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Comment by asylteltine | Hacker News Reader

The best thing I ever did was invest in some quality gym equipment at home. I have a power rack, tons of weights, bars, etc. treadmill, TVs, speakers, whatever. Never going back to a gym again.

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But then you're paying for a big house to fit all that.

In which one can additionally fit: a coffee shop, restaurants, light repair shops, tool libraries, and a bathroom for every person

A whole power rack would indeed be neat but also very excessive unless you have the space. A pair of dumbbells under the sofa will take you a long way. Running on a treadmill, no thanks, just go outdoors.

Why does your sentence start with but as if that’s a bad thing?

Well depends where you live, but in the Bay Area a house big enough for a home gym would be like $3 million and outside most people's budget.

I'm pretty introverted but even I find that working out with the "regulars" I know at the gym helps a lot with motivation. If I go at a time when they aren't there, it's definitely less fun. I've had home fitness equipment but never consistently used it.

I agree except for some specialized equipment I wanted to use for PT on my arm. Apart from that I do better at home.

But I think for some people it’s possible that the payment itself acts as a spur to exercise (I’m paying for it so I’d better use it). Of course the gym owners are counting on this not being true!

Also I just want general fitness, health, and ability to do specific things I want (bike/swim/kayak/backpack/ski), which means bodyweight exercising (including TRX) and hand weights are 95% of what I need -- most of the gym equipment is great but unnecessary to me (YMMV)

+1 total quality of life improvement, I (try to) use mine everyday. If you hunt for deals on FB marketplace you can generally get the basics for <2k. The biggest pain point is space.

I'm kinda into flywheels right now. Not too hard to DIY, basically unlimited resistance, very low space, and if you can figure out how to do a vertical and horizontal pull - you can get a full body workout in pretty efficiently.

Do you have a good guide to DIY flywheels?

And how can you know you're doing progressive overload with them? With weights it's easy to tell you're going up in numbers, how can you quantify gains with flywheels?

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