HOME WORKOUT EQUIPMENT

In addition to the essentials for fitness training, if budget allows we recommend that you also consider the following equipment:

High quality gym flooring can make a gym safer, protect the floor, and insulate heat (important for garage gyms in the winter). Our rubber gym flooring mats are made from recycled rubber and provide a high level of impact absorption and floor protection. Gym flooring mats can also insulate the noise created, especially if weights are dropped - which is likely the case if you do any Olympic style weightlifting. Giving your gym a professional finish, high quality gym flooring also protects the weights.

Storing gym equipment neatly and in an organised fashion can help you to maximise the use of the space in your gym and make it easier to find what you want. An organised gym is also safer, tidy, and efficient.

Our dumbbell racks provide a compact way to store a large number of dumbbells. Made with durable materials including powder-coated steel, the racks have been designed with saddles for smooth placement and rubber feet to stabilise the racks and protect the floor. For barbells, we also provide a wide range of storage equipment. With specific storage equipment for studio barbells and Olympic barbells, you can keep your gym looking like a professional outfit. Choose from wall mounted racks and vertical barbell stands. We also supply kettlebell racks, and weight plate racks.

Mobility is often an overlooked aspect of fitness and wellbeing. With bad backs and necks causing issues for countless office and manual workers, adding some mobility training could dramatically increase your wellbeing, mood and health. Always speak to a medical professional if you have a bad back or neck, and before you start a mobility programme.

Many professional athletes will have a home gym. However, they will often use a club or sport-organisation's onsite gym for building strength and specific types of fitness, and use their home gym primarily for recovery and mobility. 

Even if you’re not a pro-athlete, if you lift heavy weights; and/or do lots of running, you’ll benefit from flexibility and mobility work. A foam roller is a great tool to have for trigger point therapy (a method for removing muscle knots) and flexibility programmes. Loosening tight muscles, enhancing blood flow; once you have used the foam roller and/or lacrosse ball; you can use a resistance band to help with stretching and mobility. 

Yoga equipment including wheels, mats and straps can be used for active recovery; whilst ice baths have been shown to effectively reduce muscle soreness and accelerate recovery. A 2022 meta-analysis of 52 studies conducted by researcher Emma Moore and published in Sports Medicine, found cold water immersion was superior to other recovery methods for reducing muscle soreness following strenuous exercise.

With so many options for a home gym, with lots of different exercise programmes and equipment, it can all be confusing and leave you with many questions. In this section we'll aim to clear up the common queries people have, so you have a better idea of how to achieve your home gym goals.

You can have multiple outcomes and process goals.

An outcome goal should be specific, time-based and measurable. For example -
“ I want to lose 2 inches from my waist by [insert date]”

Process goals are arguably more important, as you have more control of them. A process goal could be:

“I will use my home gym 3 times per week, for 30 minutes each time”

You can always begin your exercise regime without any equipment. There are apps available that demonstrate and explain dozens of bodyweight exercises that you can do at home.

One major issue with bodyweight training is that it is extremely difficult to exercise your back muscles significantly without any equipment, so you may want to invest in a pull up bar or some free weights at some point.

Resistance bands, stationary bikes, ski machines and weighted vests are all good options for home gyms. 

*Always consult your doctor or health care practitioner before undertaking a new exercise programme*

To workout your legs at home, you can use a resistance band, free weights, or bodyweight exercises. Resistance bands can be used to make bodyweight squats more difficult. If you have a thick looped band, like our Power Bands, you can step onto the inside of it, and loop the opposite side over your head so the band is on your shoulders.

You can also use a kettlebell, or dumbbell to perform goblet squats. Simply hold the weight with both hands at around chest height, as you perform squats.

Advanced exercisers can also look to perform pistol squats/1 legged squats, and hamstring Nordic curls. 

What is Exercise Snacking?

Unfortunately it isn't a type of food. Exercise snacking involves short bursts of exercise, done throughout the day. For example, whilst watching your favourite TV show, you could "exercise snack" with a set of 20 squats and 5 burpees each time there is an ad break or a new TV programme starts. You could have a door chin up bar at home and do 5 chin ups or pull ups every time you go into a particular room, of you could go on the exercise bike three times a day for 5 minutes when you're working from home.

