Any Advice?
 

Ok so we got our tax return, and I have decided to buy something for home to cut down on going to the gym (with my schedule, it's not always feasible unless I want to work out with 500 sweaty military men, which...I do not.) I had first decided on an eliptical machine- burns decent calories, I can feel it in my thighs and legs, and even a bit in my tummy- however, even with the moving arm poles I feel nothing at all in my arms. *sniffles* My upper arms are terrible and at my age I feel I am doomed to flabby arms! I already have fear about my tummy- from 3 babies and my weight, I am terrified about the flabby tummy from extra skin, but my arms seem they could trim up if I really work at it.

So- they have those home gyms- that gives you different exercises for arms, legs and tummy- different resistance levels, ect. It's more like weight training though, rather than calorie burning like the eliptical. I don't care too awful much about burning more calories if I can lose the weight just as easily with weight training. I don't want to be just skinny, I want to tighten my body up too, though I don't want too much muscle or anything.

Any advice about which would be better? And if you think eliptical is the way to go, any suggestions for upper arm specific exercises?

I have an elliptical and I love it but my caveat with ellipticals is I don't really think they make good ones unless you start getting into the $1000+ range.

I know you indicated weight training isn't calorie burning but it is!! I wouldn't recommend a home gym but I would recommend investing in some dumbbells and a ball. You can do a lot with just those 2 things.

I actually found this training set at walmart that has great reviews too and was thinking about trying it. It's so much cheaper than a gym or machine.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/allRe...ct_id=10737823

Any thoughts?

I don't know anything about it and I'm not sure how a rectangular ball would differ than a regular one. Resistance bands are good and I have been using some for some of my workouts. It really doesn't take much to get a good workout. Some of the best workouts require only your body weight such as pushups, lunges, squats, pullups (well which requires a pullup bar), tricep dips, etc.

Oh and Amazon has it cheaper with more reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Barrys-Bootcam...dp/B001DD2D2Q/

Originally Posted by nelie:
I don't know anything about it and I'm not sure how a rectangular ball would differ than a regular one.

I don't know anything about this either but I would tend to think that the 'rectangular' ball may a bit easier to balance on then on the regular round one.
But that's just my layman's thinking.