Many benefits of having an exercise room or home gym range from inexpensive to simply convenient. Being able to get a full body workout by simply going to another room in the house is better than going out and traveling to the public gym any day. A home gym gives you 24-hour access to all the exercise you want. A home gym also eliminates the usual lines of people waiting to use whatever exercise machine is available. It also allows you to use a particular piece of equipment without time limits, giving unlimited access and usage for you.
There’s also the economic convenience of ditching regular gym membership payments, especially considering many people are too caught up in busy daily lives to have enough time to get in a proper workout. For those people, continually paying gym membership fees quickly turn into wasted money.
Although considerable investments must be made for a home gym, there is the fact that, in the end, you can exercise as much as you normally would in a public gym, right in the safety and comfort of your own home.
A more specific example of a benefit would be the privacy you’ll gain for yourself by using your own resistance exercise machines. With the right kind of management and commitment, you can achieve the kind of muscle training you would in a public gym, in your own home. The procedures are the same, the equipment is the same; the only thing that changes is the fact that you don’t actually have to go to the gym to get the same results.
For a complete home muscle toning setup, you would need the usual machines: leg weights, free weights, abdominal benches, a bench press machine, a rowing machine, hand weights, and other resistance training equipment.
Toning exercises come with the same considerations: target specific body parts on specific days, so your body has a chance to heal.
To tone your pectoral muscles, use the bench press. This machine can also benefit other muscle groups like the triceps, delts, and the like.
The abdominal bench is what you use to tone your core muscles, such as your upper and lower abdomen. It’ll also give your obliques a good workout, and combined with a well-toned core, you’ll get a well-sculpted core that shows a lot over time.
For toned legs and calves, turn to leg weights. Provides additional resistance that can increase muscle strength, without the dangers of overworking muscles. Using weights as light as 2 or 3 pounds, you’re sure to get great results. Remember, however, that when using leg weights, a maximum of 5 pounds should be observed for safety reasons.
Leg weights have also been shown to be helpful in building and toning other muscle groups, such as the thighs and glutes, when used during aerobic exercise.
The forearm muscle groups benefit from the use of free weights and hand weights.
While you have the convenience of getting a full toning workout at home, remember that the same procedures for effective use still apply when it comes to your machines. If your goal is simply to tone your muscles, keep in mind that you only need light weights: doing so allows you to do more reps and more sets, compared to the larger weights used in strength training.
Remember to do each exercise slowly – you expend more energy from each muscle when you do it slowly, thus keeping specific muscles tense and flexed as you exercise.
One very important thing to remember is to keep your form while you exercise. Good posture contributes to a good workout and also ensures greater safety. Because you’re using additional weight in your exercise, poor posture can lead to muscle strain and injury, an ever-present but avoidable danger when training with weights.
Finally, as any personal trainer would say: exercise is not enough to successfully tone muscles. Your training should be properly supported by healthy eating habits and weight loss. Although your toning exercises are precise and correct, your muscular conditions will be useless if you don’t eliminate the excess fat that covers them.