If you had no gym membership or home gym and could buy one piece of equipment, what would it be?
Home Gym Equipment

It would depend on who I was and what I was trying to accomplish.

You left out critical details. Am I a young body builder with a huge body in great shape in need of massive weights? Or am I a 308 pound aging male who needs to just "work out" and lose weight? Or am I a middle aged female who desires aerobic and modest strength training? Or an elderly retired person who wants very modest strength training?

In my case I bought a Schwinn Recumbent Bike and I just did 30 minutes on it in the "rolling hills" workout at resistance level 9. I made 8.2 miles.

I also have a bowflex in the basement and tomorrow I'm going to do my strength training taking a day off from aerobic exercise.

You know, for the price, I like the looks of the Total Workout machine that goes for about 400 bucks. I think it's better than the Total Gym 1700 model. I have a relative that lives on a mountain. They are overweight and looking to diet and exercise. They are fairly poor and a long way from the gym. I figured they could get a solid aerobic workout just walking up and down the mountain and that means the thing they would have a hard time doing is finding a way to do a little bit of strength training. So, I sent them the Total Workout model that I would get if I were fishing around for one.

Again, as I said, different people different situations. You can get a better strength workout with a set of free weights, a Bench and a few other items that are far less expensive than my Bowflex. But would you use them? The machine you want to use is a good machine to get.

I believe EVERYONE needs Aerobic AND strength exercise. Now, I suppose there are some single machines that do both. Or, you could what I did for my relative and get a strength training machine and do the aerobic out in nature. Or you could do what I did and use one machine for aerobic and one for strength. Around here the winters can be cold, snowy, icy, and long. I prefer to do my aerobic in the house where the weather is good and there is never a weather reason not to do it.

I have a fondness for the Bowflex but I like the looks of some of these total workout machines. But the important thing is that you know what your goals are and you buy a machine that can help you reach those goals. If I were a big work out boy with the huge muscles....I'd be pumping free weights on a bench setup or that machine the weight lifters like to use. But for just general shaping up...for the person out of shape who wants to get a machine that he can hop on and enjoy using.....Then machines like Bowflex, total workout, total gym make sense. My only concern about total gym is that their base and middle models seem a little on the cheaply made side to me.

Good luck. Take the time to analyze your real goals and to match them up with the equipment that can take you there.

I am really satisfied with the Bowflex Xtreme SE Home Gym. It has everything you need and is of good quality. You can perform a total of 70 exercises on this machine. Check out this review - Bowflex Xtreme SE Home Gym

A Bench or Squat Rack.

Squat Rack with a appropriate amount of weight plates.


Best wishes


Chillen

What about cardio -- elliptical, bike or treadmill?

weights>cardio, unless you are training for an endurance event.


I'd take a power rack set. I count this as one piece of equipment because you can drop a lump sum for a bar, bench, power rack, and weights. That's really all you need.

For running, just get running shoes and run outside.

For bicycling, get a road bicycle (or mountain bicycle if you hit the off-road trails). You can ride it inside by adding a trainer stand.

Running or bicycling outside have the advantage in that you can actually get useful work out of your exercise (running or bicycling to work, school, store, gym, etc.). Plus, you can go find more interesting scenery outside.

squat rack / bench with full barbell set.
By far the most useful piece of equipment anyone can own.