Fitness can be kind of intimidating. There are thousands of different exercises, tons of different pieces of equipment to use, and many different places to perform these exercises with the equipment on hand. Is it crucial to do your workout programs in a gym to get the results you desire?

 

The short answer is no. But there is a little bit more to it than just a straight “no”.

 

Provided you have the equipment needed for the exercises you wish to complete, you can work out wherever your heart desires! This solves the problem of location, but what if you don’t have a plethora of equipment at your disposal? Well, there are plenty of exercises that can be done using just your body weight and some simple equipment (like a chair). It is completely feasible to create an awesome whole body workout using just your body weight. However, your workouts will be limited and will feature a decent amount of crossover as there are only so many bodyweight exercises that can be done. But you can also alter some training variables to increase the volume and intensity of the workouts; though you can’t alter the weight being used, you can increase the sets and reps, and decrease the rest in between these sets and reps to keep your workouts challenging. To increase your home workout repetoire, you can also invest in some small equipment. A set of dumbbells, resistance bands, and/ or a stability ball can go a long way. These items are relatively inexpensive and can improve your home workouts, and give you the option to also manipulate the load being used for exercises.

There are a lot of benefits to having a gym membership as well. Obviously, a gym is stocked with every piece of equipment for every type of exercise you want to do. This opens your options up to do whatever you want to do. It is also easier to apply progressive overload to your workouts as you can progressively increase weight as the weeks go on. Having multitudes of different equipment also allows you to switch up your training type, ie. strength training vs hypertrophy training.

 

One benefit to going to a gym for a workout is that it actually forces you to leave your comfort zone to go to a place designed for people to exercise. Sometimes working out is hard at home as you can be sidetracked by other distractions (laundry, dishes, tv, etc) whereas once you drive to a gym, there’s nothing to do there but exercise.

 

All in all, you can get a great workout in both at the gym, and outside of a gym. It just depends on what kind of workout you want to get done, and what works for you and your goals.