Don't sweat it

Essex Life asks whether incorporating a home gym is worth the investment, and look at what you’ll need to include to create the ideal workout environment

- Ellie Fells

With our local gyms closed and our normal fitness classes all cancelled, we’ve been forced to get creative with our home workouts. Thousands of us have tuned into online sessions and our usual weights have been substituted with whatever we can find around the house. Perhaps you’ve been inspired to scrap going to the gym altogether, and instead create your very own in the comfort of your home. If so, there are plenty of important things to consider, including location, health and safety, and the core pieces of equipment you’ll need, as well as the impact this will have on the value of your property.

A home gym can seem like the answer to all your fitness-related problems. It eliminates the need to travel to a gym and back, freeing up more time to work out, and you won’t need to queue to use a piece of equipment or have to share it with others. Crucially, it can have positive implications for your property, too: it can add to its desirability and give a sense of luxury, which can cause a rise in value when it comes to selling.

Having said that, it’s important to ensure that the gym is well fitted, and that the space is versatile, or it could have the opposite effect. There are some other downsides to bear in mind too. Although you’ll no longer be paying a monthly gym membership, there will potentially be some hefty initial start-up costs that come with buying all the necessary equipment, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to fit in the same range that your local gym has on offer. Home gyms can also be noisy (so it might not make you popular with the neighbours), and you might also miss the social side of going to a gym and attending classes with lots of other people.