Setting up the home gym to keep the workouts going in the time of Covid-19

With gyms and fitness centres shut and unlikely to open soon, health freaks are buying stationary bikes, treadmills, weights and a whole lot of other equipment to keep their exercise regimen going

They say sitting is the new smoking. Limited access to outdoors due to risk of contracting Covid-19 has got people to build their home gym so they can work out at home. Few want to risk exposure to crowded gym spaces or grab a hold of grubby machine handles full of someone else's sweat.

For professional boxer Vijender Singh, an at-home treadmill has allowed him to work out unhampered by pollution, bad weather and other sundry inconveniences. Says Singh: “As such, boxers don’t require much space and my small room is enough to stock my basic equipment such as weights, skipping rope, dumb bells and treadmill.” Singh has had an in-house gym for years out of choice, but many others are now buying basic equipment to pump iron, jog or cycle at home during the time of Covid-19.

Take the case of pilot-turned-fitness blogger and digital influencer, Gaurav Taneja, who does his vlogs called The Flying Beast. This former Mr India bronze medallist and a Mr Delhi title holder has been working out professionally for the past 17 years. Says Taneja: “Even if they open up gyms and allow 20 people at a time like they were saying, I'm not sure how many will actually follow the protocols. At least, I don’t want to take any chances during Covid times, at a place where everybody sweats and uses the same equipment.” Three weeks back, he got a room in his house (12 ft x 12 ft) converted to a gym space, with a “full range of professional gym equipment and not home-gym rubber quality,” as he puts it. He bought three big machines, one big and small bench (for biceps), dumb bells ranging from 5 kg to 50 kg, and iron plates. “My gym can easily take on weights of 200 kilograms and more," says Taneja, who got help from a friend, a gym equipment manufacturer, to put up a home gym that cost him Rs 4.5 lakh. He says workout is mandatory for him, and his favourite piece is the Smith machine which takes care of most of the workout such as strength training, squats, bench press, shoulder press, weights.

Welcome to the world of home gyms. Top gym chains such as Cure.Fit and equipment manufacturers/retailers like Decathlon, Live Fitness, Technogym, Precor, Cybex, Deneb & Polak, and Lifeline have reported a spike in the uptake of equipment.

Ankit Nagori, founder, Cure.Fit talks about his outfit's successful entry-level gym equipment sales. “We are seeing tens of thousands of our Cult customers buy basic equipment such as yoga mats, weights and dumb bells. This is a mass solution where you pay Rs 5,000 to acquire a good yoga mat and two to three dumb bells of different sizes. Having a structured gym is more a function of resources and, depending on the size of the house and how much money you have, I would say it is more of an HNI thing to have a full gym with machines. But since we also have expertise in creating gyms, we are shortly launching our bespoke home gym service too, where we say, if you have a small room to spare, we come and create your home gym at the entry level, mid-end and high-end category.”

Cure.Fit’s first solution is for smaller spaces measuring 80 sq ft. For Rs 30,000-50,000, you can get a cult-like look and feel, mats, a full set of dumb bells in the 0-to-20 kg range -- at least 5 different sets -- along with a resistance pad and belts to give you a full workout. The second is for an area of 150-200 sq ft. priced at Rs 1-1.5 lakh. This comes with kettle bells, wall mounts, pull up section, dumb bells, rods, and more lifts. Their third solution is where the gym chain partners with manufacturers who sell high-end machines such as treadmills and stationary bikes and charge on per-machine basis. Anyone with limited space, say, 40 sq ft, can put in a treadmill or a stationary bike there, if he has the budget.

Customers want machines but a good treadmill will cost nothing less than Rs 2-3 lakh. Cure.Fit sells a basic package and the machines are an add-on in case you want to buy them. Says Nagori: “In fact, if you ask me why people buy gym memberships in the first place, it is because treadmills are expensive. You get access to all the equipment at a fraction of a cost. In a sense, it is time-sharing of equipment.”

Machines are costly -- the cross trainer and stationary bikes are priced at Rs 25,000- 2,50,000, depending on the brand. Treadmills are the most expensive and come in a price range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 4 lakh. Typically, you can create a basic gym for Rs 50,000, a mid-end for Rs 5 lakh and an advanced one for Rs 10 lakh.

What’s trending: Minus-machine workouts

Today, many people swear by non-machine-based workouts and manage with just light weights, body weight, yoga mats, barbells and dumb bells. Most workouts are done through live sessions organised by gyms or personal trainers through Zoom classes. Some are run on YouTube where you require minimal equipment.

