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Comment by nordsieck | Hacker News Reader

> You don’t need a gym, those are just excuses.

Sort of.

Physical fitness for good health has 2 components: aerobic fitness and strength. You can improve your aerobic fitness and your upper body strength at home (rings and/or handstand pushups are enough for all but the most advanced strength athletes).

Core/lower body strength is another matter entirely. People tend to quickly progress to 1x body weight squats and deadlifts. And someone who is more advanced will probably be in the 2x-3.5x range. Without access to serious weight, lower body training is usually pretty ineffective, strength wise.

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>Without access to serious weight, lower body training is usually pretty ineffective, strength wise.

Doesn't matter, 1x or even less is still 100% enough for life expectancy and general health.

For staving off disease you just need decent fitness, not 3x bw.

You can absolutely get to 2x bw squats from home with nothing but a chair as gear.

How can you get 2x bw squats at home? What are you squatting? Your fridge and oven?

> How can you get 2x bw squats at home?

You can't.

I assume your parent was confused about notation. You can get 1x body weight squats (that is to say your actual body + 1x your body weight as additional load) by doing one legged squats off of a chair.

Your interpretation is correct.

I don't understand where I'm wrong about the 2x bw though?

My thesis is that disregarding upper body gains, which can be compensated by other exercises, single leg squats will get you to 1x + 1x bw, which is 2x, with almost no gear at all.

You can also reasonably easily add about 2x15kg in dumbbells which is almost another 0,7x or so, making home training quite powerful.

Single leg squats are a fantastic tool. You can work so much in different ways depending how you balance. Very little special equipment needed!

> I don't understand where I'm wrong about the 2x bw though? ... single leg squats will get you to 1x + 1x bw, which is 2x

The disagreement is purely about notation.

In the strength world, people routinely ignore bodyweight when measuring squat intensity - they only list load weight. I suspect that this is, in large part, an effort to be consistent with other barbell exercises like Deadlift (which I mentioned earlier), Press, Bench Press, Row, etc. where including one's body weight wouldn't really make sense.

Thank you, I hadn't thought about it that way.

Pistol Squats.

It's a bit expensive to get started, but a rack and weights will pay for itself in saved gym fees after a couple years, or a few months for 2 people somewhere expensive like SF. We managed to fit one back when my wife and I lived in 1 bedroom apartments.

> a rack and weights will pay for itself in saved gym fees after a couple years

That's been my solution.

If you take into account resale value, it'll actually pay itself off much faster - especially if you're willing to wait for good deals.

I think I was able to put together a full set of weights + another set of 45s for less than $1/lb. I'm using a cheap bar and a cheap rack, so the whole thing cost me less than $800.

I estimate that I could sell it all today for $600 for sure, and probably get back all my money if I was willing to wait 1-2 months.

The other big advantage of using a home gym is wait times; I used to go to a commercial gym, where the wait time for a rack was often more than 30 minutes at peak times. As long as you don't need machines (lat pulldown can be very nice), a rack at home can make gym time much more efficient.

If you want to go really cheap, buy a kettlebell. When that becomes too easy, buy a heavier one. Unless the goal is actual powerlifting, buying a kettlebell every time you need a heavier one will carry a person a very long ways.

If a person has more money and the space, they can do the same thing with dumbbells.

It's really not complicated, but people make it so.

... cheaper still, Im experimenting with two 3-litre plastic milk containers, filled with water.

[ be sure to a) check for leakages regularly and b) do arm curls well away from electric outlets, just in case ]

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