More and more of us are choosing to exercise at home rather than to make regular trips to the gym. This can be more cost effective in the long run — you may have to pay for your gym equipment to start with but as time progresses this can work out to be cheaper than gym membership and other related costs.

Having a home gym also suits many people who simply want to exercise when they like and as often (or as little!) as they like. The options you can choose from when you are setting up your own home gym are varied and may well depend on the space you have available, the kind of exercise you want to take and how much money you have to spend.

In some cases people will set aside a room or a specific space in their home and use that as their gym area. For some of us this will mean setting up a range of different exercise machines and accessories. So, for example, you might have an exercise bike, rowing machine, step and exercise ball in your gym if these are the exercise methods you prefer to use.

Traditionally, however, the term home gym is most often used to describe a single piece of gym equipment that can be used for a variety of exercise and fitness purposes. The benefits of using this kind of machine are that you can access a variety of exercise options in one machine which can help you save on space and give you more fitness elements to choose from.

The types of home gyms on offer here offer a variety of exercise solutions and come in all shapes and sizes. In general terms the exercise elements that you get with this kind of gym will be referred to as stations. So, a home gym with four stations will give you four possible types of exercise machine in one.

There are many different kinds of exercises that could be covered here. So, for example, your gym could be used for weight training and related exercises, for rowing and for step work. Each gym will come with a range of potential exercises that can be taken up on the machine in question.

Some home gyms are also designed to give specific exercise and fitness benefits. So, for example, a gym that is branded as a cardio workout machine may well help with specific cardio-vascular workouts. Again, you can also tailor the exercises that you do here to get specific health benefits.

Although many home gym systems are relatively compact nowadays (many can be folded down to take up less space) you do need to factor in enough space to make sure that you can work out comfortably. So, if you are measuring up a room in your home for a gym make sure that there is enough space to have all the equipment extended.

And, do think about where you will put the gym and how heavy it is. Most home gyms nowadays are made to be lightweight but some more advanced gyms (especially those that deal with weights) can be heavy. You may, therefore, need to make sure that the floor that the gym will stand on can take the weight of the gym in the first place.