Weight Training At Home
Weight Training Advice
is especially true for beginners). If you're not ready to join a gym for either of these reasons you can still get great results weight training at home.
If you decide to weight train at home you'll obviously have to buy weights and other lifting equipment. It's best to buy weights that are iron instead of weights that are plastic on the outside and cement on the inside so you won't have to worry about cracking them if you drop them. A weight set with weights that vary from 2.5 to 45 pounds will allow you the most variety as far as how much you want to lift. You'll certainly need a barbell (preferably an olympic bar weighing 45 lbs.) to put the weights on, as well as some dumbell bars that you can change the weights on. You can usual buy your weights, barbell, and dumbbell bars packaged together for a reasonable price.
One of the most important pieces of equipment you'll need for weight training at home is a weight bench. Make sure the weight bench is built strong and allows you to change it's angle so you can do incline exercises on it. With a weight bench you'll able to do a great variety of lying exercises such as bench presses, incline presses, lying triceps extensions, and dumbbell flyes, as well as seated exercises such as barbell or dumbbell presses, seated dumbell curls, and various seated triceps exercises. You can also find weight benches that allow you to add a leg extension / leg curl piece to work the quadriceps and hamstrings. There are even weight benches with a cable pulldown and row apparatus so you can train your back muscles. To get the most out of weight training at home you should try to find a weight bench with all of the attachable extras.
There are plenty of free weight exercises you can perform without using your weight bench if you work out at home. These include deadlifts, barbell or dumbbell curls, and various other standing weight training exercises.
One of the hardest muscle groups to weight train if you work out at home are the leg muscles (quadriceps, hamstring, and calves). Most weight benches do come with a leg extension - leg curl attachment, so you can get some solid leg training in. To get the most out of your leg workouts you need to squat, which can be hard to do if you weight train at home. A squat rack is an expensive piece of equipment and there aren't too many people that will go out of their way to buy one. Of course, you can do deadlifts, lunges, and squats with a dumbbell in each hand as alternatives to squatting. If you want to do barbell squats at home and don't have a squat rack or any other means of safely getting a lot of weight on your upper back, you should use a lighter weight that you can safely get onto your upper back and do high rep squats.
To weight train your calves at home do standing calf raises on a block with a not to heavy weight on your upper back, making sure to keep your balance. You can also do seated calf raises on a block with a weight on your upper thighs.
As long as you have the right basic equipment (some weights and a bench with various attachments), you could very well get workouts weight training at home that are as good as ones at a gym.
While gyms have all the equipment you need to increase muscle size and strength, not everybody has the extra money to pay for a membership, or may not yet feel confident working out in public (this
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