What You Need for a Home Gym
Maintaining your personal fitness augments your appearance, boosts your metabolism, strengthens your bones, stabilizes blood pressure, lowers bad cholesterol, reduces the risk of heart problems, develops self confidence, and helps you sleep better. The components that make up complete physical fitness are body composition, cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, power and endurance, flexibility, speed, agility, balance and motor skills. A quality home gym should include equipment that help you train and improve in all of these aspects of personal fitness.
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Flexibility
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Stretching improves flexibility, and stretches should be a precursor to every workout to limber your joints and muscles to avoid injuries. A mat to stretch on is a must in any home gym. In addition, other exercises such as sit-ups and stomach crunches are facilitated by a mat.
Burning Fat
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Cardiovascular activities such as running, aerobics, bicycling and rowing use oxygen, which burns fat and improves body composition. Equipment such as an exercise bicycle, aerobic workout tapes, treadmills and rowing machines facilitate an effective cardiovascular workout.
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Building Muscle
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Strength training improves power of motion. Because there are many different muscles to be strengthened in your body, and because improving the endurance of these muscles requires varied exercises, invest in dumbbells, ankle weights, a medicine ball and an adjustable weight bench rather than purchasing an expensive bodybuilding machine. However, if you want a bodybuilding machine as part of your home gym, choose one that can be used in diverse ways to target many different muscles. Ones with advanced pulley systems tend to have more varied applications with which you can develop a more complete workout regime.
Speed Training
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Speed is a component of every sport. Sprinting, high-knee running and ladder drills all enhance the muscles that are associated with moving quickly. Add a rope ladder to you home gym, or paint a ladder shape on your gym floor. Using the ladder to practice moving feet quickly in different patterns and touching your toes to different points of the ladder is a drill used commonly by sports coaches to increase their team members' speed.
Balance
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Balance and agility go hand in hand. It is important to maintain good balance, especially as you age and want to avoid falls and injuries. Exercise balls, balance discs, foam balance beams, rocker boards, balance pods and jump ropes make inexpensive additions to your home gym that can improve agility and balance.
Reflexes
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Good motor skills can be improved through practice. Have sports equipment in your gym that allows you to participate in fast-paced sports such as tennis, badminton, hockey and squash. Also, a speed boxing bag is a great addition to your gym that will help you refine your motor skills and advance your reflexes.
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- Photo Credit woman leaning on exercise ball image by Ken Hurst from Fotolia.com
