Benefits for Workout Routines Using Free Weights at Home

When you go to the fitness center you will see the area with free weights, and then the place with all the exercise machines. Both are excellent options with advantages to either one. But what if you decide not to opt for the gym membership and would like to create your private little workout area at home. Do you bring in the machine that you saw advertised on the infomercials? We think in this case exercising with free weights is the way to go, and here are a few reasons:

1. Exercises that simulate the real-world. The advantages of a free weights workout are that you can simulate with the use of weights much of what you do in the real-world situations. You can use small weights to shadow-box to improve quickness. Many of the exercises golfers do make use of dumbells where machines have no place.

2. Cost. Machines are expensive to buy, and they also break down, which is your cost. Plus if you purchase equipment that isn’t versatile enough to keep functional as you progress, that expensive equipment might soon become obsolete. A set of dumbbells is relatively inexpensive, is more versatile, and you can use them for virtually a lifetime.

3. Versatility. To develop the previous point further, even the most multi-exercise piece of equipment will allow the user to be able to perform a limited number of movements with a restricted range of motion. Because free weight equipment adapts to the user rather than the user adapting to the capabilities of the machine, free weights are much more versatile for what the user needs.

4. Amount of room necessary. The more upscale machines can be quite large and cumbersome, because once you set them up in place that is basically where they will stay. Free weights can be stored in the closet, under the bed or in their own little nook.

5. Safety issue. This is the single most compelling reason to use machines, especially for strength training for beginners. The stability that the machine provides will give you a “safety net” to keep the user from getting injured. But that same stability that the machine offers will not build force the user to maximize full body strength, as the machine targets only certain muscle groups.

Moreover, most injuries do not occur because of dumbells falling on someone who has lost control, but from muscle pulls or joint injury because improper form was used. That of course can happen just as easily on machines as on free weights. Knowing the proper way to conduct an exercise along with not pushing yourself past your limit is the best way of avoiding injury, using either free weights or machines.

If you decide to set up your own little home gym, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune or require an entire room of your house. You may be saying that those little portable fold-away sets don’t take much space, but they do even less good for anyone slightly serious about weight training. You will get more bang for your buck with a few free weights.