Can I Build Muscle At Home?

Yes you can. Sure, gyms have a plethora of equipment available, but there is absolutely no reason you can’t be working out from the comfort and convenience of your own home in a way that will get you real results.

I’m not talking about a miracle piece of equipment (they don’t really exist) that lets you do “20 minutes, 3 times a week” and see amazing results. That’s impossible in any environment.

What I’m talking about is this — with a little bit of creative thinking, good advice, and an investment that might only cost you as much as a month or two at the gym (or less), you can do a full range of strength training right at home that will get you the body you deserve. No questions about it.

Here are 3 ways to get started.

Use Your Own Bodyweight

Not every bodyweight exercise is easy, and it takes a bit of work to figure out which ones you can do, and which ones might have to wait until your strength is built up.

But there are plenty of bodyweight exercises you can be doing, right now, at home, without any equipment or a gym membership.

Advantages: there is literally no setup time. Unless you (maybe) count a mat, you can go from a brief warm up directly to a great strength exercise in seconds. No setting up a machine, no waiting in a queue for the machine to free up, no nothing — except improving your body.

Buy a Set of Adjustable Dumbbells

When you start to get a little more serious about working out at home, you might find that limiting your exercise to simply bodyweight or fixed dumbbells is getting a little bit limiting.

That’s when adjustable weights can be a godsend. If you’re looking to save space, a little investment is required — you don’t want adjustable weights that are going to break on you, so you want to make sure you’re paying for quality.

Advantages: the convenience of having one set of weights that you can quickly add to or subtract from can save you tons of time in your workout and let you really vary things up.

Use Resistance Bands

The amazing thing about resistance bands is that they weigh nothing and are extremely cheap. Having a few different resistance bands is especially valuable because it lets you combat something that a lot of people face when taking on a workout program at home — boredom.

When you don’t have the variety and interaction that you find in a gym environment, you can find yourself getting into an exercise rut, doing the same workout over and over again. This can lead to further procrastination if you’re sick of the exercises, and suddenly you can find yourself not having worked out for a week or two.

Advantages: having lots of different options — that don’t take up huge amounts of space — can make a big difference when it comes to sticking with it.

It’s Not As Hard As You Think

Get creative. Talk to a sporting goods store and explain what you want. Do some research online.

There’s no reason at all that in 2010, today, right now — you can’t get the body you want in your own home, apartment, room, whatever. You can do it!