A gymnasium or gym is a building or
room, or an athletic facility equipped for indoor sports and physical training,
exercises and physical education. It originated from ancient Greece where it
was referred to as a locality for both intellectual and physical education of
young men. If it is a home gym, therefore, it is a room or facility in your own
premises with equipment for sports, physical training or exercises, or a place
where you can regularly exercise or train physically. It may also refer to a
compact unit of equipment with which you can do many exercises, or a multi-gym
of various work stations that fit into your spare room, home basement or
garage, where you can do your weight training as often as you want.
Setting up a home gym is not as hard as
they think, because the set ups depend on the goals of the exercisers and their
levels, such as the beginners, intermediate trainers, and advanced trainers. For
beginners whose goals are based on
general fitness, muscle tone or flexibility, a minimum set up is best to
include aerobic exercise equipment such as treadmills, stationary bikes and
rowers, and combinations of basic extensible equipment like dumbbells, bench,
balls, steps, mats, bands and ab workers. For intermediate trainers, the home gym should consider a complete set
of dumbbells and barbells with weight plates, a barbell rack and an exercise
bench, and free weights combined with cheaper multi-gyms. For advanced trainers, or serious weight
trainers, the home equipment often supplement but not duplicate those in
regular gym sessions but may include free-weight bench set ups or multi-gyms.
The other types of home gym set ups
include the following: (a) Multi-gyms based on steel or composite cords and
bands that create the resistance, (b) Total gym concept that uses an inclined
bench, adjustable height, and a sliding seat platform, (c) Multi-gyms based on
stacked weights that uses a pulley and cable mechanism with carefully arranged
weights, and (d) Multi-combinations of Smith machines that constrain the bar in
one vertical plane.
As part of the home gym set ups, you can
decorate them or choose the colors that will motivate you to perform more. You
can paint a mural or artwork on one or two walls in it, with colors that can
make the gym room feel cooler and give you something to help you recover when
you are seating. If the gym is going to be used for running, weight lifting or
stair stepping, you can paint it or some areas with warm colors such as peach,
orange, banana yellow or even bold red are aggressive-looking and can invoke
from you some feelings of determination and persistence. But if your gym is
mainly for yoga or Pilates exercises, you may want to use cool colors like
green, purple and blue for a calming and soothing effect.
With a well set up home gym, some good
exercises can be performed on a regular or daily basis, such as body building,
heart rate training, general fitness, low-impact exercises, sports training,
performance training, weight loss workout, strength training and stretching.
