Best Exercise Equipment? The Stuff you Actually Use. Four Essential Investments that Cover the Whole Fitness Package.

There’s a lot to choose from when it comes to exercise equipment.

Most homes with a health conscious owner have some kind of exercise machine, and all too often it’s quietly gathering dust in a corner of the spare room. The exercise bike. The treadmill. Bought on a whim, used twice, then condemned to be an impromptu laundry stand forever more.

But you’re serious about getting in shape; you want to regain some of your youthful health and vigour, and you want to do it in the comfort of your own home rather than going to all the trouble of gym membership and travelling back and forth. What’s the best investment you can make for the sake of your fitness and your continued good health? None of this stuff is exactly cheap. How do you guarantee your exercise equipment won’t be condemned to the spare room after a trial run, a bulky, awkward nuisance that nobody wants to take off your hands and is far too expensive to take to the dump?

Well, let’s start by asking what kind of exercise you want to do. There are three areas you can focus on: cardiovascular health, resistance training, and flexibility. And there are levels of financial commitment that, while they have no bearing on how fit you’re going to get, are important to consider.

Let’s start with cardio training.And the best exercise equipment you can buy for this is a good pair of running shoes. The rest – tracksuit, stopwatch, treadmill – they can go by the board. As long as you have a decent pair of running shoes, you’re all set. I don’t know what kind of neighbourhood you live in, so I can’t recommend that you run inside or out, but either way a good pair of shoes is a must. Of course if you do run indoors, a treadmill is needed. Should you buy one? It’s a big investment, and as with all exercise equipment, going for the lowest priced option is usually a false economy. All exercise equipment gets hard use. I’ve watched a gym owner spend hours making running repairs to professional quality kit. It was all superbly made, but this stuff gets relentless pounding day after day, and metal fatigue eventually does the damage. Buy one in the full knowledge that eventually you’ll wear it out. But then it’ll still be a good laundry stand.

Resistance training is another matter. You can go the complicated machine route, or you can buy a set of free weights. Either way, they’re no use unless you actually use them. Free weights have this advantage: they’re probably the only exercise equipment you can buy that won’t wear out. A minimum investment is a pair of dumbbells and a barbell and  the weight plates to slide onto them, with the locking nuts that keep them in place. Get the metal plates, rather than fooling around with the bulky concrete filled plastic ones. Sooner or later you’ll want to add a weights bench to the mix, and if you’re struggling to find space in your home for all this kit, a folding bench is probably a good idea. Make sure it’s a sturdy one, both on grounds of safety and to make sure it lasts. The absolute minimum investment you can make in resistance training is a pull up bar, the kind you fit in a doorway. Apart from the free weights and bench, it’s the only thing I’d recommend you get.

Flexibility training keeps everything moving. And the man who knows all about it is Bob Cooley. Google him, get his books, and study them. What equipment do you need for flexibility training? I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Maybe a yoga mat. A little help from a friend, to add resistance to a stretch. I can remember ads in the martial arts magazines for leg stretching equipment that looked like medieval torture implements, but unless you have a specific need to get your foot over your head, you can probably give those a miss.

Bottom line? It doesn’t matter so much what you have, as long as you use it. If you have the room and the money, by all means go for the top of the range exercise machines. If you don’t, go for the economy options. Either way, you’re all set.