Mumbai-based fashion designer Sanjana Bubber, Co-founder, Bubber Couture, says that all one needs is a few good-quality yoga mats, weights and dumb bells, barbells and the rest of the workout is HIIT, Tabata, kickboxing, pilates, and yoga. Bubber, who has always preferred outdoor fitness workouts and has been into marathon running, playing basketball, kickboxing says, “When the city started closing down and imposing limitations, I realised changes would have to be made to my daily fitness routine. I started this lockdown with a shoulder pull so I gave myself a week's rest before I realised I was in urgent need of equipment and a new fitness regimen.” She already had a few exercise bands, a skipping rope, therabands, a stepper, foam rollers, yoga bricks, and ankle and wrist weights. But I recently bought kettlebells, dumbbells, non-abrasion mats, anti-abrasion pads, and interlocking gym flooring that can be dismantled – most of it from Decathlon & Selection Sports. Bubber recommends to set up a home gym in a room that has a “a mirror or any reflective surface. I use my reflection in a switched off Television Screen for my workouts. The correct form is the key to fitness. It’s important for you to see if your form of each exercise is correct or incorrect if you aren't using a trainer.”

Gamification of workouts

Today the quantity and quality of your workout can be assessed with the help of certain tech-enabled fitness apps that help track calories, energy meters and provide you real time feedback on your workout. As a result, working out at your home gym is no longer a solitary experience.

In  the US, exercise equipment company Peloton has a hugely popular spin-cycling session where people get unlimited access to spin-cycling workouts from celebrity trainers and can work out with other spin-cycler groups as well, by paying a subscriber fee of $40 dollars a month. This way they end up working out together even from their homes.

"The 'at-home' fitness industry is a much more mature market in the US and the adoption is still low in India but we want to take it to the next level," says Ashish Rawat, founder, Oga, an interactive digital workout platform that offers real-time feedback on how well a user is performing his workout. “If you are working out alone, be it on machines or with or without equipment, it still has to be a community-inspired workout. We say you don’t have to work out alone. You can select your favourite songs, invite your friends – we map your body, compare it with others and give you feedback on how you are performing.” 

Oga's AI-based solution uses the webcam of the user’s phone/ laptop camera to track 17 joints in the body in real time and capture 15 frames of the user. The system tracks the movement in real time and also evaluates the trainer/competitor and compares the two. General cardio of 20 minutes remains the most popular form of work out as per Oga's research, followed by yoga, but dance-based fitness forms are catching on like wild fire. 

Rawat shares insights on why people enter the fitness routine in the first place, “The biggest reason is that they want to burn fat and lose weight. Even the yoga studios I speak to say majority of the people want to lose weight whereas globally, yoga is a tool for meditation. And your best bet to lose fat and gain muscle is weight training. So pairing cardio and weight training is the way to go and hence people are buying basic weights these days.”

Technology is increasingly finding a place within people’s fitness routines and people are even measuring how much they walk. The more you walk, the more you earn -- the likes of StepSetGo, another fitness gamification app motivates users to walk and earn reward points that can be redeemed on app’s bazaar or Amazon. Says StepSetGo Founder Shivjeet Ghatge: “Everyone has been walking forever. It’s just now we are finally quantifying and validating it.”

With gym hardware and software in place, an at-home gym workout is eminently possible and staying fit is not so difficult. "It’s all in the mind," says Bubber. ‘More than the focus on equipment, I think what is harder to procure for workouts is the motivation to work out from home. If you are mentally motivated and set your own physical and calorie goals for each workout, the battle is half won. My workouts are more all-rounded, and I have expanded my earlier limited knowledge on fitness daily by being exposed to different YouTube trainers every day.”

On the brighter side, people have got the chance to creatively evolve their workout and explore new fitness routines that they didn’t have time for, prior to lockdown.

What setting up a home gym would cost you

Gym Equipment 

Budget/Economy Range (Price in Rs)  Advanced/High-end (Price in Rs) Treadmill  50,000-1,50,000  3.5-4 lakh Cross Trainer  25,000-50,000  1.5-2.5 lakh Stationary Bike  20,000-50,000  1.5-2.5 lakh Rowing Machine  20,000-50,000  1.5-2.5 lakh Bench, Bars, Weights  45,000  75,000 MultiGym  50,000-1,00,000  2-5 lakh Mats  3,000-5,000  12,000-20,000 (TRX Original) Kettle Bells  8,000  8,000 Resistance Tubes  3,000  3,000 Dumb bells (Weight per kg)  100  300 Budget brands typically include the likes of Deneb & Polak, Lifeline and some Chinese/Taiwanese brands while premium ones include Precor, Live Fitness, Technogym, Cybex. Source: Market Research

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