Home Gym Setup for Cheap: Free Weights

While you can use your body or things like milk jugs and cans for weights, having fun colored free weights make lifting easier and more fun. Deciding on what weight(s) you need to start at is the trickier thing.
If you have access to a sporting goods section or a gym, trying out their weights is the easier solution. Otherwise, try to guess based on weights you would normally lift repeatedly around the house.

As a petite woman, I’m using about a medium set of weights right now (shown in picture). This set is 3 pounds for hard lifts, 5 pounds for the medium ones, and 10 pounds for the ones I’ve built up a lot of power to. However, I started at 2, 3 and 5 pounds. Went up gradually with an 8 pound for a while. Stronger women and men will likely need heavier ones.

An initial set should be around $50 or less for three different weights. Save yourself some money and get a set now for when you work your way up from where you are initially.

Those really into hand weights can get super fancy sets that go up really high to $250ish and use the same bar with multiple add-ons at the ends. They look much like the traditional weights we associate with weight lifting, but two individual ones rather than one big one. This is absolutely NOT necessary and not what even my trainer the fitness model uses.

You do NOT need to have the heaviest weights, though. If you get some that are too light overall, they may be just right for difficult lifts. Hence the reason I have the 3 pounds for a deltoid muscle lift that I do.
You can also make the weights harder to lift instead of switching to heavier ones.

Two easy ways to increase the difficulty are

(1) count to 5 as you raise and lower the weights so you’re holding them longer and

(2) do more sets of reps.

Typically, I do 3 sets of 15 reps for each of my weights. But a few I’ll do 20-25 reps or do the longer hold.

My fitness guru Maureen doesn’t lift much more than I do, but because of how she lifts them and the reps she stays in her fitness model shape. Be careful not to go so heavy that your form goes bad. You could risk injuring yourself or just make the exercise less efficient.

In general, you’ll want to keep your shoulders back in retracted mode. And you want to keep your muscles engaged both up and down rather than allowing them to relax at either endpoint. You can test whether your muscle is engaged by doing just one arm, and pushing on the muscle you’re working out with the other to see if it’s working or relaxed. What moves to do with your hand weights?

Obviously, the internet has a ton of videos and sites you can choose from. If you’re like me and want books, I’d recommend browsing the used book section either online or in person. This isn’t something that changes much, and people either learn the moves or don’t use the books, so there are plenty of used books to choose from.
Bonus: They usually show you really good form.

Don’t worry about which sex the exercises are shown for. That’s just for marketing. As far as muscle size goes, that depends on how much testosterone you have. Women can get pretty fit and have #michelleobamaarms, but we’re never going to look like The Terminator — Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Three books I found useful:

(1) The Gold’s Gym Book of Strength Training by Ken Sprague

(2) The Body Sculpting Bible for Women by James Villepigue and Huge Rivera

(3) Body Change by Montel Williams and Wini Linguvic.

I just went with ones that looked pretty good at the used book store rather than worrying about the absolute best one for me. I just found it annoying that the Bible for Women was written by men because it definitely felt like I was being mansplained to in the text sometimes. But the exercises are solid and it was relatively cheap.

I did glance through a book Schwarzenegger was featured in, but the exercises centered around becoming a bodybuilder rather than just getting solid muscles, so it wasn’t something practical for me. Given that you’re looking at a cheap home gym article, likely a bodybuilder-focused book isn’t right for you at this stage either.

Keep in mind that many of the exercises shown using gym equipment can be modified for free weights and/or exercise bands. You just have to think through the motions and how much weight to use.
Try some basic moves for biceps, triceps, and deltoids.

See what you like and vary it up to keep your workout mentally interesting as well as work out different parts of those muscles in different ways.

Your muscles will adapt faster than you probably think they will. That means they won’t be challenged enough if you just do the same things over and over. That’s mostly why I normally end up going to the gym to meet up with my trainer bimonthly. I don’t have a gym membership. But I do go to martial arts class normally. Obviously, with the coronavirus problem, I’m not going out to either now.

For me, getting precise exercises for precise muscle groups is why I’m using a personal trainer. Mine had done massage therapy, so she knows how to un-kink my muscles as well as exact locations and how to work them.

This is the priciest option though, and unless you’re also trying to really get your fitness up or have some particular problems as I do with scoliosis, you can instead try to do just one session with a trainer to get some basics started.

Do let me know what you’re doing with your free weights and what you find most useful.