5 Reasons You Don't Need A Gym To Get In Shape?

Think you need a gym to get in shape? Think again. While it’s certainly possible to lose those pesky pounds by whiling away hour after hour on the treadmill, you can get just as good, if not better, results far away from the gym. That's good news for people who hate "working out", but still need physical activity!

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that gyms don’t work. It’s like those serial dieters you know who always go on about how “diets don’t work” or who claim that they physically can’t lose weight. The right gym program can get you in tremendous shape, but you can still craft an exceptional physique without having to swipe your membership card, queue for the treadmill or make idle chit chat in the locker rooms every time you want to work out.

Fact of the matter is, there are plenty of reasons why you don’t need the gym to get in shape, and why you might actively prefer to get fit in another way.

1. Gyms Cost Money

Financial reasons are one of the main barriers to exercise and one of the most common excuses you’ll hear from overweight people about why they’re fat and unfit.

While this does, at least to some extent, come down to priorities and managing your finances better, you can take the money you’ll save by not having a gym membership and put it into building an awesome home gym, or investing in a training or nutrition course to give you much better results than your pilates class or boxercise session ever could.

2. Wasted Time

Add up how long it takes you to drive to the gym, get changed, workout, get showered and change back again, then drive home. Maybe two hours? And that’s without stopping to chat to the hot trainer, the time you spent gazing in a trance-like state at the gorgeous guy or girl on the stepper in front of you, or the 10 minutes it took you to get over your fit of laughter when you saw that man fall sideways off the rower.

Gyms have built-in constant distractions that not only waste time, but take your focus off your workout. The commuting time can be a pain too and makes it easier for you to skip workouts after a long day, when you've got just about enough "juice" to move your body, but can't quite manage driving over to the gym as well.

3. It’s Intimidating

How many times do you feel like you’ve been judged for the weight you’re lifting, your exercise selection, or your choice of clothing while you're at the gym, with its many prying eyes?

If your gym is anything like the other thousands across the country, this probably happens once every 7.3184 seconds.

Skip the gym and train at home though, and there’s no one to judge you or watch you. Apart from your dog maybe, who gazes slightly inquisitively as you try to remember how to jump rope for the first time since high school.

4. The Gym is Old News

It’s so easy to slip into the same routine day after day, week after week, year after year. While people come and go, you see the same faces all the time in the gym. You get to know peoples’ mannerisms and could probably write down their workouts, just from observing them.

This might seem great, and resemble some sort of fitness version on “Cheers” but in reality, it’s killing your progress.

There’s no one there to push you out of your comfort zone and without realizing it, time slips by. Before you know it, you’re three years down the line, two thousand dollars out of pocket, twenty pounds heavier and no fitter than you were on day one. If you want to really leave your comfort zone and start progressing, you may have to try something else.

5. Safety

You might think the gym is a safe haven, with CCTV cameras and experienced trainers to watch over you, but be warned. By the law of averages, you’re at a higher risk of injury when there are more people around.

Training on your own, you’ve only got yourself to watch out for and if you drop a dumbbell on your foot, that’s your own fault. You need eyes in the back of your head at the gym though, as you’re constantly vigilant towards dodgy personal trainers, senior citizens looking decidedly unsteady with their dumbbells, or the guy you know is just about to crash off the treadmill next to you.

The Keys To A Gym-Less Workout

So you’ve ditched the gym – now what?

First thing’s first, what’s your plan?

Sit down with a piece of paper and write down all you goals. You probably haven’t done this since you first joined the gym anyway, so it’s a great opportunity to reaffirm your aims and targets.

From here, you can then decide on what route you’re going to follow – cardio junkie, bodyweight beast, or home gym hero.

Cardio Junkie

Love the treadmill, elliptical and rower at the gym, but hate everything else? If you think the chest press machine and squat rack are better used as expensive coat racks, you are undoubtedly a cardio junkie.

The good news is that means you don’t really need to buy any equipment to keep working out on your own, without a gym. You should already have your gym clothes, which is more or less all you need.

A new pair of running shoes wouldn’t go amiss, especially if you’ve only used your current ones for gym work. A bike is a safe option too – if you get bored of exercising with it you can always use it to get around and save on fuel.

If you fancy something else too, why not pick up a second hand piece of cardio kit online to keep in your garage or back room?

Bodyweight Beast

This is pretty self-explanatory. The main focus of your workouts will be bodyweight exercises.

The massive advantage of this is cost – your body doesn’t cost anything. Plus it’s fantastic motivation to keep your waistline in check – added body fat will make your training much harder, so you’ve got to keep lean.

Make pushups, squats, lunges, planks, bird-dogs and burpees the staple exercises in your home routine. Equipment isn’t a necessity, but a chin up bar plus a resistance band or two will make your training efforts go a lot further.

Home Gym Hero

The home gym hero is the next level up. This is for you if you love the gym and enjoy pumping iron but just cant be doing with monthly membership fees or queues any more.

Forget resistance machines – they’re bulky, overpriced and only have one or two functions each. Opt instead for a basic strength set up.

Get yourself a bench, a power rack or an adjustable squat rack plus an Olympic barbell with plates and collars. This is really all you need as it means you can squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press and perform rows and chin ups plus all their variations. What more could you want?

Variety is the spice of life though, so consider purchasing a few extras as and when you can.

A kettlebell is a nice addition as a method of improving your conditioning, fitness and muscular endurance, as are medicine balls. Some good floor matting is essential too as you don’t want cracks in the floor from your monster deadlift.

There you have it – why ditching the gym might be the best decision you ever made.