The default move when people want to get into shape is to go to the gym. They don’t even think about it, instead equating a huge room filled with cardio machines and weights with the path to health and fitness. But is this the case? Must we go straight to the gym if we want to get fit, or are there alternatives, maybe even better, cheaper, more effective ones? In today’s blog post we’re going to look at another option: the home workout.

The gym has many negatives to it. Let’s be honest: they cost a ton of money each month and every month, they can be filled with the kind of people we don’t want to know, or even worse, who insist on staring at us while we work out, or coming up to us to make conversation when all we want to do is focus on our workout. They can be packed full of people so that you often have to weight in line to use the more popular machines, or freezing cold, or blasting the worst music possible. They can be staffed by rude or ignorant trainers who insist on telling you what you’re doing wrong, and what could be worse than the drive home when you’re tired and beat and just want to get right in the shower?

For all those reasons a home workout can be the best way to go. You can skip the drive their and back, usually a half hour each day all told, which trust me, adds up over the months and years. You can skip the long membership fees, the paperwork that locks you in whether you change your mind or not, the bossy trainers who think they know best and insist on telling you want to do. You can work out in the privacy of your home, away from staring eyes, sketchy dudes, people groaning and yelling as they do weights. You can adjust the temperature so that it’s perfect, you can play just the kind of music you love as loud as you like, and best yet the kitchen is right there so that you can fix yourself some beachbody nutrition snack when you’re done and hop into the shower.

Better yet, you can get a quality home workout program like P90X or the Insanity Workout which has been put together by a true expert and that can guide you through your workout so that rather than roam aimlessly about the cardio machines, you are doing exactly what you should be doing from the get go.