Well, according to price that gym paid for any one piece of that equipment, I certainly hope that it not only stimulates your muscles, but also cooks your breakfast, washes your car, and brings kids home from soccer practice! Now question becomes whether or not those machines were worth price, or if you'd be better off doing a home aerobics video with a can of soup in each hand….

Personally, I would advise you to get low-sodium version of soup, serve it up alongside a tomato sandwich, and then go buy yourself some free weights. Yes, that is just my opinion, but it does come with some scientific reasoning behind it.

Natural movement vs. Controlled movement

One of things that you need to remember is that when you are exercising, you are training for LIFE. You may spend an hour a day at gym, but that still leaves 23 other hours for your muscles to function without aid of that fancy equipment.

Whenever you do any given exercise, movement of your body during that exercise is called Range of Motion. The greater and more difficult Range of Motion, more effective exercise is, because your body has to work harder to perform that movement.

Let's take a classic dumbbell bicep curl for our case study. If you aren't familiar with movement, it is basically performed by standing up straight with your palms facing forward, and a pair of dumbbells held down at your sides. You concentrically contract your biceps (also known as flexing your elbow) to bring dumbbells up to approximately shoulder level, and then repeat movement for a prescribed number of repetitions.

Let's take that same muscle movement and do it using a bicep curl machine. You sit down, brace your upper arms on a pad, grasp 2 handles that are in front of you, and do that same fancy elbow flexing movement to move handles in an upward motion. Pretty easy stuff so far, right?

Working out with your clients in their homes is an option for any trainer, and by offering this option to your clients you can increase your potential client base by a dramatic number, and you may even decide to exclusively offer home personal training. In order to decide if this type of business model is for you, there are several points to consider, and they include time management, exercise modalities to be used, and business resources that are available.

Time Management

Managing your time and your schedule is a critical consideration when deciding whether or not to work with clients in their homes. Unlike working at a facility, amount of time that you need to dedicate to each client is increased, sometimes to point of even doubling time spent for each client session.

For example, let's use a standard one-hour training session as our business model for this discussion. Although many trainers are utilizing different training times with their clients these days, one hour is still a good time frame to use for your scheduling reference. You want to remember that as a home personal trainer, you can be on a tight deadline to get from one place to next, so you don't want to schedule your sessions back-to-back like you can when you are working at a fitness facility.

You must also factor in your travel time to get to your client's home, as well as to get to home of following client, client after that, and so on. If you live in an even reasonably populated area, you will have to allow at least 15 minutes of driving time to and from every client's home, and sometimes as much as 30 minutes per client, depending on size of geographic area that you train in. Using our one-hour training session as an example, just one training session can cost you as much as 2 hours of your time.

A standard 8-hour workday will now only allow you to train between 4 and 6 clients, depending on where they live in relation to your starting point, as well as in relation to each other. Your best bet whenever possible is to set up your clients in a roughly straight line, or possibly a circle that brings you back to your starting point at end of day. The last thing that you want to do is set up a client who lives 30 minutes north of your starting point followed immediately by a client who lives 30 minutes south of your starting point. Not only will you eat up massive amounts of time driving to and from your client's homes, but you will put serious mileage on both your car as well as your wallet at gas station! More on that in Business Resources section below.

Exercise Modalities

The next thing to consider is type of training that you will be doing with your clients in their homes. Unless they have a full fitness facility set up - which is rare - it is very likely that you will have to come up with ways to put them through a vigorous workout without massive amount of equipment that is available at a full-size fitness facility. In order to put together these home workouts, you need to address two different energy pathways that your clients will need to use during their workouts: aerobic and anaerobic.

Anaerobic Workouts

Although many trainers are used to massive resources available at a local gym, getting your clients a variety-filled and intense anaerobic workout in their home is actually easier than most would think. With nothing more than an exercise ball and a portable set of dumbbells, you can take your clients through full range of motion and exertion on almost same scale that is afforded those clients training at a gym.

If you are just starting out in industry, or are simply used to working your clients out at a fitness facility, you should do some research on Internet for dumbbell workouts, bodyweight workouts, functional training, and sport-specific training. Those 4 keyword combinations alone will net you hundreds of websites with free or low-cost resources that will teach you thousands of exercises that can be done with little or no equipment.

The key to getting your clients a good anaerobic workout at home is not type of equipment that is used, or actual amount of weight that is moved, but rather INTENSITY of workout. A bit of trial and error will teach you how to take a client through their paces in a safe but intense manner that will leave most people ready to call it quits in 30 minutes or less!

Aerobic Workouts