The Perfect Home Gym

Well, there\’s no such thing as the perfect home gym designed for everybody. But there is a perfect home gym for you. All of us want to exercise but not all of us can maintain the willpower to do it.

I\’ve been an active person since I was a kid. I was a regular 80s kid who played outside the house with friends, we biked for hours, we did trekking, name it. When I reached high school, I started playing table tennis and joined the varsity team playing doubles. Then I went serious and just train in my entire school years, won a couple of provincial and regional meets until I graduated. I started lifting weights after that and never stopped up to this day. I played basketball in my early 20s and got a lot of shoulder and ankle injuries. I learned swimming by myself at the penthouse of our condo and then started running in my late 20s. A month after my 31st birthday, I finished Ironman 70.3 in CamSur.

A few years prior to this unfortunate pandemic, I just maintained a gym membership, a couple of half-marathons, and failed full marathon attempts. And now that home workouts are the new norm, I canceled my gym membership and invested in a home gym instead.

If you build your environment according to the habits that you would like to keep, then you will most likely be successful. If you want to stop smoking, then don\’t buy cigarettes or start by not putting the cigarette pack where you\’ll see it easily. If you want to stop eating sugar, then don\’t buy donuts or stack it all the time inside your fridge. Replace it with fruits or ready-to-eat vegetables.

The concept is similar to working out. Sleep with your gym clothes and put your equipment where you will be excited to start at least with a warm-up.

I don\’t have a regular workout routine. I normally start by listening to my body. What part of my body wants to stretch? Do my quads feel like I need to strengthen it? So that\’s where I focus on. I just search a random good workout from YouTube depending on the workout that I feel like doing.

Here\’s to share my perfect home gym and workout routine.

I love to set mini-goals or set a highlight of my workout. At this time, I want to improve my pull-ups, so I usually start my warm-up with side dynamic stretches and backbends. I back it up with a jump rope routine to jumpstart my heart rate. You can buy a jump rope as low as P500 and watch tutorials from YouTube. I did it every day for 10 days and now I can do boxing skips longer.

I bought a pull-up bar from Decathlon that costs P1,700. All I do is mount the two sides on our main door and do the pull-ups. I do 5 sets every other day. I started with 3-2-2-1-1 reps and incremented it gradually. Now I am on my 7-6-5-4-3 reps.

If I feel like continuing my back workout, I do follow up exercises such as bent rows or resistance band rows. Resistance bands are cheap and a great way to do many exercises. You can buy resistance bands at P300-P1,000 depending on the resistance. I bought 4 types from Decathlon as well.

A TRX or suspension training is also a great way or alternative to training your back and arms. You can buy one set of TRX from Lazada or Shopee at P2,000 to P4,000 range. You can do a lot of exercises like low rows, pistol squats, flys, etc. I do TRX exercises at least once a week when I feel like it.

When I feel like doing high-intensity interval training or HIIT, I use battle ropes, medicine balls, and kettlebells. You can buy a battle rope in Lazada, Shopee, or Decathlon at a P3,000 to P4,000 range. I bought my 20KG kettlebell at P2,750 and 16KG at P2,350. Battle ropes or kettlebells can independently be a great way to do full-body HIIT training or combining the three will always be better.

The best stress reliever for me is boxing. You can buy a heavy punching bag at P3,000, a boxing glove at P1,500, and a hand-wrap at P250-500. I love the YouTube channel of Nate Bower where he does a 30min. follow-along shadow boxing and heavy bag workouts. That\’s all you will need and your stress relieved!

As this pandemic extends, my urge to play table tennis and basketball get stronger. I am lucky my brother has table tennis at home that he doesn\’t use so I borrowed it. I trained my son on how to do drills so I can practice my skills too (there\’s no excuse). And lastly, my passion for basketball has been awakened. I asked some construction men to build a small court and then I got a standard size basketball hoop from Lazada at P18,000 and some basketballs at P2,500 each. So recently, I \’ve been doing hoop drills, dribbles, and layups. It\’s been fun!

At times, I still do long jogs especially on a weekend in a park a few miles from the house. The only thing I don\’t do at this time is swimming but who knows? All dreams come true 🙂

With all these investments, if you total it, it cost me about P60,000 but if you compute it against the cost in gym memberships plus cost to travel, then investing in a home gym is all worth it. It saves you time and saves you from the hospital expense of not working out at all.

I\’ve been excited and looking forward to another morning for my workout just before I sleep, and no motivation needed.