The Trouble with Home Gyms

Paul Woodlaw, Personal Trainer

The other day I was speaking to Peter, a very good friend of mine. He was quite please with himself having recently bought one of these all in one machines for working out at home.

His machine enables him to do chins, pull ups, dips and leg raises. He had been using it for a good 2 months with little or no progress in strength or size. He was naturally baffled as to why, now that he has taken a "giant leap" towards the kingdom of muscle, he was no closer to it.

His problem is one that is all too familiar to 80% of home gym users with a very simple solution to it. Read on…

A home gym may very well be a lot more accessible than your local gym but you cannot treat it as such. You must treat your home gym like any other gym - which means use it sparingly and use it wisely. This is the problem with home gyms. Most people end up not having a plan and most certainly do "something" on their home gym daily.

Working out every day is fine so long as you have a plan. You cannot work each body part every day. It just won't give you results. This was the problem with Peter. He was using his chin up machine every day and trying to do more chin ups on a daily basis. He had started on 4 and after 2 months, was now doing 5!

You have to have a plan and a strategy. Ideally, you want to be training each body part once every 5-7 days EVEN on your home gym. So restrain yourself from chinning every day - you will reap the rewards in the long term.

Taking Peter's home gym as an example, this is how he should really train:

Monday: 3-4 sets of Pull-ups (as many as you can)
3-4 sets of chin ups (as many as you can)
You can vary your grip here to target the different parts of your back. Wider grip for a wider back and narrower grip to work the inner back muscles.

Tuesday: You can do some knee-ups. Something like 2 x 30 reps (or as many as you can ) is sufficient.

Wednesday: 3-4 sets of Dips (as many as you can) - If you can do more than 20, you may want to consider buying a dipping belt and attaching some weights to it so you bring the reps down to 8-12 per set.

If you want, you can do 3 sets of as many push ups as you can on this day.

Thursday: You can do some knee-ups to the sides (rather than straight). You can do 2 x 30 reps.

Friday: Rest.

Saturday: 3-4 sets of Pull-ups (as many as you can)
3-4 sets of chin ups (as many as you can)
You will find that today, you WILL be able to do more chins and more pull-ups and THIS is what it's about. Really blasting the body and letting it recover.

Sunday: Up to you. You can rest or do Dips again.

The equipment that Peter is using is quite simple in that it allows for very few exercises. If you have a proper home gym with bench, weights, squat rack and so on, you can obviously do more.

It doesn't matter whether you have a fancy home gym or a few dumbbells. Your aim should be to lift HARD and HEAVY and then just rest and eat. You will grow a lot more muscles this way, than doing the same weight and reps every day - that's a promise.

If you find that your rep range at home is going over 15, then you are not using heavy enough weights and you need to either add more weight in the form of cast-iron weights to machines or dipping belts for added weight on free-standing exercises or you need to go to a proper gym.

There always comes a time when you may out-grow your home gym. If you can't afford the space or more weights, then to make more muscle gains, it's time to go to a proper gym.