Fitness begins at home

Amir Khan, the lightweight boxing champion of the Commonwealth, is having a state-of-the art fitness complex built at his home in Bolton. "I always said I wanted a games room, somewhere I can chill out," said Khan. "It will have a gym and all my memorabilia from boxing ..." Khan is not alone in his dream of working out in the conveniently situated privacy of his own home. We're currently spending about 300m annually on home-exercise equipment - a boom industry - but so many of the swiss balls, ab cradles and stationary bikes we shell out on end up as doorstops, clothes horses and landing-based domestic-accident hot spots.

Mike Whittaker is a strength and conditioning coach in east London, whose clients visit him at his own home gym. "I don't use a whole lot of gear: swiss ball, dumbbells, dynabands (larger, thicker elastic bands) and boxing pads are the staples. For someone on a limited budget, that's what I'd recommend, and a decent pair of trainers so they can go outside for a run. So many of the gimmicks end up discarded. The main white elephants I've seen in people's houses are the ab cradles. Exercise bikes are also used with much gusto in the first week or so, and then slowly become ornaments. The worst, though, are Steps, which are about two inches high, and cost about 35. They're a complete waste of money - use the bottom step of the stairs for step-ups!"

Personal trainer David Hislop, from Castle Kennedy in south-west Scotland, says: "A large number of people buy equipment for home use on impulse and they haven't got either the motivation or any idea how to get the most out of it. The equipment is usually bought at places like Lidl or Aldi. No matter what the quality, though, the bottom line is that very few of my clients have the self-motivation to follow an exercise plan away from my gym.'

For Christmas 2006, Mia Johnson, from Brighton, drafted a fitness-themed present list. "Everyone got me workout related-items. There was a small stepper, an ab cradle, dumbbells that had a special coating so they wouldn't mark the floor if dropped." However, despite having all this gleaming equipment at her fingertips, Johnson struggled to find the motivation to use it. "I could blame the equipment and say it was shoddy quality, but I was rubbish, too. After a day at work, I wanted to chill out at home, not sweat."

Harry Blackwood has motivation to the nth degree, and two gym rooms in his County Durham home. The impetus came five years ago when he lost his job editing a north-eastern newspaper. "I was 46, and quite depressed. I felt a huge sense of unfair loss, and I needed to do something to fight back against it. I was fit from running, but I decided to get really fit. We had an open space in the roof of the house, so I set about building a gym. That process was really good therapy."

The exercise equipment he filled the space with came from a world far removed from the Argos catalogue. "I bought a spinning bike, made by Schwinn - the top brand - from an ad in a local paper, for a ridiculous price. A woman had bought it from a gym that was closing down, and she was asking 40 for it, when it was actually worth 10 times that. I got an indoor rower and other bits and pieces from eBay, and a treadmill worth 6,000, which had been used for a short while from a gym, for 990. I couldn't manoeuvre it up all the stairs, so I put it in a spare room downstairs, which became the second gym. I bought commercial quality kit, and it's lasted so much longer than the stuff you get in the high street."

Blackwood then discovered the home-gym owner's equivalent of the skip filled with Rembrandts. "Arthur Johnson & Sons, the auctioneers in Nottingham, specialise in selling off gear from gyms that are being refurbished, and I bought a cross trainer, a stepper and a stationary bike - all top quality - for about a tenth of their original prices."

Blackwood's gyms, however, contain no free weights, whereas 48-year-old Pete Byrne's Glaswegian home gym is stuffed with them.

"It's just a garage with some old carpets on the floor, but it does me fine. All in all, I've got 500-600lb of free weights, which is enough for me to go as heavy as I need in any exercise. I didn't buy any of the weights from fitness stores, just ones from the adverts in local papers, or from guys who were doing clearouts of their garages or rooms. I do have a membership at a gym but find that the weights area there can be a bit busy in the evenings, so really most of my weight training is now done in the garage. Oh, and I have a spin bike that I managed to get for free from a gym that was closing down."

In August, along with other keen amateur cyclists, Blackwood is riding some of the stages of the Tour de France. Training is soon to begin with his latest purchase, the Tacx i-Magic.

"It's virtual reality cycling. You fix the back wheel of your road bike to a roller, which is controlled by an electromagnetic brake, and you hook up to a computer that controls it. On screen you see a picture of yourself riding the route, and the computer controls the brake so you get all the gradients and contours. It's amazing. It should have cost 350, but I got it from eBay for 150.

"Some people might look at the gyms and say, 'What a self- indulgent git', but so what? Getting really, really fit is such a buzz. Look at how much the drinkers and smokers spend over the years. Anyway, it's my money."

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Additional information :

From lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk:
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