One of the most compelling exercise snack studies was published in Nature Medicine in 2022. Scientists collected data from over 25,000 non-exercising adults using wearable devices over nearly 7 years. The researchers found that participants who engaged in just 3-4 minutes of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) per day - activities like brisk stair climbing or fast walking - experienced chance of dying over a set period of time reductions to those who did no exercise:

• 38-40% lower risk of all-cause mortality (death)
• 38-40% lower risk of cancer mortality
• 48-49% lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality

What makes these findings particularly noteworthy is that the participants weren't doing structured gym workouts in any sense, they were simply incorporating brief bursts of vigorous movement into their daily routines.

Using exercise snacks can be a great way to improve your health if you have a busy lifestyle and don't get time to go to the gym. Tabata intervals - 20 second bursts of exercise done 8 times, with 10 seconds rest in between bursts is also a highly efficient way to enhance fitness. Just one set, lasting a total of 4 minutes of this form of exercise per week is enough for sedentary people to experience benefits. You won't achieve peak fitness with 4 minutes per week, but in terms of your cardiovascular health and insulin sensitivity it can make a crucial difference. You can read more about Tabata intervals on the BBC website here.

Always consult a doctor before starting a new form of exercise. Doing low impact exercise, such as cycling, is often best for exercise snacks, as you don't complete a normal warm up. Resistance bands are often better then heavy kettlebells, and bikes might also be better in terms of injury risk than sprints on a treadmill.

Home workouts certainly can work - you can build as much muscle and get as fit as you could when you join a commercial gym.  The likelihood of someone reaching their fitness and exercise goals will depend on a number of factors including his/her baseline (starting) fitness, the space available, and the equipment he or she has available. Social support, planning and goal setting are also big factors. 

Having measurable goals can help a lot with adherence and motivation. Either pay a personal trainer or medical professional to take your starting/baseline heart rate, blood pressure, waist size and weight. The more you measure, the better. For example, if your waist was to stay the same size, but you’ve measured your neck and arms circumference and they’ve gotten bigger, then you’re very likely building significant amounts of muscle. 

Whole body, high intensity workouts burn the most calories per minute/hour. For example a circuit training style workout with minimal rest between exercises or stations. Carrying out exercises like squats, lunges, press ups, chin ups and 1-arm-rows with a kettlebell or dumbbell for 50 seconds on each station will burn lots of calories and build a high level of fitness, but it can be hard to maintain a high intensity for a long period of time. 

If you do adopt a high intensity interval training programme (HIIT), like a circuit of bodyweight exercises, then it can help to begin with 30 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest, building up to 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest. Because HIIT and circuit training produce lots of lactic acid; it can be better to do daily 10 minute workouts when you first start. 

Whatever form of exercise you choose, to burn the most calories ideally you will:

• Focus on “compound movements” that use all the legs or upper body  like squats, lunges and chin ups. 

• Minimise rest periods to keep your heart rate up

• Add resistance to make it more difficult - e.g. use resistance bands, or weighted vests
  
  
  

Here's an example of a routine for building fitness and burning calories at home -

It is possible to build muscle using bodyweight exercises such as press ups and pistol squats. However, it’s really hard to train your back muscles without any equipment. You need a ‘pulling’ exercise to train the muscles in the upper back; this generally requires a weight, kettlebell, pull up bar, or dumbbell. 

Progressive overload is key for building strength and muscle. This just means that you gradually increase the resistance.

Progression is also easier if you have a comprehensive free weights set up. For example, a progression for building up your chest muscles could be moving up to 85kg for max repetitions, from 80kg the week before.

With bodyweight exercises, you would have to increase the repetitions, or move into a new exercise. For example, if you could complete 20 press ups easily; to carry on building more muscle and strength, you’d have to add on or replace standard press ups with single arm press ups, Hindu press ups or some type of plyometric press up.

This completely depends on your goals, fitness levels and ability to recover between workouts. Workouts can be a 4 minute Tabata Interval, 30 seconds of bodyweight squats or 2 hours of weightlifting and cardio. 

