You want to stay strong and healthy. Like everyone else, you want to experience all that life has to offer until the hairs of your hair have turned gray and even then, you still want to be senile and fit enough to do the things that you weren't able to do when the responsibilities of raising a family meant putting world travel or a ship cruise in the backseat. But here's the catch: You can't reach this point if you don't workout while you're still younger and again, while you're still in the process of climbing the ladder of success career-wise while chasing after your screaming toddler, this can be a very difficult act to juggle. As a consequence, cases of obesity in America have grown more and more each year. Worse, it's affecting not only the middle-aged but the young adults as well. In this generation of fast food and fast living, it's becoming exceedingly challenging for anyone to find time for exercise.

Thankfully, there is a solution: Home training. With the costly gym memberships and the scarce time and even scarcer energies that people need to get there before or after work hours, the ultimate answer to stay fit to postpone your meeting with the Grim Reaper early on in life is to create your very own home gym. The biggest advantage is that it doesn't require monthly fees and is very convenient. You don't have to waste precious time traveling to and from the gym. Of course, you have all your equipment to yourself-- no more waiting in line just to be able to use the treadmill.

Home training, however, does have its downside, too. For starters, training alone requires a really high degree of motivation. Compared to a gym setting where you see like-minded people working up a sweat, exercising in your own home gym facility can grow stale and boring after a while. You have to be imaginative to keep your enthusiasm going. If you're planning to replicate a gym, the initial expenditure can be a bit hefty as well.

If, despite these disadvantages, you still feel that home training is for you, then you can go ahead. Find a room in your house that you rarely use, clean it up and convert it as your home gym. In case you live in a cramped apartment and don't have such a room to spare then the only viable place would be your living room. You'll just have to rearrange the furniture, though. Look at your budget. If it's shoestring tight, then at the very least, you will need to purchase dumbbells (adjustable ones save you space and money), exercise mat, workout bench and a stability ball for core training. For a more complete exercise area space and budget-permitting, add in a chest press machine and a treadmill or a cross trainer. Later on you might want to add a television, video and stereo set and a set of exercise DVDs to give variety to your workouts.

Whether you have a sparse home gym or a highly elaborate one doesn't matter. What's important is that you actually use your fitness equipment. Only then will you get its benefits.