Let’s start this blog off with a simple exercise for you – not the ones you do at the gym, a mental one. You’re looking to regularly work out, and you go visit these 2 gyms near your home in the hopes of potentially joining:
Option 1: |
Option 2: |
If cost isn’t a factor, which gym are you more likely to join? Most likely, the second one, the more premium one. Here are several reasons why that may be the case:
- Versatility: All of us seek different things while working out – some of us are looking to lose fat, others gain muscle, a few of us may just be focused on increasing our mobility. There’s also a chance these goals may change over time, and we need a gym that is accommodative of all this through a variety of equipment.
- Scalability: Real progress takes years, not months – and commercial gyms like the one on the right are built for that. There should be no artificial ceilings that force you to outgrow the equipment and plateau in your workout journey.
- Safety & Durability: On one hand, any kind of physical effort comes with risk of injury – the single biggest impediment in helping us achieve our workout goals. On the other hand, we won’t reach those goals unless we really push ourselves. Therefore, we need a gym with safe practices and durable machines that function well under repeated, high-stress use.
- Guidance: Unless we have been regularly working out for years, we require direction when it comes to constructing our workouts and effectively executing them. Gyms like the one on the right are most likely to come with trained professionals to help you with this.
Now, the question arises – can we replicate all these capabilities at home? Earlier, when it came to the gym vs home workout debate, the biggest impediment in choosing the latter stemmed from a lack of space. A successful home gym setup is achieved when you have commercial-grade capabilities without commercial gym sprawl – and today, it is quite possible to achieve that. In fact, both of Portl’s offerings – the UltraGym and the Portl Studio – provide a premium home gym experience in just 4 feet of space.
| Portl’s Home Gyms | |
| The UltraGym
150+ exercises in a footprint of 2.4 square feet
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The Portl Studio
India’s 1st Personal Training Mirror
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Here’s a 4-step questionnaire that will help you create a premium home gym specific to your workout goals.
Step 1: What are you looking to achieve in your workouts?
Setting up and working out regularly in a home gym involves both a cost & time investment. Therefore, we need to be absolutely sure of what we’re doing all this for. Many of us workout to achieve one (or several) of these goals:
| What You’re Looking To Achieve | What Kind Of Training Delivers It | What Makes This Best Suited | Ideal Portl Device For This Goal |
| Lose weight or get less fat | Cardio, HIIT | Optimal fat burn comes with metabolic stimulus and sustained calorie burn. | Fire Mode in the Portl Studio |
| Get stronger | Progressive strength training | Muscles get stronger by constantly adapting to increasing resistance. | Portl UltraGym |
| Look visibly ‘ripped’ | Variable resistance training (incl. controlled eccentrics) | A holistic, varied strength training program leads to increased hypertrophy, giving your body that ‘ripped’ feel. | 5 different strength training modes in the Portl UltraGym |
| Improving flexibility, mobility and balance | Dynamic yoga, mobility flows like dance | These kinds of workouts lengthen muscles and improve your joint range. | Water Mode in the Portl Studio |
| Reducing stress & gaining mental clarity | Yoga, meditation, guided low-intensity sessions | These lead to parasympathetic recovery, activating your body’s ’rest and digest’ system. | Air Mode in the Portl Studio |
While the UltraGym is ideally suited for strength training and the Studio is more holistic in nature, both can help you achieve all these goals. For example, the Earth Mode in the Portl Studio is all about strength and resistance training, while the Rowing Mode in the UltraGym brings cardio into your strength training workouts. Either way, click here to speak to a Portl professional about which product is best for your specific goals.
Step 2: How do you plan on progressing towards your goals?
Once you’ve identified the outcomes you’re looking for, there needs to be a plan in place to help you get there. If it’s a solid plan, you will start seeing results sooner than expected.
Let’s take the example of you working out with the goal of ‘getting ripped’. Here’s what you can expect if you follow through on a progressive, hypertrophy-centric workout plan:
| In 1 Month | In 3 Months | In 6 Months | In 1 Year |
| While it doesn’t show in the mirror yet, your strength jumps considerably and you start showing better control during lifts. | Hypertrophy becomes visually apparent, with noticeable increases in muscle size and clearer muscle separation. | A clear V-taper/athletic frame emerges, and your friends & family definitely start noticing. | Gains compound after months of consistent, intelligent training. You’re now building a body you can maintain for decades. |
The trick becomes – how do you create such a plan for your home gym workout? Guidance is key to this, and there are several options:
- In this fitness influencer era, you have access to several free workouts online. However, most of these are generic and not concentrated on your specific requirements.
- Personal training at home is, but then you’re looking at regular, rising costs (starting around ₹1,500 per session) on top of the initial investment you’ve made on the gym equipment for home workout.
What sets Portl’s offerings apart from others in the market is that training comes in-built with each device, at no additional cost. When you bring the UltraGym or the Portl Studio to your home, you bring the expertise of many top trainers across the world through guided, pre-loaded workouts that optimize your specific targets.
Meet Portl’s World Class Coaches |
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Step 3: Is there a home gym that optimizes this journey?
For goals like better mobility and losing weight, the way forward is to have workouts that lead to progression over years, not just months or weeks. All of Portl’s workout programs are geared towards long-term success.
It gets more complicated when it comes to strength training goals, as that is dependent on the increasing resistance of your equipment. You don’t want to reach a stage where you overgrow the equipment, as that will result in stalled progress and more additions required to supplement your journey.
Portl UltraGym has variable resistance ranging from 0.5kg to 70kg, with the upper limit suitable for even the most advanced strength trainers. Moreover, modes like isokinetic and eccentric in the UltraGym manipulate the resistance and multiply the effective loads, demanding more from you per kg in terms of muscular load.
Finally, what makes Portl’s offerings optimal for your progress is the incorporation of real-time performance analytics in your home workout plan like automatic rep counting and time-under-tension. We track your workouts as they’re happening and provide instant feedback, ensuring that you’re optimizing every workout en route to your goals.
Step 4: Can you work out by yourself with this home gym?
When you invest in a home gym, it is assumed that you will undertake most of these workouts alone. This is where the experience differs compared to actual gyms, and two things need to be taken into account to ensure your progress stays even:
| Safety
“How do I avoid injury risk working out alone at home?” |
Motivation
“How do I constantly push myself regularly in order to reach my goals?” |
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Now that you have a good sense of how to gym at home effectively, it’s time to choose which home gym to go with. While this blog has mentioned what sets both of Portl’s offerings apart in comparison to the rest, we know that seeing is truly believing. To that end, click here to set up a live demo for either the UltraGym or the Portl Studio.
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