Start off with daily short workouts of around 5-15 minutes.  Build up the duration and aim for 4 or 5 20-30 minute workouts per week after 2 months. Remember that workouts can be split throughout the day, doing 10 minutes in the morning, at lunch and in the evening, is as good as, and in many ways healthier than sitting down all day and doing 30 minutes of exercise in the evenings.

There’s no point investing in a lavish home gym, if you don’t use it. In this section we will look at some effective ways to stay motivated when working out from home.

There are some psychological differences between people who will tend to adhere to an exercise programme and people who don’t.

People who adhere to exercise programmes, and stick to things generally tend to have:

• Intrinsic motivation

• Internal “locus of control” - they believe they have full control over their fitness levels and weight

• Confidence that they can follow through and stick to the programme

Find something that you like doing. Maybe you like computer games, hiking, or swimming. If you haven’t found a form of exercise that you like, then try out a few classes for different exercise modalities. 

If you don’t like ‘traditional’ forms of exercise, like sports, you could also try video games. From the Nintendo Wii, to the PS5 there are dozens of effective and extremely fun video games to play. Nintendo Wii, for example, has Wii Sports, boxing and tennis games, and the PS5 has boxing games like Creed, which are incredibly immersive and physically hard work!

Remember too, that once you see progress and develop skills and physical attributes, exercise will become more rewarding. When you start to use a rowing machine for example, it can be demotivating if you can’t complete 1000m. If you set daily goals however, and build up to 1000m, you’ll feel great and start to enjoy rowing more.

Studies tend to show that if you focus on what you can control, you're more likely to stick to an exercise programme and/or diet. Try not to blame/attribute any element of your healthy lifestyle success or failure to factors outside of your control. Focus on what you know you can control and try to respond positively to any setbacks. 

Saying “no” to junk food and being able to set polite boundaries for example is within your control. It's highly likely that at some point you'll be tempted to eat junk food, but you can always control your response.

Having short term “micro goals”, like “I will workout for 10 minutes after lunch”, can help you to keep motivated day by day.

Micro goals can make exercise less overwhelming. Although it's a great idea to have longer term goals, focusing on smaller goals each day can help keep you motivated. 

To read about setting outcome and progress goals, please click here. 

Studies show that using an existing habit as a cue to exercise or eat something healthy, can increase adherence to an exercise programme and/or healthy diet. 

Take a habit that you already have and already adhere to on a daily basis, and do your workout, or some exercise, after that habit has been carried out. 

The habit could be brushing your teeth and your goal could be “I’ll do 30 press ups and 20 squats after I brush my teeth”.  Another example, might be after your coffee or lunch, you go for a walk for 10 minutes, or you could accumulate 50 bodyweight squats when you’re waiting for something to cook in the oven.

Remember it only takes 5 minutes to get start & to get back on track. Whilst hitting your ‘big goals’ like losing a set amount of body fat or weight can take months, remember that getting started and getting back on track can be done in minutes. 

Reddit subs including r/bodyweightfitness and r/homegym, and home gym groups on Facebook, are full of knowledgeable and supportive users. 

Many of the groups have online challenges and workouts. Discord is especially good for real-time live fitness challenges, providing a more interactive experience than Facebook or Reddit. 

In summary, you can increase the likelihood that you will stick to an effective exercise programme by:

• Using a fitness app

• Using fitness games on consoles like Meta Quest, PS4 and Nintendo Switch

• Reducing ‘friction’ by leaving equipment out when possible

• Habit stacking - add your workout straight after a habit you’ve already established

• Join a community - Reddit, local fitness groups etc

Remember that it takes most people 7-10 weeks to develop a habit. Once the habit is in place, adherence becomes much easier. 

Below we have listed some of our most popular home gym equipment. From doorway pull up bars to kettlebells that weigh up to 48kg; we have a wide selection of top quality fitness equipment, so that no matter what your fitness goals are, you're sure to find what you need to get your gym set up. At Net World Sports we supply fitness and gym equipment to elite athletes, events and teams including Bristol Bears Rugby League Club, MaxOut Fitness competitions, York RLFC Knights and West Ham United.