For me, the effort of going somewhere to exercise is a big impediment, and I’m self-conscious exercising in front of people. The low barrier to start a daily workout wins, hands down.

Others find camaraderie just having other people involved in the same process, or really enjoy the variety of machines and options of a well-equipped facility.

You have to figure out which type of person you are. The most important thing is just to do something. (Unless you have specific, Jason Momoa-type goals in mind)

I’ve been working out at home since the late '70s/early '80s, as I found gyms in that era seriously woman-unfriendly. I splurged for a simple bench, a barbell/dumbbell set, a cheap area rug and a book by Arnold Schwarzenegger on workouts for women. At my peak, I was pressing 130% of my body weight, and able to bring my head down to my knees without fracturing a vertebra. Nowadays, my aim is to be able to carry my own groceries 9 blocks home, chase the cat up the stairs and down the hall when it’s time for his meds, and defend my wallet as needed.

I prefer this. It allows me to focus, protects me from dorks who think I need their advice or should surrender the machine I’m on because they need it, saves $75-100 a year in membership fees, the cost of ‘proper’ gym clothes, the time and money travelling and I can work out when it fits into my day. I recommend it, but you will need a level of self-discipline and a daily routine that works for you. Don’t just buy the weights and start flinging them around: find a good book or two/a couple of websites and learn about basic nutrition needs, the best times for exercising, and why you need to cycle your exercises and take a day off regularly.

Don’t be discouraged if it takes a while to get into it, and see results. If you miss some time, just go back to it when you can. I can’t explain how good it feels every day, being fit, but it is worth it!

When it comes to exercise the struggle isn’t doing it, it’s finding a routine that works for you. That’s the key, figuring out something you can do and make a habit of it so it becomes routine, like brushing your teeth.

I bought a collapsible bench and hand weights in late 2024 so I could cut the gym membership from my budget, and I’ve been able to maintain my usual habit of lifting 3-4 times a week. The added benefit is that it’s nice not to have to deal with other people or wait for equipment. You can learn better ways to work out from professionals for free on Youtube, and you can add equipment to your home gym over time.

It’s definitely reasonable to be new and never go to a gym.

Look up calisthenics routines on youtube or reddit. The great thing about calisthenics is you almost only need your body weight. That means you can do it pretty much everywhere, even if you travel or move. If you can, I would join a group or maybe seek out a calisthenics class to start, mainly to give you tips & help with form. Long story short, it’s absolutely possible to workout at home, or outside of gym.

I spend a grand on a nice adjustable dumbbell set and a bench and went from 165lbs to 210lbs over the last 18 months with a combination of weight training and eating better. It’s absolutely possible to work out at home with the resources that are out there these days. I do miss some of the equipment at the gym but the convenience of a home gym is just too good.

I would point out that getting lean/shredded is not a function of the gym, it’s a function of the kitchen. You cannot out exercise a bad or even mediocre diet. You can use a gym to build muscle, increase flexibility, or improve cardiovascular fitness, but there’s no avoiding making changes to your diet if you want to decrease body fat.

https://www.bowflex.com/product/1090-adjustable-dumbbells/710000.html?adID=DOFG2BFEED1&gad_source=1

I have a set of these (I didn’t pay retail, got them cheap off Craigslist). Adjustable from 10 to 90 lbs and a bench press. With these 2 things, I can do most exercises from the comfort of my home. I have no gym membership, but stay in decent shape. At the end of the day, it’s all about your discipline and sticking to it. Imo it’s much easier and more convenient for me to just go to my garage to work out vs driving 15 mins to/ from. It’s not for everyone tho. Some people like the social aspects of a gym.

Go for it dude. I’ve been working out ny whole life and have never paid for a gym membership (I used the gym at college, then at my various apartments, and then when I got a house I set up a home gym). You can get an awesome workout in with nothing more than some free weights, a bench and a little creativity. You mention being a “total novice,” but I feel like most people that go to a gym are working out on their own anyways so unless you’re thinking of getting a personal trainer there’s really not much difference. If you have any questions about form just take a look on YouTube.

