them. A lot of exercise equipment manufacturers claim that you can lose weight fast and easily with the help of those machines, but truth to be told, this is nothing more than hype.

I don’t know about you, but I have seen several newspaper ads featuring people who are bulked up using Photoshop to show they are “fat”; their real picture is displayed at the top, and just beside it is the picture of the exercise equipment. The ad claims that you can lose weight within a couple of weeks. Nothing could be further from the truth. A woman who is really that fat would need at least a couple of months to get rid of fat, no matter how devoted she is and which workout machine she uses.

I am saying all these to make sure you get the real picture about those workout machines. The fact remains that if you are not ready to work hard and sweat, you are not going to acquire the sexy and svelte body you desire. With that said, let me tell you how to make the best use of a home-based exercise equipment.

A huge advantage of a home based fitness equipment is that it helps you get rid of fat from the comfort of your home. Nothing could be more enjoyable and fun than taking a shower and then riding on the treadmill. More than helping you acquire a toned up body, regular exercises make you a happy and confident person. A good exercise program should consist of three types of exercises: strength training, cardios and stretching.

The primary purpose of working out is to keep your heart healthy; keep in mind that if your heart is not healthy you can never be fit. Diseases like strokes and high blood pressure are the offshoots of an unhealthy heart located within an equally unhealthy body. If you want to focus on your heart, equipments such as treadmills, elliptical trainers, steppers, etc., are pretty good. Make sure that the equipment you are going to buy comes with an in-built heart-monitoring tool.

Treadmills are good for you if you are too lazy to go out and take a walk or jog. Treadmills enable you to walk or run in the comfortable surroundings of your home. Moreover, unlike the uncomfortable, hard and steep roads, treadmills make your feet comfortable with good cushioning.

On the other hand, if you wish to burn fat non-stop, then there is no better option than an elliptical trainer. An elliptical trainer is indeed a versatile fitness equipment, in that it has a cycle, treadmill and stepper, all rolled into one. It offers electronic adjustable resistance which is good for burning fat when you maybe busy in some other work. Another advantage of an elliptical trainer is that it offers you plenty of statistics, ranging from the amount of calories you burned, the speed at which you burned those calories, your pulse rate, etc.

Tags: exercise equipment, Fitness Equipment, high blood pressure, home fitness equipment, home-based exercise equipment, in-built heart-monitoring tool, strokes, versatile fitness equipment

I have written quite a bit over the last week about what you need as far as home fitness equipment goes but thought I would just round out this week with an overview of what you should have for equipment. So here is what I think that you should try to accumulate over the next while.

Mats – The most basic piece of fitness equipment is an exercise mat. You need an exercise mat for doing stretching as well as for doing abs and an exercise mat is always good for lying on when you are tired from a tough set or some cardio

Dumbells – Dumbells are those short bars with the weights on them. Who cares about them all matching but you want to probably have pairs of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 pounds and sometimes even a pair of 3 pound weights are good to carry while you are running or doing other cardio. These all come in handy for lots of your weight exercises

Barbell – This is just a big long bar. The barbell bar weighs I believe 20 pounds although ones at the gym will weight 45 pounds. Then of course you need weights to put on this bar. Remember that anytime that you are using a barbell you are lifting more weight and in the case of bench presses or even military presses you can get yourself into real trouble if you do not have a spotter. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: cardio equipment, elliptical trainer, Fitness Equipment, home fitness equipment, paul plakas, rowing, weight exercises, X

Stair climbers have long been a mainstay piece of equipment in many home fitness centers. They are considered to be the third most popular choice in home exercise equipment that is available today.

Stair steppers are simple to use since they simulate the beneficial action of climbing up stairs. Of course, with real stairs you are done when you reach the top, but with this fitness equipment you can continue climbing as long as your legs endure.

Why are stair climbers good
One of the reasons that stair climbers are so popular is that they are very effective at strengthening and building the muscles in your legs, thighs and buttocks. These large muscles are responsible for a great deal of overall body strength and are also responsible for a large percentage of the calories that you burn each day. Once you build up this group of large muscles, the effects on your metabolism will be significant because a faster metabolic rate equals more calories burned.

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Tags: climber, climbing up stairs, energy, Fitness Equipment, fitness machines, good stair climber, home exercise equipment, home fitness equipment, home gym exercise equipment, orthopedic disorders, physician, stair climber, stair climbers, stair climbing equipment, stair steppers

I have two kids and my wife and I love our kids but they can wreak havoc on a workout schedule.

Men who hit the couch instead of the gym lose about seven pounds of muscle a decade. In other words, if you don’t stay active you may soon look like that guy at work who hasn’t seen his toes in 20 years.But with work and raising a family, finding time to log those miles and rack up those reps can seem impossible. Here are some tips on how you can fit an excellent workout into your hectic lifestyle:

Remember: Less Is More…. Or At Least Enough.
It used to be that you’d have to spend hours a week at the gym to get a buff bod. The good news is studies show you can get nearly the same results with a third of the work.

“If you’re training to increase your health and to optimize your fitness, you certainly can have a very focused workout that makes the most of your time,” said Richard Cotton, chief exercise physiologist with First Fitness Inc. in Salt Lake City.

So say goodbye to those multiple sets of arduous pumping, and instead choose just ten exercises, and do one set of ten reps each. Devote a full minute to each set, concentrating on the major muscle groups, and in ten minutes you’re pumped.

Gain With Less Pain.
Not only can you reduce your number of sets, you can cut your weekly workouts from three to two, said Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Mass. Men who workout twice a week using the above regimen get 85 percent of the benefit as men who hit the iron three times weekly, shedding fat and packing on the muscle as they do it, he said.
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Tags: Avon, chief exercise physiologist, coach, David Goodwin, director at the South Shore YMCA, First Fitness Inc., fitness research director, football, Glenn Gaesser, home fitness equipment, Less Is More, Massachusetts, owner, pain, Phoenix Academy, professor of exercise physiology, Quincy, Richard Cotton, Salt Lake City, stair climber, University of Virginia, USD, Virginia, Wayne Westcott, www.trazer.com