Unused Home Exercise Equipment. How To Beat The Trend

Happy New Year!:
Say hello to questionable gym memberships and your soon-to-be unused home exercise equipment!

And the video & the comment are funny because they’re true.

This isn’t one of Cracked’s Honest Commercials, but it’s still right.

Especially if a Consumer Reports survey is to be believed,…

So out of the $4+ Billion US sales of home exercise equipment every year,

Approximately 40% of if gets used much less than people expect.

$1.6 Billion A Year Wasted:
And by the end of the year, home-exercisers are more than 10% likely to not exercise at-all.

What many studies would suggest about this phenomenon is something similar to the traditional best advice on exercise.

It’s not really important which specific exercise you do, unless you have a specific goal, like building overall muscle for example,

The Best Exercise Is The One You Will Actually Do:
What’s more important is the old Project Management axiom: The best tool for the job is the one you will Actually USE;

-Not necessarily the fanciest or newest.

It’s not just a question of Motivation alone, or even Initial Fascination.

-With either a new fad, or the dopamine-boost from purchasing a big shiny new contraption you’re positive you’ll use 2 hours a day, 365 days a year!

Shiny & New Are No Guarantees Of Home Gym Equipment Going Unused:

Studies about purchasing also back this up when testing people against the exercise they guessed they’d do, and what they actually did.

The financial commitments went down as people realized they’d really work out less, so why buy the $800 treadmill instead of the $400 one?

The best exercise for you is one that is the greatest percentage easier and more-fun than all the others.

Do Whatever Is Easier & More Fun Than The Others:
-That is the one you will go back to. That is the one you will find an excuse to do instead of avoid, even when avoiding committments seems easy or even advisable.

That is the one you will see as a valuable component of your life and your health, instead of a complex logistical inconvenience.

And maybe the important thing is to try several and then settle on the one you find works the best and requires the least convincing for you to do it.

-Preferably no convincing at-all, you just get to it.

Just don’t buy a gym membership, those are harder to get out of than an IRS audit.

Some People Need The Social Component:
The other component, or components of why Home Equipment ends up being used less?

It could be The Social Element.

Some people are private, or -Think- they need to be on their own.

But many studies indicate otherwise for the majority of exercise success.

Most people really do exercise much better in a group of compatriots, because they really are much more social.

And if they make friends with regulars, the sense of shared labors can bring military-like esprit-de-corps to exercise.

To Avoid The Unused Exercise Equipment Curse, Tilt All Odds In Your Favor!:

The lone-wolves are unlikely to experience the same sense of connectedness and may eventually drop-out because of that deficit.

-Not to knock introverts, though; because everyone is different and needs different things.

But to reap the long-term benefits of any exercise, the effort really has to be a marathon and not a sprint.

The one you pick can’t be the one with the most excuses around it.

-Or clothes piling up on top of it.

So keep that exercise equipment from going unused and choose wisely…

Photo/Video Credits:
Video by CollegeHumor
Photo “gym”, by Graeme Maclean

Links:
• More Coverage: NYT
• Source Study: An.Beh.Med.- Comparing Psychosocial Predictors of Physical Activity Adoption and Maintenance