Fitness Club Versus Home Fitness Training

If you’re about to get started with a brand new workout program, one thing that you may be thinking about is whether you should invest in a fitness club membership, or whether you would be better off doing home fitness training.

There are pros and cons of each and in order to really get the best workout possible, you need to dial in on some of your own personal preferences.

There is no right or wrong answer here – a fitness club is not always better than a fitness program at home or vice versa, but rather, there is a best choice for you.

Let’s have a quick look at the pros and cons of each so that you can fully see the complete picture.

The Fitness Club

The fitness club comes with a number of pros and cons.  First, one of the biggest pros of doing your workout at a fitness club is that you will have direct access to the club’s trainers. This means that you will easily be able to get the help you need when you need it as you go about your workout routine.

While some trainers will come to the home environment to help you, they are much harder to find.

Another big benefit to doing your workout in the fitness club is that you will get access to group fitness classes as well. These classes come in a wide range of different styles, so there is sure to be something that you would enjoy.

If you often get bored of doing solo workouts, a group fitness class done in a fitness club is a perfect solution to you.

Many people also find that working out in a fitness club makes it far more motivating for them to stick with the session altogether.

A fitness club is filled with other like-minded people, so they can offer support and encouragement along the way. This may make you stick to your workout better and adherence is one of the biggest factors that can bring you great results.

In addition to offering group fitness classes, a fitness club may also offer other services as well that you’ll want to take advantage of. These can include having a massage therapist on site, offering tanning services, having a nutritionist that you can work with, having a smoothie or juice bar, as well as having a pool or sauna.

Depending on what all you’re interested and what your needs happen to be, these may be highly beneficial and draw you more to the fitness club than the home workout scene.

Finally, a fitness club also offers far more from a machine and equipment point of view. You’ll have your choice of cardio equipment when working out at a fitness club, so this makes it far easier to include plenty of variety in your workout session.

So now that you know the pros of the fitness club, let’s look at the pros of the home training routine, many of which act as cons to the fitness club.

Home Fitness Training

The first pro to the home fitness training routine is that you won’t have monthly membership dues like you will at the fitness club. Depending on your workout budget, this can be a significant reason for choosing to exercise at home instead.

Keep in mind though that you may have a few more upfront fees right at the very start when working out at home since you will need to purchase equipment to do so.

If you don’t have the money to do this, your equipment options may be limited.  When purchasing equipment for your home gym, the best and most cost effective investments to use will be an exchangeable set of dumbbells that easily allows you to adjust the weight as you make progress along, an exercise ball, which can be used for core training or to make some of the exercises that you are performing that much more intense, as well as a skipping rope.

If at the very least you can purchase these, which shouldn’t total more than $50-75, you can be off to a great start with your workout program. Then from there you can add some other weight lifting equipment such as a squat rack or bench press station, along with a piece of home cardio equipment to make getting in your cardio that much easier.

Another big benefit to working out at home is the convenience factor. You will easily be able to do your workout at any time during the day that meets your needs and you’ll save travel time that you would have spent going back and forth from the gym to home.

For those that lead a very busy lifestyle, this is a highly appealing factor.

Furthermore, if you prefer having privacy when you workout, either because you don’t like distraction or perhaps you have some body image issues in place, then you will definitely prefer the home workout environment.

So there you have the main pros of the home fitness workout compared to the fitness club. It’s important that you really sit down and figure out what your biggest priorities are in terms of where you want to workout.

Each option is always going to have some trade-offs that you’ll need to make, but if you’re wise as you go about choosing, you can select the one that is going to work best for your own individual goals.

Remember that if you are going to go the health club route, you should visit a few different health clubs in your area and make sure you have a good look around. Many will also offer a week’s free pass and if they do, take advantage of it.

You want to be completely comfortable in whatever gym you are working out with and at times, the only way you will know for sure if you’re fully comfortable is if you give it a try.

Shop around as it will help you make a more informed decision.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”About the Author”]Shannon Clark holds a degree in Exercise Science from the University of Alberta, where she specialized in Sports Performance and Psychology.  In addition to her degree, she is an AFLCA certified personal trainer and has been working in the field for over 8 years now.[/stextbox]


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