The other factor is, what will motivate you to exercise more? For me, it’s the convenience of knowing i can just walk into a room in my house and work out. Whereas I know some people that are more motivated by group exercise classes. So you’ll have to figure that out yourself.

Personally the home workout route never worked for me. I’m sure there are a ton of people that it has worked for but I need a routine. Having a set time to go to the gym without distraction is really what broke through.

It your looking for apps to track progress check out fitnotes for exercise tracking and OmNom Notes for diet tracking. Took me a while to find good non sleazy apps

Kettlebells! Kettlebells are a great tool to have for home workouts. You might want to start with a lighter one–even if you’ve worked out some, you can still wear yourself out with even a 35 lb. kettlebell.

You definitely can start this way. When I started, I got some help from a physical therapist–I had really messed up my back, and in addition to helping with the acute issue, they also selected a set of exercises and numbers of reps for me that I could do at home, and that was a great starting point for my exercise routine. It was pretty short and focused, so it was easy to find time to do it every day, and the practice of keeping at it was really helpful. My health insurance covered most of the cost of the physical therapist; I had to pay a copay, but even then it was just a couple times a week for maybe two months, so not exorbitant. Insurance is generally willing to help with this stuff for a little while because they know that if your health improves, it’s likely to reduce their future costs. So it’s worth looking in to whether yours would help with something like that just to get yourself going. I don’t think you need to have an acute problem to take advantage of that; I think having a specific goal for improvement is adequate. (They want measurable goals, like “I’d like to be able to jog five minutes without getting winded,” or that sort of thing. I believe mine was “I’d like to be able to spend a day out walking around a garden with my family without being laid up the next day by my back.” Which reflects where I was at the time. But, y’know, anything that reflects where you currently are, and something that you might be able to achieve in a six-to-eight-week timeframe, is probably a good goal.)

Doing that regularly also got me listening to my body, and that got me to gradually expand my routine–I eventually understood that some of my back issues were propagating up from hip issues, so now I work on those, and some of those are coming from limited ankle mobility, so I’m also working on that, and working on that has got me doing “goblin squats” that has gotten me to stop thinking of dumbbells as something to avoid. I’m also getting closer to being able to do pull-ups; I got a pull-up bar because just hanging from a bar sometimes can really help with a bad back, but at some point I started thinking about how much more I enjoyed moving when I was a kid and took gymnastics classes, and back then I actually had the strength to do things like pull-ups. So now I can do some resistance-band assisted pull-ups, and hopefully in a year or two I’ll be able to do the proper thing.

Picturing enjoying movement is something that really motivates me, actually. Like, I used to enjoy biking and ultimate frisbee. I don’t, now, but I think I might enjoy them again at some point. I think I might also enjoy parkour, if I can get into that kind of shape, but I recognize that may not be an achievable goal at this point. I had a kind of enthusiasm for brief bursts of very intense movement, like sprinting up a flight of stairs two at a time, or climbing up onto a loading dock in a single giant step.

At this point I do a basic set of dumbbell weight exercises, squats and lunges, push ups, a back stretching and exercises routine, assisted pull-ups, and a walking/running aerobics routine. It’s not a ton, but I’m really in vastly better shape than I was when I started a few years ago. I do have a handful of equipment–the dumbbells, a floor mat, a couple of foam rollers, an exercise ball (for trunk lifts, which are good for a weak lower back), a doorway pull-up bar, some resistance bands that I basically just use with the pull-up bar, and the biggest thing is an elliptical machine for when the weather is too bad to do the aerobics outside. There are ways to do it without a machine, like jogging in place or doing rapid shallow squats, but the machine is kind of nice–it’s hard to explain, but it really helps to have the exercise take place in its own little isolated space, or even just in its own mental space. I actually also have a little lighted sign that I made (it’s a recreation of the neon sign for an exterminator’s in my home town that always tickled my fancy back then–it’s got a giant neon rat in the middle) and I like to turn that on in my room specifically while I do my exercises there (everything other than the aerobics and pull ups), just because it kind of marks out the distinction of exercise time. It helps make it a ritual, and that helps make it a habit. As I say, hard to explain, but it feels like it matters.

