Are you looking for home workout machines but unsure which one is the best? Do you want to know, once and for all, what the best machine is to get fit without going to the gym? Read on to see which machine we think is the ultimate home workout machine.
Working out at home has grown in popularity.
High fees, overcrowded gyms, and spending more time waiting for a machine than you actually do using it has lead to more and more people ditching the gym in favor of staying and working out at home, and it’s easy to see why.
Flexible workout times, doing the exact routine that you want, and not having to worry about anything other than what time of the day you’ll do your session, home workouts have many benefits, and often, the main problem you will have is actually deciding what equipment to buy.
Treadmills, bikes, rowers, and more, the options for home workout equipment have dramatically increased but unless you have the space available of an actual gym, you will often struggle to fit in more than a few pieces of equipment.
In this article, we’re going to break it down and once and for all, decide on the best home workout machine that you need for working out at home.
Treadmill
Favored by runners, although used by people that like to jog (or walk) a treadmill is a fitness icon that needs no introduction. It’s widely accepted that running is one of the best ways to burn calories and one of the most natural movements you can do when it comes to fitness training and whether it’s done outside, or inside on a treadmill, running is a great workout.
However, as with everything, there are pros and cons of using a treadmill for your home workouts.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
Treadmills are fantastic calorie-burning machines that can help anyone to improve their fitness and make overall improvements to their aerobic endurance levels.
Although they can be big, many now come with space-saving features allowing the treadmills to fold, and in some of the higher-end models, you can also get access to fitness classes that use the treadmill or other equipment to train you, although this is only at the higher end of the market.
A better option than running outside on the ground, treadmills can still be difficult to use for people with joint or mobility problems and in some cases, larger users can also struggle with using a treadmill and its impact on their body.
Stationary Bike
When we talk about a stationary exercise bike there are three main options, an upright bike, a recumbent bike, and a spin bike. All three offer very similar benefits and are similar in their design and how they can be used. When we say stationary bike here, we mean all of the varieties.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
Exercise bikes can be beneficial for people that need low impact exercise, making them great for people that are new to exercise or those that are recovering from an injury. They also provide good calorie-burning potential, helping users to burn a high amount of calories in a short space of time. With different variations such as recumbent or indoor cycling (spin) bikes, most users will find something for their level and there is always going to be an option even when a more advanced or challenging level is required.
Elliptical
Elliptical machines have become an exercise favorite with people all over the globe due to their low impact and easy to use nature. For the very same reasons many people also look o the elliptical when building out their home gym, here are the pros and cons of using an elliptical machine.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
A good option for low impact exercise machines that still burn calories, the elliptical machine is a very strong option for home exercise. With good calorie-burning potential and an easy to use system that provides a good full-body workout, an elliptical machine is a good option for any home gym. However, users should be aware that elliptical machines can be very big, making it difficult to store if space is limited and due to the standard height setting that most machines have, it could also be problematic for people to use.
Rowing Machine
Providing a very intense workout whilst still being low impact, the rowing machine is a long-time favorite for gym goers that want to improve their performance fast. A rowing machine can provide a very intense workout and it also has the benefit of providing a full-body workout.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion:
Rowing machines can provide a very intense workout and will test the user more than most machines will, making it difficult for some people to effectively use a rower for longer than 20 minutes. Although this can be good for faster, high-intensity workouts, it can also lead to some people fatiguing faster and therefore leave them unable to complete a full workout and burn as many calories as some other pieces of equipment.
What are Your Goals?
Before buying any piece of home exercise equipment it is worth analyzing what your actual goals are and if you need to make any special considerations.
Is space an issue? Does the machine need to be quiet? Are you ok with higher impact machines? And are you training for something specific?
If you’re a rower and you need a suitable indoor training option then the decision is simple, you need a rowing machine.
But if you’re just looking for a good machine with high-calorie burning potential, the decision could be much harder.
Whether you know what you want or not, it’s always worth looking at all the possibilities before you purchase your first piece of home gym equipment.
Final Verdict
We’ve looked at the different options, now it’s time to pick a winner, and unfortunately, there can only be one.
All of the machines named in this list are fantastic options for home exercise and all will do a great job, helping you to burn calories, get fitter and improve your health, but they also have their drawbacks. These drawbacks are only small, but when trying to decide on only one, we have to take into account what we’re faced with to pick a winner and for us, that winner is the stationary bike.
In a perfect world, we’d have them all, but it’s like the desert island conundrum and we can only take one.
We felt that with the mix of stationary bike options available there is a far greater range out there to appeal to different people and with more intense workouts available and a moving scale of resistance that can promote muscle growth all across the lower body, there were more options to meet for all fitness levels.
A big complaint of many machines is the boredom factor, but we felt that using a stationary bike, we could go much further, for much longer, before boredom set in, and the low-impact nature of cycling also helped.
It’s now possible to find online workouts to go with most machines and some high-end machines even come with built-in screens to follow along with, but again, here we feel the options available are superior when purchasing a bike.
With indoor cycling spin classes or virtual follow along cycle routes that users can follow from their own home, we felt that the options available for the stationary bike were a cut above the rest.
With all that together our minds were made up and the decision was made that the best piece of home workout machine you can buy, is the stationary bike.
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