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[–] 28 points 6 days ago (4 children)

This is deliberate. Gyms want you to think that you need a suite of bulky machines to work out: so you keep going to the gym.

If you realize that a couple of kettle bells and free weights is all you need, then you might also realize that most people only need to do body-weight exercises which don't need a gym.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    Do you train at home? I thought about getting some stuff, but I just feel it would get repetitively boring. And getting some machines is not cost effective at all. It would take years for it to pay for itself.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 days ago

    No, I'm (now) a lazy slob busy parent, but my wife was a PT in a gym for a while.

    It turns out that squats, lunges, press ups, burpees, pullups, boxjumps, and jogging/sprinting are pretty much all an ordinary work out needs for most people. Kick it up a notch with free weights and a bar to do dead lifts, cleans, etc and to add weight to lunges and squats or depth to pushups if you want to body build.

    Specialized equipment might be necessary if someone has an injury or are training for very specific purposes.

    When I did work out I found that keeping a log was useful to log e.g. AMRAPs or speed for motivation and having lots of subtle variations of the base exercises e.g. free squats vs heavy/light goblet squats.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago

    I've got a fun home gym setup - just a bench, dumbells, and a functional trainer. There's no muscle group i can't hit with multiple different exercises. A squat rack would be nice, but too big heavy, and expensive. So I just do 1-legged squats instead!

    With that said, if you are rhe kind of person that likes to always be doing different exercises then I dont know if I I'd recommend it. I dont really get bored with doing the same exercises, so I think I benefit from the extremely low activation energy of just being able to walk down the hall and hit the gym.

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