In order to purchase home gym equipment that you will get years of effective use and enjoyment out of (and that won't wind up building nothing but dust and cobwebs unused in a corner of the basement or garage), consider the following three suggestions:

Bigger Does Not Mean Better - Consider exercise equipment that is portable, meaning that it's lightweight and easy to carry around with you wherever you go. That way you are able to bring your workout equipment with you when you travel, take a break from work, or even simply have to switch to another room in your own home if the one where you usually do your workouts suddenly needs to be put to another use.

Portability also usually means "stowability", in other words, the ability to stow or store your home gym equipment away so you don't have to stare at it sitting out all the time in whatever space you're using for your workouts.

Serving both of these ends is the Bodylastics system, so lightweight and compact that it all can be stored in a small gym bag. When considering a hefty home gym like the Bowflex or Total Gym, don't forget that should you ever decide to move to a new home, you'd either have to move that monstrosity with you, or you'd have to give it up when you go - either way is no fun.

You Get What You Purchase, NOT What You Pay For - In other words, you don't have to pay through the nose to get yourself a high-quality home gym system. People tend to think (and advertisers tend to capitalize on the belief) that you get what you pay for.

But if you pay through the nose for garbage, you still get garbage. And, conversely, you can pay very little (like $50, say) for a small and simple set of tools that are built of the best quality materials and designed both for efficiency and to last.

How Mechanically Inclined Are You? And how organized? A big home gym machine is comprised of many parts, some big and heavy, some very small. When your attention is really on using the equipment to work out, build muscle, tone your body, etc. how much time and energy do you really want to spend constructing your workout machine?

It's hard enough to put a piece of Ikea furniture together. How much easier do you think a workout machine is going to be. And that's even counting how if you do it wrong - heaven forbid - you could end up causing yourself considerable damage (forgetting for a moment about what damage you could also cause the equipment).

Then there's also always the problem of small parts and pieces. Where do you keep them all? How do you remember what they are? How do you make sure that you don't lose any parts (spare or otherwise) that you may not need now, but inevitably will at some point?

Is a personal belonging with 3,000 separate, individual parts requiring a potentially weeklong construction project really what you're looking for in a home gym? A product such as Bodylastics, on the other hand, is ready to use out of the box.