Our guide to choosing the best small home gym

Don’t have enough time to go to the gym but you’re really motivated to shed pounds and maintain your ideal weight? Then a compact home gym is what you need. Investing in one could be one of the best things you can do for your health, apart from regularly working out, of course.

Bowflex PR1000 Home Gym	Our favorite for 2020
Thane Total Flex Home Gym	A great value option
FreeForm Hideaway Home Gym	Compact and easy to use

Having a machine like this at home has its own share benefits. One is the convenience that it gives its users. People who lead busy lives usually have a hard time going to the gym regularly. But with a compact one which you can just place in your room, garage, or basement, you can keep yourself fit without leaving home.

Having your own mini gym at home is also more cost-efficient in the long run.  You don’t have to pay for expensive fees, and spend for gas in commuting to and from a gym.

These home exercise machines can give you a total body workout as well. You can exercise numerous parts of your body, including your arms, back, legs, chest, and shoulder with just one machine.

There are different types of compact gyms for homes. There’s the free-weight plate loaded style machine that features several stations that are interconnected with each other, targeting different areas of the body.  Another type is the resistance rod style that makes use of bands of various tensions. And there’s the body weight style machine that utilizes body weight as the only form of resistance.

That said, here are five compact workout machines that you might want to invest in:

Reviews

Bowflex PR1000  – Give yourself the total body workout at home with this equipment. You can do as many as 30 strength exercises on this machine, including horizontal bench press and lateral pull downs. You’d have to be less than 300 pounds to be able to use the Blowflex PR1000, which also includes a rowing machine rail.

This piece of equipment requires a minimum workout area of 100 x 78 inches. It weighs 149 pounds and measures 54 x 33 x 8 inches (length, width, height).

You will get a comprehensive list of exercises that you can do depending on your workout goals and your level of fitness. According to Bowflex, you only have to spend 20 minutes a day and three days a week using this equipment to be able to achieve your fitness goals.

Thane Total Flex  – If the Bowflex compact gym is a bit expensive for you then consider the Thane Total Flex Home Gym as an alternative. It comes fully assembled so you can use it right away after taking it out of the box.

You can do as many as 60 exercises on this piece of equipment, targeting major muscle groups like the arms, chest, abs, and legs.  It really doesn’t matter whether you’re a novice or a fitness pro as you will find the exercises offered by the Thane Total Flex to be very effective in helping you stay in shape.
Some of the exercises that you can do with this machine are leg raises, squats, lat pulls, shoulder presses, inner and outer thigh adductions, and bicep curls. You can also do multiple abs moves such as oblique twist, crunch combo and seated crunches.

FreeForm Hideaway  – Designed by the James Design Company based in New Jersey, this equipment is very compact making it very appealing to those who don’t have enough space at home. It folds flat within seconds, enabling you to slide it right under your bed.

It supports three main body positions— standing, facing forward, and facing in. The exercises depend on which position you assume. When you are facing forward, you can do exercises like chest press, tricep extensions, ab curls, and chest dumbbell flyes.

You can also do exercises like upright rows, bicep curls, lower back rows, and upper lat rows. Exercises like leg press, inner thigh presses, and calf flexions when you are standing.  You can set the resistance level from as low as 10 pounds to as much as 200 pounds.

Weider Ultimate Body Works – You can perform as many as 50 exercises using this machine. Target the major muscles of your body like the abs, calves, thigh, shoulders and arms with this home exercise machine which is a budget item.

It features four adjustable power bands that increase weight resistance, giving you more than 50 pounds of extra resistance apart from your body weight. With regular use of this piece of equipment, it is very likely that you will be able to shed unwanted fats fast.

Its space saving design makes this product ideal for those with limited space at home. Complimenting the design is a slide-away technology that gives users the convenience of quickly and easily storing it.

You can refer to the instructional manual on how to properly perform specific exercises. This machine is of the body weight style type, utilizing the user’s body weight as the natural resistance for various exercises.

XBAR – The Revolutionary  Workout Fitness System – This is a resistance rod style machine that makes use of a very revolutionary design. It features a curl bar with six different handgrips plus three resistance bands and two push-up docks. The curl bar is just 34 inches long, and the entire set is less than 10 pounds in weight. It is small and portable meaning you can bring it anywhere you go, as it can be placed in a bag with such ease.

This product may look so simple but you would be surprised to learn that you can perform more than 100 exercises with this revolutionary device. It can target every muscle group, giving you a complete body workout without leaving your home.
Despite being equipped with an advanced system, the XBAR is pretty much affordable. and is slowly becoming a favorite of traveling athletes and professional trainers.

Buyers Guide –  How to Choose the Right Compact Gym for You

There are lots of home gym machines that you can choose from, which make it quite hard to pick just one model for your own use. So how do you decide which one to get?

There are several factors that you will have to consider, like the features. Each unit has features that could make you buy them.  Workout machines for home use have features like sliding seat rail that is more for cardiovascular training, while other units have multi-purpose hand grips that are designed to promote flexibility. There are also units with stations targeting specific areas of the body, while others are designed for ease and convenience in storage.

You must also consider your personal goals and needs. Do you want to bulk up or increase your lean muscle mass? Then a machine with free weights would best suit you. If you want to improve your cardiovascular endurance then a machine with a sliding seat bench can be a better choice.

The size of the machine must also be considered.  You must know how much space you have at home before you buy any unit. If you live in a small place, then buying a compact machine like a folding home gym is a no-brainer.

Naturally, you will have to consider the price of the fitness unit.  You may have noticed in home gym equipment reviews that these machines vary from budget to premium range items. The more features the higher the price tag.