Commercial gyms are an endangered species.
The effect of the global pandemic in the form of lockdowns, social distancing and fewer staff (PTs unable to earn an income during lockdowns have found employment outside the fitness industry) mean that many gyms are shutting their doors forever.
Consumers are also becoming more wary of attending commercial gyms — either because of the risk of contracting COVID, or the prospect of more lockdowns in the future.
As a result, many people are now setting up their own home gym. With the commercial gym model no longer viable long term, it’s expected that the number of home gyms will continue to rise.
Our purpose in writing this blog is to help you make the right decisions when setting up your home gym.
What is your goal?
The first thing to consider is why you’re setting up a home gym in the first place. Are you training for an event? Trying to lose weight? Or are you setting up a gym because everyone else is doing it?
Your goal will determine what kind of training you’ll do and what equipment you’ll need. Unless you have a goal and you know what you’re working towards, your home gym will only gather dust. You can read our blog How to set SMART goals to lose weight to find out more.
What do you need to achieve your goal?
A dedicated space
Regardless of the goal, you’re going to need a dedicated space to train in. Whether it’s in your lounge room, on your back patio or in your garage, we recommend setting aside a space to train in and house your equipment. Setting up the right environment to train in will make it easier to train, help you stay focused and lead to better results. We explain the importance of the environment in our blog How to set up your environment for weight loss success.
Equipment
Speaking of equipment, you’re probably wondering what you need. The truth is people need a lot less equipment than they think. For a basic set-up you really only need:
- a set of dumbbells of varying weight
- an adjustable incline bench.
Other optional equipment may include:
- barbell
- weight plates + clips
- pair adjustable racks (for barbell squats and bench press)
- gym mats (to protect the floor and provide cushioning underfoot).
How will you achieve your goal?
It’s one thing to set a goal but another thing to achieve it. Whether or not you achieve your goal will depend on three key things:
- the type of training you do
- how consistent you are
- who is helping you achieve your goal.
What type of training?
Many people confuse weight loss with fitness but the two are different and require different types of training. This explains why many people can spend years in the gym trying to lose weight but fail to make any changes to their body shape at all.
Improving your fitness doesn’t necessarily equate to losing weight. It just means you become more efficient at doing a certain type of activity. For example, if the goal is to increase fitness to run a marathon training should involve activities that help you become more efficient at running.
If the goal is to lose weight, training should involve workouts that help build muscle and fire up your metabolism so you can burn fat. We explain this in more detail in our blog All you need to know about your home workout.
Whether the goal is fitness or weight loss, a training program must be focused, structured and progressive, if it’s to yield the results you’re after. You can read more about this in our blog How to progress your home workout.
How will you be consistent?
Plenty of people know how to train and have even set up a home gym, but what they struggle with is being consistent with their training.
As we have said many times, consistency beats perfection every time. In other words, it’s better to be consistent over 12 months (missing the odd session here and there) than have a perfect training record for 6 weeks and then fall off the wagon. We explain this in our blog Why 52 imperfect weeks is better than 6 perfect ones when it comes to weight loss.
One of the biggest mistakes people make with their training, whether it’s in a commercial gym or a home gym is they do too much, which often leads to burnout and injuries and leads to inconsistency. The only way to be consistent is to have a system that includes structure and accountability. This means:
- training at specific times on specific days and sticking to it — usually starting with two days a week
- following a structured training program
- factoring in rest and recovery
- making yourself accountable for your training.
You can read more about this in our blog Why a weight loss goal is bullshit without a weight loss system.
You can also read more about consistency in our blog How to be consistent with your weight loss.
Who will you work with – a PT or a coach?
While many people with home gyms devise their own program, cobbled together from watching PTs on YouTube videos or using a program that was written for them by their old PT, this is not the best approach if you want to reach your goals.
You need to work with a personal trainer OR a coach.
How a PT may help
If your goal is purely fitness-related, then a PT may be the person for you. That’s because personal training involves designing and implementing exercise and fitness programs to reach fitness goals.
However, people who focus on exercise alone to lose weight will always struggle to succeed. That’s because exercise is only 3% of the weight loss equation. We explain this in our blog The truth the fitness industry won’t tell you about exercise.
If your goal is to lose weight, you need to work with a coach.
Why working with a coach is the only way to lose weight
Weight loss is more than just exercise, or even fitness and nutrition. It’s all about habits and mindset.
You see, people don’t have weight problems. They have personal problems (habits, mindsets, identities, beliefs and fears) that are reflected in their weight. You can read more about this in our blog Struggling to lose weight? The real weight you need to lose to change your body shape.
Long-term weight loss is only possible when we address the habits, identities, mindset, beliefs and fears that led us to become overweight and prevent us from losing the weight. That’s where coaching comes in.
Coaching is very different to personal training. While PTs know about training and exercise and maybe even a bit about nutrition, they aren’t specialist coaches who can help people address their habits and mindsets. This explains why people who work with a PT often continue to struggle with their weight.
Coaching involves:
- Collecting data (asking questions) to identify the obstacles (habits) that prevent people from having the body, confidence and lifestyle they desire.
- Working together to develop a personalised strategy on how to overcome these obstacles.
- Implementing this strategy, collecting more data and revealing any blind spots that need addressing.
- Tweaking the plan and repeating the process.
As you can see, coaching is very different from personal training. However, it’s these differences that help people lose the weight, rather than focusing on exercise. You can read more about this in our blog Why you need a weight loss coach.
How can we help?
The difference between what we do and what PTs do is that we are transformation specialists.
It’s a bit like the difference between a GP and a brain surgeon. GPs have a great deal of health and medical knowledge, but they don’t have specialist knowledge about the brain — which is why they refer you to a neurosurgeon if you need brain surgery.
We are the brain surgeons of the weight loss industry if you like.
We help people address the habits and mindsets that led to them becoming overweight in the first place, which means they can finally lose the weight and keep it off.
We develop individualised plans for all our clients (which include training programs), to help them address the habits that are holding them back so they can reach their goals. We can also advise them on the right equipment they need for their home gym.
Our DATSTM Personal Coaching Program is a complete all-in-one habit, mindset and holistic weight loss personal coaching program that gives you everything you need (knowledge, systems, tools, skills, structure, accountability and support) to finally lose the weight for good, and get the body, confidence and lifestyle you desire — even on your worst days.
Through our DATSTM Program our clients — all of whom train at home — have access to a personalised, all-in-one easy-to-use online platform and mobile app which includes:
- Habit and mindset system
- Mobile-friendly workouts
- Exercise demo videos
- Progress tracking
- Unlimited support and accountability
- Real-time, in-app messaging
- Accountability reminders
- Calendar
- DATSTM accountability tool
- Recipe book
That means that our clients aren’t just focusing on exercise (3% of the equation) to lose weight. They’re also working on the other 97% which means our program is guaranteed to get results.
If you’re investing the time and energy setting up your home gym, make sure that you invest in a program that will help you get the body, confidence and lifestyle you desire.
Conclusion
If your goal is to improve your fitness, then a PT is the right person to help you.
However, if your goal is weight loss and you want more than just a good body, you need a coach. That’s because working with a PT or focusing on fitness and nutrition without addressing the habits and mindset that got you overweight is just like refilling a flat punctured tyre with air over and over without sealing the puncture and addressing what caused it — a waste of time.
If you’re ready to finally lose the weight, we’re ready to help you.
