Can I really build a good physique if I train at home? Did any of the Mr. winners build their bodies in home gyms? Is a personal instructor necessary to ensure that the correct exercises are done? Due to its advanced training equipment, is less time required when training in a commercial gym?
The answers to the above questions are: Yes, Yes, and No. If you have the drive and determination, you can build a prize-winning physique in any home or commercial gym, provided it is equipped with enough weights and basic training equipment.
The Advantages of Working Out at Home
Guys, if you can read simple English, you can acquire all the training knowledge you’ll ever get from a “personal trainer.” Also, if you workout from home, you will require less time for your training than you would if you traveled to a commercial gym for your workouts.
All of these factors and more make home training infinitely preferable to training in a commercial gym.
The point about “professional” instruction is so misunderstood that it becomes just crazy. Some high-pressure commercial gyms would have you believe that their instructors have post-doctoral degrees in weight training! Come on, let’s come down from the clouds.
Books and Online Courses
Remember this important point: it doesn’t make one bit of difference whether you get your training instruction from a licensed instructor, an online course, or a written course, as long as it’s good instruction given by someone who knows the difference between his triceps and gluteus maximus.
Research Your Courses Well
The thing that counts is that you’ve got to get good instruction and you must follow it!
Any intelligent 18-year-old could understand the text of most training courses (And I might add any 18-year-old with brains could tell that the instruction makes sense)
Anyone just starting training can get three times more instructions from a careful reading of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding than from a bunch of so-called professionals who work in commercial gyms and have occasionally offered some pearls of their training wisdom.
I don’t want to knock the few sincere, legitimate training authorities and instructors, but they are unfortunately few and far between.
For every legitimate personal trainer, there are a dozen idiots who’d be more than happy to sign you up for their “THREE-YEAR SUPER COURSE,” upon the completion of which, you will be just as husky (and probably as moronic) as your instructor. But enough said about the phonies. We’re after the positives!
Refer Back to It Whenever You Want
There’s another advantage to written instruction: You can refer back to it 100 times if necessary, and it won’t become impatient or tired of answering the same questions. The material will always be available – and that’s important.
Further, remember that once the foundation has been laid in bodybuilding, the advanced work requires your own independent judgment and experience.
Let no one kid you about this: There isn’t one advanced bodybuilder who’s worth his weight in protein powder who doesn’t rely 90% on his own”hard-won know-how” for gains and development.
Advice from a coach may be necessary in competitive weightlifting if you desire to rise to Olympic caliber. Still, advice from others can do more harm than good in bodybuilding if your best judgment tells you that whatever words of wisdom you’re hearing just don’t apply in your case.
No Need To Travel To The Gym
Convenience in-home training is obviously a major factor in its favor. Even an idiot can see this.
Regardless of how late a gym stays open (or how early it opens in the morning), you still need to get there to train. If you workout from home, however, travel is completely discounted since you actually live in your gym.
No time is lost or wasted. If you want to or are crazy enough, you can work out in the middle of the night!
Save Money
The money you can save on transportation expenses to and from the gym can be enough (over a year) to buy several months’ worth of supplements. The gym fee itself, for twelve months of training, can be more than enough to equip a decent home training area.
Some advanced bodybuilders like to train twice a day occasionally. Though this is done infrequently, it can be a king-sized headache to go back and forth to the gym twice a day. If you train at home, you can work out before going to college or work in the morning and again when you return home in the evening.
I’ve been training at home for the last decade and, thanks in large measure to the convenience, have missed perhaps five workouts during that time.
Stick To Your Goals – Power, Size, and Shape
Many commercial gyms have excellent swimming, judo, and massage facilities and great atmospheres for hanging out with friends after training. But so what? Despite what the commercials might say, these are incidentals.
The bodybuilder’s goals are great power, muscular size and shape, as well as fitness and condition.
You need a heavy barbell, dumbbells, a slant board, squat stands, and a good all-purpose bench to achieve them. In fact, despite every “advance” in bodybuilding, they remain the only means to the desired ends.
It’s important to understand that despite what some advertisements may say, having fancy, chrome-plated facilities doesn’t automatically make you a champion like Mr. Universe. What you achieve at the gym really depends on the effort you put in.
Curling with chrome plate dumbbells, in other words, won’t build your biceps any quicker than curling with plain old iron weights, provided that you CURL!
As for extras offered by health clubs and commercial gyms, they’re all fine, but they are intended for recreation, for those more interested in fitness-type training rather than serious barbell man.
If you’re giving your “all” to hard barbell workouts, you just won’t have the time of inclination for other sports and games afterwards, unless you happen to be one of those rare “easy gaining” guys.
The expense of joining a club with a host of facilities could be a waste of good money. Ronnie Colman’s muscles in the 90’s were not built in a sauna.
Less Time Talking More Time Training
“Gym environment” is a point always mentioned in favor of commercial gym training. It’s supposed, according to those who advocate it, to be more conducive to training when you’re in a professional gym -“psychologically.”
I won’t accuse every gym of running a social club, but I’ve visited some commercial gyms where the “gym environment” was about as conducive to training as Forty Second Street on New Year’s Eve!
Once you get to know other people in the gym, you tend to spend more time exercising your vocal cords than your deltoids. It takes too much effort to maintain a consistent program of serious training in a busy gym atmosphere.
Privacy
Privacy is another factor—for some, it’s a primary one. On this point, home training wins hands down. Still, some people thrive best when they train amid noise and activity.
Of course, training partners are not by any means a necessity; bodybuilding is not a competitive sport. It is after all, just you and the weights, every workout is and ought to be a TEST. How much better can you do in relation to what you’ve done before? More concentration, heavier weights, better exercise form, and more muscle.
Though I’ve got no scientific evidence to prove it. I believe that training with others does detract from your ability to concentrate fully on your workout program.
Mental self-discipline through solitary training is, in itself, one of the best benefits to be had barbell training.
If you enjoy training with friends, invite a few over to the house now and then for a workout. This method of group training has the advantage of including only those with whom you wish to train. There will be no personality clashes like those you sometimes find in commercial gyms.
Relives Stress
There’s one final thing, perhaps more significant than money, time, travel, or privacy, that must be noted in favor of home training. It’s called the “safety valve factor.” It’s psychological.
It’s the tonic, therapeutic effect that a few hours a week of escape into the seclusion of your home gym can have on relieving the stress and tension of everyday life.
These periodic breaks of healful, invigorating exercise can do quite a bit to make you a happier person. Your home gym can provide you with an outlet place to vent pent-up hostilities and release the inner aggression that tends to arise in many of us today.
Simply walking into your room, closing the door, and forgetting everything but getting a good workout for an hour or so, can do more to perk you up than unleashing a fist into your boss’s nose. And its a lot safer especially if your boss has a gym of his own.
References & Excerpts
Author: Brad J. Steiner. Article: Home vs Gym Training. Muscular Development Magazine
