Home VS. Gym: What’s Better For Me?

There’s one simple answer to this question, to the often-repeated demand of “should I go to a gym, or work out at home?”

The answer? It depends.

It depends on you, on your needs, on what your priorities are. Sometimes we don’t know what our exercise priorities are until we’ve tried both and discovered what suits us, or until we’ve got into a habit or routine and found it perfect (or lacking).

With that in mind, here are some advantages of both approaches. Look for the characteristics that really jump out at you — if you find yourself nodding in approval to one trait of the home gym, or really thinking “yeah, that sounds awesome” in terms of a professional gym, you’re on the right track. There’s no right answer, just multiple options for different people!

Home Advantage: Only Use the Equipment You Need

When you work out at home, you can adjust your equipment needs to exactly what you want to focus on. You’ll never be met with the dilemma of unlimited choice — when you only have one elliptical machine to warm up with and a set of dumbbells and a bench press, you’ll get the maximum use out of those machines.

The fact is, most people who work out in a gym never hit 100% of the machines, and never use even close to 100% of those machines’ potential. At home, this is much more likely. However…

Gym Advantage: Find the Perfect Equipment for You

One of the great things about a gym is that an organization has already invested in the entire range of equpiment that you could possibly want to use. There’s a lot of it, it’s modern and well-maintained (if you’re going to a good gym), and it’s usually at a much more professional level than the equpiment you’d get at home. If you find that a particular exercise with a particular set of weights isn’t working for you, you’re free to try multiple alternatives that won’t feel like compromises, something that’s not always an option at home.

Home Advantage: No One is Looking at You

Unless you workout in your living room while the rest of your family watches TV, wondering why you’re sweating away in the corner and distracting them from the news, you’re probably working out in your home gym on your own. Here, you can blast whatever music you want, throw on your favorite movie while you work, and not worry about other people in any way. If one of the main things that bothers you about the gym is the psychology of everyone else in there, working out at home is a definite advantage.

Gym Advantage: No One is Looking at You Here, Either

It’s a big myth that people in the gym give a crap about what everyone else is doing. They’re too busy focusing on what you should be concentrating on, too — your workout. Ask anyone who’s worked out in a gym all their life, or has worked in a gym, or talk to a personal trainer — people simply don’t have time, when working out in a gym on a regular basis, to worry in any way about the ‘new’ guy or girl who might not be in great shape like everyone else. It’s a huge myth.

Home Advantage: You Can Customize Your Workouts the Way You Want

If you work out at home, you can take our workout videos and follow them at your own pace, creating your own customized workout that fits your needs. You’re free to mix and match and really do things your way.

Gym Advantage: You Can Get a Trainer’s Guidance

While customizing your workouts is great, the other side of such an advantage is simply that you might not have such a great handle on how to customize your own workouts, and one of the biggest advantages of a gym is that there are real live personal trainers right there, available to work with you and customize a routine exactly to your body type and exercise goals, in a professional way that’s often better than what you can accomplish on your own.