At least you are asking this question! I have worked out at my own home, gyms, other peoples home gyms, hotels, motels and Holiday Inns!

Each has their own little quirks, pros and cons. It is quite a major decision you will have to make as you embark on your crusade for mental and physical fitness and getting in the bets shape of your life. Let me give you my opinion and you can make your own judgement on what you are going to do..

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Home Gym – Pros

• You can pay once for your equipment and then never pay again
• Your own music to workout to – no more bending the barbell to Patsy Cline
• Nor more distractions – you can’t make excuses to not go to the gym
• 24/7
• Get your family into working out too

Gym Pros

• Trainers to help you out
• No cleaning up
• Competition (this is a big part I will talk about soon)
• Meeting like minded people
• Endless equipment choices
• Potential to meet future partner who is in great shape!

Each choice has equal and opposite pros and cons, but in the end the choice is up to you.

My advice would be for you to go to a gym until you feel very confident that you are performing all of your workouts with a barbell and dumbbells in the correct form and have progressed significantly in weight. This is just because you don’t have the benefit of somebody pointing out wrong and potentially harmful technique.

I still go to the gym sometimes as I am in the process of making a home gym at my place. The only equipment I have are dumbbells, a barbell, weight plates and a set up that enables me to do squats and bench press etc safely.

I have a boxing bag out in the back yard and use that often for a good ol’ sweat breaker before, after or as a complete workout.

If you do decide to go down the route of a home gym, keep it simple and just learn how to use a dumbbell, barbells and maybe a medicine ball for burpees, press ups and some ab workouts. Play some loud music, record your progress and show those plates of iron who is boss!

Until next time, check out the fitness club house and kick butt somewhere!

Johnny

Beginning a weight lifting program can be intimidating, scaring and when I first started, it made me very nervous.

I remember the first time I ever went to a gym.  I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew I wanted to get in shape. I didn’t know any workouts, I had never head of a bench press before and assumed I was supposed to get under the bench and push it…

I am not trying to make too much of a dick of myself, just explaining that if you are beginning, or getting back into a weight lifting program then there are some things you should know and understand before storming the gym every day.

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Here are a couple of pieces of advice if you are just starting out:

1. Your gains are not made in the gym. Your body repairs the muscle that you break down in the gym when you sleep at night. So don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you spend more time at the gym you will get bigger, stronger, faster and more ripped, because you won’t. Get a good amount of sleep each night, for me I find anything less than 7 hours I get tired during the day, but different ages and types of people will require different lengths of sleep.
2. When you first start at the gym, you should be working your entire body for at least the first couple of months. This would mean doing a workout like this:

• Bench press: 8 sets of 2
• Back squats: 8 sets of 2
• Calf raise: 8 sets of 2
• Incline crunches: 8 sets of 2
• Shoulder barbell press: 8 sets of 2
• Bent over rows: 8 sets of 2
• Straight leg deadlift: 8 sets of 2
• Optional: Bicep, tricep and forearm workout

I would also recommend that after every workout you should take a protein shake to help your muscles get access to good sources of protein as soon as they need it. When you hit the gym hard you break your muscles down and protein is what will fix them back up and make them stronger, ready for next time.

This is what I normally take:

• Cup of milk
• 2-3 egg whites
• Peanut butter
• Cream
• Yoghurt

This is a good hit of protein, and although it has some fat in it, it doesn’t really matter because your body will use it, not store it.

Before you go into the gym, check out videos or look at some pictures of how to do the workouts I told you about above, and then at the gym ask an employee (or somebody who looks like they know their stuff) to make sure you are doing them right. Form is everything, and yes there is a easy way to o some lifts of weights, but it will never get you proper gains and your progress will plateau big time.

Until next time, bend that bar and hit the site to check out the free course download on how to shed body fat like crazy!

Johnny

Exercises – Home Body Sculpt

Some people are hermit crabs. Other people are just anti social. Some people are not too generous with cash. Others just don’t like traffic. Some people don’t like to be seen doing “exercise”, and others just prefer to motivate themselves.

Whatever your reason for wanting to workout at home, it is irrelevant.

I tend to do both. I will workout with some lighter weights for hard exercises such as clean and press and any dumbbell exercises + boxing workouts. But I will go to the gym to go hard and heavy on deadlifts, squats and bench presses. Sometimes it just depends how I am feeling. There is nothing like meeting a girl at the gym, but there is nothing like blasting “Some Kind Of Monster” by Metallica at full noise while smashing the boxing bag into submission.

Here are a few of my favorite tips for working out at home, plus an intense workout you can do with absolutely no gear.

• Make sure you set how many reps and sets you do before you even pick up the weight
• Play some music sometimes, and other times workout in silence. The motivation music brings is amazing, but the reflection and self growth that comes from the sounds and thoughts of silence is equally beautiful.
• Drink heaps of water
• Always incorporate full body workouts into your routine – even if you are doing say arms on one day, always throw in some full body workouts such as clean and press, deadlifts or squats of some variation.
• One thing I do sometimes is to end my workout with a one rep max of a couple of bodyweight exercises such as press ups or crunches, pull ups or chins.
• Record exactly what you do in your gym session, you always want to progress.

Here is a workout to help you burn fat and build a lil’ muscle:

Set the timer (if you have a laptop you can bring it with you and use This Bad Boy which is a stopwatch that rocks so hard.

Warm up by beating up your flatmates or cleaning the house then:

• 2 minutes skipping
• 1 minute burpees
• 1 minute crunches
• 1 minute lunges
• 1 minute press ups

Rest because you are lazy then:

• Hold the plank for 1 minute (youtube it)
• Squats for 1 minute
• Box jumps for 1 minute (are box jumps self explanatory?)
• If you are human, you should be a bit sore by now, if not go and run up a mountain

Until next time look good, feel good and workout like you are going to live for one more day!

Johnny (wants you to visit his site How To Get Abs ) make me happy

Feel free to comment and ask me to post about anything you are interested in, if it is related to fitness and nutrition… Even better! My email is also on the site so feel free to drop me a line, I respond to every email and enjoy it!