Stay motivated this summer: Gym-inspired home design ideas

Summer is officially here, and you’ve probably been spending the past few weeks attempting to eat healthier and exercising to get fit for beach weather. Or at least, you’ve probably been trying. Or maybe just wanting to try. These home design ideas are for you.  

Like a New Year’s resolution, it’s easy to promise that you’ll get in shape for the summer. Everyone wants to be healthy and fit, but because of our busy schedules and our basic craving for food (which may be exacerbated by sugar and fat), cheat days can easily turn into cheat weeks. Unfortunately, a beach-ready body doesn’t happen overnight, so you have to keep yourself motivated. Consider some of these gym-inspired home design ideas to stay on track.

1) Stay selfie-oriented with mirrors

Mirrors are an ideal fixture in any gym, and the same goes for your home fitness centre. When exercising, following the correct form is critical to getting the right results, so you should be able to watch your movements. Mirrors can also provide good feedback in the long term. Whether you’re looking to bulk up or lose weight, seeing the changes in your body over time is important to keep yourself going. Putting a full-length mirror somewhere with plenty of light and good visibility will help you maintain your technique and sustain your progress.

2) Strategize with motion studies

Fitness comes from habits, which are made up of cues, routines, and rewards. The best way to build a good habit is not to create it from scratch, but to find a way to incorporate it into the ones you already follow.

What’s your morning routine? Where can you place triggers to make sure you don’t miss out on any of your necessary exercises? If you wake up to a cell phone alarm clock in the morning, maybe you can put it in your exercise area so you’d have no choice but to go there and turn it off, at which point you might as well exercise.

Maybe you can put your gym in an area of the house you can’t avoid, like an anteroom or just outside your bedroom. Your bad habits can be your greatest obstacle, so some of the best things you can do to stay fit would be to cycle out of them.

3) Get more with less

Another practical gym design idea is to not get too ambitious with your home gym. While it’s a good idea to keep gym equipment in plain sight, too many machines may end up intimidating and discouraging you.

Each machine represents a part of your routine, and the more machines you see, the more it could feel like troublesome work. Especially if you live in a relatively small condo unit, having a lot of machines or equipment crowded together can be counter-productive to cultivating healthy habits.

Instead of having big butterfly machines or punching bags, try just using a pull-up bar, some exercise bands, and dumbbells. You can even consider getting a mat and doing some Pilates or yoga. Think about it, having less might just help you do more.

4) Apply in-your-face motivation

One of the seven habits of highly effective people is to begin with the end in mind. That’s fair enough, but when you’re fighting through shortness of breath, aches, cramps, and other physical struggles, keeping your goals in mind can be really difficult.

To keep your head in the game, you’ve got to literally surround yourself with motivation. Think of someone you admire for their athleticness or health habits and put a picture of them up to inspire you. Look at different wall decals of inspirational quotations and stick some on your home gym wall. Even a simple whiteboard where you can track your progress and personal records can be a great visual tool to push yourself.

5) Try temptation bundling

Some of the best home gym design ideas don’t involve sports equipment, nutrition or human kinetics. They just involve knowing how to hack the human brain. In this case, you may want to sweeten the experience of working out at home by doing temptation bundling, which essentially involves tying together two activities: one you should do and are inclined to avoid, and one you love to do that isn’t necessarily productive.

One possibility is to lay out your home gym so that you can exercise while binge-watching your favourite series (Game of Thrones, anyone?). You may also consider listening to a podcast or an audiobook as you pump iron. There are plenty of quick exercise tips you can apply to help make your exercise routine more immediately rewarding.

6) Play with colours and designs

Exercise doesn’t have to happen in a room full of blacks and industrial greys. Ask yourself: do you really think you’ll be motivated to work out in a room that looks an awful lot like a prison cell? If you want to keep yourself motivated, colours are what you need.

Consider decorating your gym with your favourite colour. If you have none, you can try going with oranges or yellows for a jolt of energy. Blues can be great to make yourself feel cool throughout your routine, and natural greens can inspire a zen-like mood. Neutral colours like ivory, cream or tan can expand a space, making it feel alive but not off-putting.

7) Keep your cool

One of the most overlooked condo exercise tips is, surprisingly, to make sure your workout area has enough ventilation. When you exercise, you burn calories, so your body temperature goes up. If you’re exercising in a poorly ventilated area, the space will get real hot and humid.

Pretty soon, you’ll be struggling for every breath, and you’ll hit that wall hard and fast. Consider setting up your home gym somewhere that has a high ceiling or lots of floor space. If that’s not an option, find a place where you can set up a nice cross-breeze via an open window and a door.

8) Stay in the zone by increasing convenience

Another critical factor to stay fit is convenience. A workout routine often involves not just one exercise, but several different exercises that are integrated into a seamless program. If the flow is disrupted in any way, it can be hard to get yourself back in the rhythm you need to finish strong.

Therefore, a good home gym design should minimize interruptions by making transitions as smooth as possible. Make sure everything you need is easily accessible. Towels should be within easy reach. Yoga mats should be easy to retrieve and lay onto the floor. If you don’t have much space in your apartment but have to use different weights for different types of exercises, consider getting a weight rack or a set of adjustable dumbbells.

Basically, just plan your workout space well so that you can go through the motions with minimal trouble. And ensure other parts of your home are designed to keep you motivated and active throughout the day.

Being toned or muscular comes from consistent, habitual effort, and remember, being healthy is the most important thing. We hope these gym-inspired home design ideas help you get healthy and fit for the summer!

By Patricia Evans