People often wonder if they can achieve the same results at home as they can at the local fitness center. The short answer is yes, but the key is to invest your money wisely when equipping your home gym. It is important to buy equipment that will provide the greatest fitness benefits at the lowest price.

While there are all kinds of exercise equipment on the market, all vying for your limited home fitness dollars, perhaps the most effective exercise equipment of all is also one of the least expensive. A set of free weights will cost only a fraction of the price of those fancy exercise machines, and provide many benefits those machines cannot.

The fact is, nothing builds muscle and increases strength like free weights. If you are already in shape and looking for more muscle definition, you need free weights. If you are a first time exerciser needing to lose fat and build muscle, you need free weights. Are you getting the picture? Free weights will give you results like no other fitness equipment.

Every weightlifting exercise can be done with free weights, and that is certainly more than you can say for any weightlifting machine. While free weights play an integral part of any home gym, don’t forget about the cardio aspect of your fitness program. A quality treadmill or elliptical machine, along with free weights, will round out the perfect home gym.

There are a variety of free weights on the market to consider as you equip your home gym. For instance, free weights come in both metal and synthetic varieties. The major advantage of metal free weights is their durability, but the downside is they can damage the floor if they are dropped. In addition, some chrome free weights will need regular maintenance to prevent them from rusting.

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On the other hand, free weights coated with plastic, acrylic, rubber or neoprene do not require maintenance and will do less damage when they are dropped. However, the coating on the synthetic free weights may degrade over time, making them less useful or even requiring that they be replaced. Coated free weights, however, provide an excellent grip, especially for the beginner, and they are certainly safer for the floor.

Free weights are available in two basic types – dumbbells and barbells.

Dumbbells are the easiest and cheapest free weights to get your home gym started. They take up very little space and can be stored in a closet. When you buy dumbbells, you’ll buy them in sets, or pairs. Buy a variety of sets to give you a wide range of workouts. For example, you might want a set of 10, 20, 30, and 40 pound dumbbells. In this case, you’ll have a total of eight dumbbells that will easily store in the closet or underneath your bed.

You may also want incremental weight plates for your dumbbells. These are small weight plates that attach to the ends of the dumbbells by a very strong magnet. They come in different weight increments but one pound increments are common. By using these increment weight plates, you can take a pair of 10 pound dumbbells, for example, and increase them to 14 pound dumbbells by simply adding four, one-pound weight plates to the ends of the dumbbells.

Barbells are similar to dumbbells except they have a bar with attached weight plates on each end of the bars. I'm not a big fan of barbells for a couple of reasons.  They aren’t as easy to store as dumbbells and they take up much more room. Another drawback is that as you get stronger, you’ll be stuck with weights that are obsolete since you can’t increase the weight. Finally, barbells get very expensive if you want multiple sets of them in different weight amounts.

A better option to barbells is to purchase a weight bar and separate weight plates. They'll take up less room than barbells and will give you total flexibility in building your home gym. As you get stronger, you can simply buy more weight plates.

In addition to dumbbells and barbells, you’ll want to consider an adjustable weight bench. These benches will typically adjust to four different positions - flat, incline, decline, and sitting straight. Some benches also come with built-in arm and leg attachments. Buying an adjustable weight bench is a cost effective alternative to buying several different benches.

A weight bench isn’t absolutely necessary, but using one will provide the best support during your lifts, and many weight lifting exercises require a weight bench to do them correctly and effectively.

As you shop around for a weight bench, make sure it can handle the amount of weight you are planning on using. You’ll also want to make sure that the supports that hold the weight bar, known as the crutches, can accommodate your bar. For most benches, wider crutches indicate that the bench can handle more weight.

There are three different sizes of weight benches:

• Standard – contains 28” crutches which can handle five to six foot bars
• Midsize – contains 40” crutches which can handle six to seven foot bars
• Olympic size – contains 48” crutches which can handle seven foot bars

You may also want to consider a weight rack to store your dumbbells or weight plates. A weightlifting belt and a pair of weightlifting gloves are excellent accessories to consider as well.