I will say, this routine has also helped me lose some weight. I’m down about 45 lbs (~22kg) from this time last year. That’s mainly down to diet changes, but I did ramp up my exercising while doing this to be sure that I was losing fat rather than just losing muscle. I’m still a lot heavier than I’d like, but I’m definitely proud of how far I’ve come. I’m improving in other measures, too, like my resting heart rate is down from around 100 to around 80, which, again, is not where I’d like to be, but represents movement in the right direction.

So, I do think the physical therapist helped a lot with getting me started, but most of my work I’ve done at home, and without too much in the way of equipment.

Would I have done better, faster by going to a gym? I dunno. I definitely know that friction is a big factor. If it’s hard to actually go do the thing, then it’s easy to make excuses not to go do the thing; needing to actually travel to a gym definitely counts for that. There’s kind of a balancing act in making my routine easy enough and pleasant enough that I’ll actually do it, but also challenging enough that I’m still gradually improving. Sometimes I need to let myself slack off at something a little as an incentive do just do the thing. And sometimes once I’m actually doing the thing I don’t need the slack after all.

Bit of a rant, I guess. Sorry, it feels like so much of this stuff is, like, techniques for outwitting part of my own brain, and it feels like those are things other people might be able to use, but I’m not sure how transferable they really are. Hope it helps.

Good luck with your journey! I know I’ll need luck on mine.

So my biggest tip, if you want to start out exercising make sure you have a clear goal. For me the goal is to feel good in my limbs and body, so I don’t have pains and aches and have more energy. For others it is looks or muscles or mental health or whatever.

If you know why you are doing something it is a lot easier to do. I think focus often ends up on the visible aspects like looking better or losing a little weigth but these goals will take a lot more commitment than just feeling good by exercising, so make sure you know what the goal is and that you are realistic about it.

For doing at home, you could start with easy yoga and some weights and a RUBBER BAND. Rubber bands are fucking awesome for at home exercise. Put it under your foot, around a doorknob… Whatever. Short jogs are underrated. Five minutes around the block is a good warmup.

Jog five minutes, do a yoga set 20-30 minutes (find on youtube for example, eventually design your own), then rubber band exercises for ten or so and done. That is a good exercise you can do at home in many different ways.

I think it depends on your preference. I worked out at the gym for many years before covid and after the pandemic I built a home gym with a power rack, barbell, adjustable dumbells, and cable machine. Biggest advantage of this is not having to share a rack with anyone. It was sometimes annoying to have to wait for equipment.

What I’ll say is that I really appreciated starting at the gym as I got to have access to every machine and workout equipment. This let me build a workout plan over years and get a good idea of what sort of equipment I would need to stay active. I also found it helpful to see what other people were doing at the gym. Some people clearly have no idea what they are doing, but seeing what other experienced people at the gym were doing gave me some great ideas of what to incorporate into my workouts.

I also did have a personal trainer for 6 months and I highly recommend this, especially when you are new to working out. The biggest value is from having someone experienced give you tips and tricks on how to improve your form and workout safely. Especially as you get stronger and lift heavier weights. It’s easy to lift something slightly wrong and really hurt yourself.

Overall, I always enjoyed my time at the gym and it gave me the knowledge to built a great home gym.

Honestly it makes me sound like a shill but the Apple Watch / fitness+ stuff has been incredibly helpful and motivating. I went from not doing anything to getting at least 30 mins a day after about 6 months. I work from home and am the primary caretaker of a toddler so getting to the gym hasn’t really been in the cards.

The real trick is sticking to it. But I promise it’s worth it for you and everyone in your circle. You can do it!!

Yeah it’s definitely realistic. Look up some calisthenics workouts and they have harder variations when you get stronger. Also, don’t neglect your cardio. You might have to use your furniture for some workouts.

you can do a lot at home! if youre new to lifting consult your resources and work on your form. if you feel a little lost, you can always book a session or two with a personal trainer and they will teach you your way around weights. i was a trainer for about 2 years and most of my clients needed some corrections their first few sessions (and some reminders past that!)