It makes sense to revisit this issue as we age. Personally I’ve held to the nigh daily bodyweight alternative for quiet a number of years. Some of those exercises are plain arduous. And really, the bodyweight practice ranks light years better than a sort of nothing practiced by a severe contingent.
So if arriving from that contingent and seeking betterment, even if wrought by the gym fever, I would counsel spending time with home bodyweight exercises with the joints still stiff and muscles undeveloped. Not that you couldn’t take tiny sips of soup at the gourmet Michelin restaurant, but why would you? - money and time too early and too foolishly spent, if that’s of any consideration.
From a non-professional twenty-plus-year-long practitioner of different gym and bodyweight dynamics, I’d suggest a month of the calmer and home-based treatment before hitting the weights. And that’s assuming you’re on fire, for there otherwise isn’t immediate haste.
But to circle back, ruminating year after year with a trainer friend of mine (not that general research discords), resistance training is of substantial benefit to bone density and resilience to fracture and increasing wear with age: not resilient to minor injuries by any means, and hardly resilient to even the greater especially with those weights improperly managed. But proper care employed and the endoskeletal benefits outweigh the risks, even coming from an existing bodyweight routine.
Without a gym membership for some ten years now, I’ve still occasionally visited gyms on a one off basis or as a visitor. And every time I work with weights I feel an altogether different sort of exhaustion challenging to simulate for those of us not involved in hard core calisthenics or otherwise wielding an axe and saw in natural environments.
Not that I’ve not gotten creative in home settings devoid of weight equipment. I’ve adapted a habit of doing squats with twenty liter water jugs which limits me to no more than twenty reps (usually fifteen), loads more demanding than the slow 40+ rep bodyweight or jumping squats. And for a while now I’ve leveraged the elevation of chairs to severely augment motion and confine slow, conscientious push-ups to no more than fifteen demanding reps as well, among other adjustments. And pullups spaces have always been paramount.
So unless you harness a genuine craving for gyms and the time-cost involvement they presuppose (the commute, the locker room, the waits on equipment, the wandering through large spaces, the distractions, the leveraging of other amenities for which you have no legitimate need), I rather limit gym frequentations to one or two sessions a week to derive substantial incremental resistance training benefits in unison with the existing home/street bodyweight routine.
Even if you’re not bothered by any of the above (not time-wise nor financially), have the spare time and embrace the five-day-a-week gym routine like so many (for let’s face it, even I welcome the social energy), to make it a nearly daily habit runs a risk, and I say, a high risk of becoming dependent on such an environment. That is to say, you’ll (with a certain likelihood) associate workouts with this external element and, should circumstances prove adverse, refrain from exercise altogether until a more fortuitous time.
Logistically, you’ll always have the freedom to exercise at home, on the street, right then and there. But psychologically, you’ll not want to nor even recognize the alternative as legitimate, so high the gym endorphin byproduct. (Again, with substantial likelihood.) I’ve observed this in myself those earlier gym heavy years and across endless groups of others.
A gym becomes a narcotic. The business thrives on that model. So like any narcotic yielding certain benefit, I prefer to limit its usage to that minimum range of the curb just sufficient to derive greatest incremental benefit.
Should you opt to rather maximize your days at the gym, the way I see it, and many would disagree, but all psychological imperfections and liabilities considered (where I’m a notable skeptic), you face as great a long-term health risk as avoiding gyms altogether for strictly home based exercise.
Hence to directly address the opening question, I’m strongly inclined to the policy of viewing the home-based workouts as your primary equity, and the occasional gym as a necessary supplement, the sum of which to be practiced on a daily basis. Thus you 1) reap the incremental benefits of strength training, 2) reduce the gym cost-time involvement to one-two days per week 3) cultivate psychological resilience to circumstantial mishaps inherent to gyms and 4) (bonus) better appreciate the occasional social dynamic.
Questions, comments? Connect.