Workout Routines Using Free Weights at Home
When you go to the fitness center, you will see the area with free weights and then the place with all the exercise machines. Both are excellent options with advantages to either one. But what if you decide not to opt for the gym membership and would like to create your private little workout area at home. Do you bring in the machine that you saw advertised on the infomercials? We think in this case exercising with free weights is the way to go, and here are a few reasons:
1. Exercises that simulate the real-world
The advantages of a free weights workout are that you can affect weights much of what you do in real-world situations. You can use small weights to shadow-box to improve quickness. Many of the exercises golfers do make use of free weights where machines have no place.
2. Cost
Machines are expensive to buy, and they also break down, which is your cost. Plus, if you purchase equipment that isn’t versatile enough to keep functioning as you progress, that expensive equipment might soon become obsolete. An affordable free weights set for home is relatively inexpensive, more versatile, and can use them for virtually a lifetime.
3. Versatility
To develop the previous point further, even the most multi-exercise piece of equipment will allow the user to perform a limited number of movements with a restricted range of motion. Because free weight equipment adapts to the user rather than the user adapting to the machine’s capabilities, free weights are much more versatile for what the user needs.
4. Amount of room necessary
The more upscale machines can be quite large and cumbersome because once you set them up in the place, they will stay. Free weights can be stored in the closet, under the bed, or in their little nook.
5. Safety issue
This is the single most compelling reason to use machines, especially for strength training for beginners. The machine’s stability will give you a “safety net” to keep the user from getting injured. But that same stability that the machine offers will not force the user to maximize full-body strength, as the machine targets only certain muscle groups.
Moreover, most injuries do not occur because of free weights falling on someone who has lost control, but from muscle pulls or joint damage because the improper form was used. That, of course, can happen just as quickly on machines as on free weights. Knowing the proper way to conduct an exercise and not pushing yourself past your limit is the best way of avoiding injury, using either free weights or machines.
If you decide to set up your little home gym, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune or require your house’s entire room. You may be saying that those small portable fold-away sets don’t take much space. Still, they do even less suitable for anyone slightly serious about weight training. You will get more bang for your buck with a few free weights.