Do You Need Really A Gym To Workout?

Do you really need a gym to workout? That’s right! Here is something I have been asked multiple times, “Carlo I don’t want to go to the gym as I am on a budget but still want to build muscles and strength, can I do it without a gym membership?”

The answer, without much further ado is… YES.
It is absolutely possible to still be able to do so without having to join any iron temple or to necessarily having to lift heavy weights and you can do it in the comfort of your home or actually anywhere you want.

There are a couple of caveats here though that I think are important to keep into consideration before completely erase any gym option from the equation, let’s quickly have a look at them:

1 - Space constraints

Not everybody has enough space at home to perform exercises in a safe way without destroying furniture or…bones. How to cope with this?

Safety first! There are workouts that you can follow on youtube or on any workout apps but they might require space that you don’t necessarily have right at hand and if every time you have to work-out you need to move furniture around and re-organize your room, chances are you might just push today’s training to tomorrow or the day after or…next time.
Make sure to have a safe space to perform your exercises and possibly have it already set up, removing obstacles to your workout (both mental and physical) will greatly increase the consistency

Do you really need a gym to workout? — I wish I had this much space but I don’t.

2 - Motivation

Working out at home consistently requires a very strong motivation, when you’re in the comfort of your sofa it becomes very difficult to shake the brain from a lazy moment and force yourself to get a nice sweat.

You’re watching your fav TV show, eventually under the blanket on the sofa having a snack and the alarm rings excited: it’s workout time! But you snooze it, you just want to finish this episode and….there you go, 3 hours passed and wups, the workout is gone down the drain. You set a new alarm for tomorrow but the pattern is the same.

I get it, it’s super hard to break the comfort of a lazy afternoon with the idea of training in your apartment, I find it hard too so what can you do about it? Here are some strategies for you to experiment on:

Wear your favorite workout clothes while at home, seeing you in the mirror with them on might trigger a workout impulse.
Have your training gear (yoga mat or anything else you use) in clear sight and possibly already in position to, once again, trigger your workout desire.
If you listen to music while working at home, set your workout playlist to start when it’s almost workout o’clock to get you in the mood.
Make it fun!

The less obstacles you have and the easier you make it for you to get into workout mode, the more you’ll be consistent

3 - Spice up the challenge

Using body weight is an effective training to build strength and muscles provided that it gives your muscles a good challenge.

Bodyweight training, when keeping it to basic movements and not jumping directly to the crazy calisthenics workouts you see all over the internet, can be in some cases either way too easy or too hard according to your fitness level. What can you do here?

The key is: progressive overload. If you’re already strong, try more challenging sets of bodyweight exercises by either increasing the number or reps or shortening the rest time, if you’re still building your technique and strength focus on one or two exercises at the time and study how to progress from the simplified beginner version to the regular one.

Avoiding the gym: pros ✔️

Save money: training using your body is…free! Saving the hard earned cash that in this covid-era is more than ever precious and relevant. Skipping the monthly gym membership can allow you to keep that budget for other and more important priorities and generally for your savings or the “you-never-know” funds.
Flexibility: you get to decide when you work-out, no need to drive or physically go to the gym especially if the commute time is a big chunk of the time you spend out of your place to workout, you can be more efficient and don’t have to waste time going back and forth.
Train everywhere: you can train at the local park and spend time outdoor enjoying fresh air (if it’s safe enough) eventually having the chance to meet other people doing the same and potentially finding workout partners and friends to keep the motivation up and build a routine.
The more the merrier: you can train with your other friends that are not gym members, that’s right, no need to be all members of the same club.
Safer: bodyweight exercise, to some extent, might pose less risk of injury even if the form is not 100% in place. You can still hurt yourself if you have no idea what you’re doing so be careful no matter what. Surely you can follow Youtube workouts or use apps to have a menu a tap on the screen away.
Your own space: If you’re more introvert or shy and don’t like to have people’s eyes around when you’re training, by doing so in your place, you’re in a safe space.
Accessories for your own budget: you can, if you have budget, buy simple tools to drastically improve the level of challenge for example loop bands, suspension training, dumbbells that are way cheaper than a gym membership.

Avoiding the gym: cons ❌

The right exercise for the right muscle: training some specific muscles, for example the biceps or your back, with zero tools might be more complex, requiring a certain degree of familiarity and effort that are not necessarily easy to achieve or common knowledge.
Results can take longer: Progressive overload to achieve strength and muscle gains can be challenging and, again, require more efforts than they would do by using weights.
Consistency: even more important to allow your muscles to grow stronger over time, you really need to stick to the plan.
Challenge level: As you become stronger, normal exercises might not be enough anymore. Knowing different types of training styles becomes a key concept to progress further with the difficulty of your routines to provide more stimuli to your muscles VS simply increasing the weight or reps in the gym.
Tutorial: Surely apps and youtube follow-up workout are a valid method to use but in some cases they might not cover the basics of the right form so chances are you might be (unknowingly) doing wrong movements that can in the long term create you issues or make your efforts less efficient.
Unless you have someone more experienced than you to train with, you won’t have coaches or trainers to help you correct your form or spot you.
Cheap is…cheap: If you end up buying tools that are too cheap or low quality, they might break easily, increasing the risk of hurting yourself or if they use your furniture, they might break it AND hurt you….one for all? Check on youtube how many videos of loops bands snapping and hitting people’s face are there or videos of furniture collapsing on unlucky people. Be careful!
This is…boring. As the level of challenge can be way lower or higher than you’d have in a gym, the risk of slowly abandoning the bodyweight workout routines is round the corner and motivation can be hard to keep up, try different things to spice up your exercises selection and set realistic goals to reach.

Hear me out..

Far from wanting to scare you, I want to share my story related to this. As some of you might remember, I am living in Tokyo and the Covid outbreak was not taken seriously as in other countries but, when we had around 300 cases a day on March 2020, the state of emergency was declared and all the gyms were shut down until a time to be decided (that by the way was then June 2020).

As I had joined Gold’s gym on January 6^th and was training 2 hours a day 5 days a week on a steady strength and muscle gain road, you can imagine how pissed I was at the idea of being forced to stop and potentially lose everything I gained so diligently and with so much effort.

At that time I was working following a push-pull routine so push days were basically chest shoulder and triceps and pull days were back and biceps (yes I was doing legs too during those days) so I figured I should do the same type of training at the local park where there was a pull-up bar and at home when it was raining.

As at the gym I had gained quite the strength you can imagine that pushups and pull ups were not that big of a problem to complete per se so I decided to ramp up the menu:

On push days I would do somewhat around 350 push-ups and loop band triceps training
On pull days I would to around 100 pull ups and TRX back and biceps training.

Knowing that the challenge level was different than the gym I had to be very consistent and, given that I did want to get out the state of emergency with minimal losses and hopefully improvements, I kept on training like that for the entire time out of the gym.

What did I find out when, in June 2020, I finally went back? I realized that my strength did not decrease much, it actually improved a lot, to my surprise.

That is to say that, again, YES, you can build muscles and strength by doing simple body exercises, as long as you have a plan and…guess what, are consistent.

Do you need a gym to workout? — look where consistency took me!

Don’t be discouraged!