Happy New Year! It's that time of the year when many people want to commit to improving their health, fitness and strength. If you've come this far, you likely have a New Year's resolution similar to the rest of us! Get fit and stay consistent. 

Unfortunately, although the New Year has begun, work can still be stressful, the weather remains cold, and the gyms have now become overpopulated, making it hard to get through an efficient, quick-paced session. Investing in a home gym can provide a very practical and sustainable solution for you to stick to your training goals long-term. Exersci provides high-quality and durable equipment that keeps up to date with evidence-based training to provide you with the best ability to achieve your fitness goals. This blog post will cover the importance of building strength, highlight some essential strength-building gear and explain why a home gym can help you with your New Year's resolution.

What Does Building Strength Mean for Your New Year's Resolutions?

Understanding Strength Training as a Long-Term Fitness Goal

Strength training refers to exercise where you apply external resistance to a muscular movement. The goal is to induce adaptations to muscle mass, strength and endurance. Strength training provides a myriad of benefits, with adaptations to your nervous system, improving bone health, and increasing resting metabolism (increased calorie burn), muscle size, and strength. As such, the world-health organisation reccomends that at least 2 days of strength training should be included in the recommended 300 minutes of physical activity per week (Source).

Furthermore, this makes strength training a top pick for people's New Year's resolution. Strength training is not only optimal for musculoskeletal health, either. Committing to strength training is more sustainable and accessible in comparison to some other training modalities. It is also easily measurable to track your progress. Having strength training equipment at home makes strength training even easier.

Why Strength Training Is Ideal for Home Workouts

Having strength training equipment available in your home removes many boundaries that may unmotivate you to attend the gym. For example, not having to travel and being able to be more flexible with your training times. One clear benefit of having gym equipment at home, especially in January when the gyms are crowded, is that you can train at your own pace and are not limited by other people being on the equipment you want to use.

Whether you're a beginner or an advanced lifter, a home gym is a great investment in your health. The only difference might be the equipment you opt for, which we will cover in the next section. 

Essential Exersci Home Gym Equipment for Building Strength

Best Home Gym Equipment to Support Your New Year Strength Goals

Exersci offers a range of suitable products for home gyms and can meet the demands of beginners and advanced lifters. 

For beginners, we recommend: 

• Adjustable dumbbell & kettlebell set
• Resistance bands
• Exercise mats

For advanced lifters, we recommend:

• Heavier dumbbell sets
• Kettlebells
• Weighted vest 

Equipment for Beginners

To note, these pieces of equipment are not limited only to beginners. We recommend that more advanced levels also include or consider these items.

Adjustable sets are heavily discussed throughout these blog posts. This is because you can adjust the weight to your desired training level. This means you can become introduced to resistance training with lighter loads and optimise your safety. Furthermore, you are able to scale your progress to continuously place stimuli on your muscles to drive adaptations. By opting for our adjustable kettlebell, dumbbell and barbell set, you also get a large variety of exercises that you can complete. For instance: kettlebell swings, dumbbell shoulder press, dumbbell or barbell bench press, deadlifts, etc. 

Resistance bands are also an extremely versatile piece of kit that we offer here at Exersci. Resistance bands add external resistance to movements, typically body weight movements, for example, standing on the band and performing bicep curls. The band gains more resistance as you progress through the movement and increase muscle activation, which subsequently leads to you becoming stronger and building muscle mass. 

Exercise mats are great for multiple exercises. Firstly, they encourage regular mobility and stretching sessions to reduce the risk of injury whilst you are working out. Further, they ease pressure on joints during body weight and core exercises

Equipment for Advanced Lifters

Heavier dumbbell sets are essential as you progress into advanced lifter status. Dumbbells such as our Hex dumbbell range are more durable than some of our adjustable sets, allowing them to be more resilient to withstand drops, which will likely occur when training maximally. This will allow you to get a greater value for money, whilst you can train maximally to induce adaptations to muscle growth and strength. Thus, heavier dumbbell sets will provide a long-term investment into your musculoskeletal health and strength. Dumbbells are also ideal for completing a range of exercises, including lower and upper body focuses, allowing you to keep your programmes fresh and enjoyable. 

Kettlebell training is a versatile training modality to increase muscle strength and power. Essentially, as the majority of kettlebell exercises, such as swings, are conducted at higher velocities, it forces the muscle properties to adapt to contract with a greater force of development (i.e., power). Kettlebells are also extremely useful within interval and circuit training, as well as being able to hit upper, lower and core musculature. 

Lastly, weighted vests work by adding external resistance to body weight exercises. By adding further mechanical stimuli to your exercises, not only do you get an increase in strength and muscle mass, but also an improvement in bone health and an increased calorie burn. Weighted vests are also great for engaging postural control muscles to improve posture and subsequently limit the risk of injury.

The Benefits of Building Strength

As previously mentioned, strength training provides multiple benefits to physiological and psychological processes. 

Physiological responses

Firstly, mechanical tension and the metabolic stress from resistance exercise trigger a cascade of secondary mechanisms that subsequently lead to increases in muscle size (Source). For instance, activation of cell signalling responses that are responsible for protein synthesis and cell proliferation (the body's ability to produce new cells), both play crucial roles in muscle growth. Additionally, the reliance on fast-twitch muscle fibres during high-intensity exercise leads to a preferential growth of fast-twitch muscle fibres, which are responsible for forceful contractions. Not only do you get a growth of these muscle fibres, but your body adapts to send greater impulses from your brain to the contracting muscle to recruit more of the muscle fibres you have, which increases the rate of your force development and total force output. 

It is important to note that there are a multitude of other physiological responses to strength training. In order not to go on forever, we won't go into them in detail. Some responses include increases to: bone reformation (increased bone density), tendon stiffness, metabolic rate (you burn calories quicker) & improved cardiovascular health.

Psychological responses

Many people discuss the release of endorphins that can increase your mood following exercise. However, there is an array of molecular responses that occur that lead to psychological adaptations. For example, exercise causes an increase in the production of neurotrophic biomarkers, which are markers that support neural health, neural adaptations in the brain (your brain's ability to control signals to send to muscles for movement) and support emotional regulation, thus reducing anxiety and depression. Furthermore, by regularly completing strength training, you develop habitual pathways that make being disciplined to your training programme much easier, helping you achieve your New Year's Resolutions. 

Conclusion: Make Strength Training Your Most Successful New Year Resolution

Strength training is massively important to musculoskeletal health, quality of life and reducing the risk of all-cause mortality. Therefore, it's highly recommended that you incorporate a minimum of 2 strength training sessions per week into your routine. By being able to do this at home, you provide yourself with an all-year-round, sustainable training regime. This overcomes the barriers of commercial gyms (i.e., outdated equipment, overcrowded spaces, and having to travel). Hopefully, this blog post has provided some insight into the benefits of strength training, as well as advised on some essential equipment we recommend including in your home gym. So, start your New Year Strong, and chase that New Year's Resolution!

Explore Exersci's home gym equipment range and build lasting strength today!