Top 5 Home Fitness Gym Tips

Setting up your own home fitness gym is awesome, but can be difficult if you do not plan properly. Take the time to review these five common mistakes people overlook or do not consider when setting up a home gym. Learning from other people's mistakes is one of the best ways to learn what not to do. Let's take a look at the top 5 home fitness gym tips.

1. Measure, Measure, Measure. We always hear the mantra when buying a home or starting a business: location, location, location. In setting up a fitness gym the mantra should be: measure, measure, measure.

You need to map out the area you plan to build your home fitness gym. If you are looking at building the gym in your basement make sure you consider the height of the ceiling. The last thing you want to do is buy a piece of fitness equipment only to discover it is useless because your ceiling is too low.

2. Remember Regular Dumbbells. When people set up their home gym they always get too focused on the big expensive multi gym machines. You know these gym machines; the one's where you can work your legs, arms and back all in one. However, good old dumbbells are still an important part in your home fitness gym. They work the stabilizer muscles, which your gym machines do not.

Another item to consider is to buy resistance bands, which help with stretching and yoga.

3. Treadmill or No Treadmill? Before heading to the gym equipment store you need to consider what type of home gym you want. Do you want to lose weight or build and tone your muscles? Treadmills help with cardio and losing weight. The multi-gym machines work on building and toning muscles.

Treadmills and elliptical trainers take up a lot of space. Depending on your climate and your home fitness needs you want to see if having a treadmill is necessary. If you can run outside regularly then you may not need a treadmill.

4. Don't Hurt Yourself. Setting up your own home fitness gym is exciting, but it comes with some risk. When you are at a gym you can ask for advice from personal trainers or the staff about how to use the equipment. With a home gym you do not have this luxury of a personal trainer and you can potentially hurt yourself.

Another disadvantage is you are in charge to set up your own exercise program. Before purchasing any equipment you should find out if someone is available to teach you at home. Of course most home fitness equipment comes with "how to" DVDs to help train you how use the equipment properly.

5. Don't forget the ipod or mp3 player. Now with your very own home gym you can dictate the music to be played. You have several options when it comes to playing music. First, you can hook your ipod up to some speakers to play in your home gym. The second option is to use headphones as you probably did at the gym in the past.

The main point is to pick music that motivates you to keep going. Working out at home can become boring because you may miss the camaraderie of fellow workout buddies from the gym. Do not get discouraged. You get to create you own workout environment, so have fun and get creative when setting up your gym.

With these 5 home fitness tips you should be ready to start you very own home fitness gym successfully. Good Luck!