By Matt Griffin

Once upon a time, working out from the comfort of your living room meant tying back your mullet, popping in a VHS and sprouting an undetectable sweat into your neon razorback tank top. Those days of dance-along videos have faded out with the headbands that went along with them. Today, home fitness systems are a respectable market with the potential to yield big results for devotees.

Many men look down on home workout systems. There’s something initially undesirable about this living-room phenomenon: Perhaps it’s their gimmicky, infomercial nature, apparent low intensity or that it lacks the formality of a gym. As fitness clubs grow crowded and schedules fill up, these convenient options have begun to attract tons of loyal fans who swear by their effectiveness. Below, we've provided you with a selection of our favorite home fitness systems.

Cross Fit

Developed by former gymnastics coach Greg Glassman, Cross Fit is a high-intensity workout regime based on different alternating exercises that promise a total workout. Although many Cross Fit gyms are popping up across the nation, daily workouts can be found at the organization’s main blog, where hardcore followers keep in tune with the program’s demands.

According to the site’s literature, Cross Fit seeks to serve all types of people by changing the degree of intensity instead of the type of workout. Translation: Anyone can use a Cross Fit. Workouts are sports-inspired, from Olympic dead lifts to gymnastic parallel bars, in order to train your body for athletic activity. Cross Fit enthusiasts claim to separate their method from typical workout facilities by offering high-intensity cardiovascular workouts coupled with compound movements. This belief replaces typical routines, like lateral raises or leg extensions, with push-presses and squats, claiming anaerobic cardio is more effective at peaking fitness.

Cross Fit openly asserts it is the principle strength and conditioning program for many police academies, military special operation units, martial artists, and tactical teams. Follow its short daily workouts -- such as three rounds as fast as possible of 800 meters running, 50 back extensions and 50 sit-ups -- and monitor results.

P90X

Sponsored by BeachBody.com, P90X is a 90-day plunge into total fitness. During your 13-week trial, training guru Tony Horton -- an enthusiastic Michael Scott of the fitness world -- beats people up with the 12-DVD series that guarantees a full-body change. The muscle-building, cardio-trimming series includes a diet plan, three different programs catering to users' specific goals and workouts ranging from predictable dosages of biceps, triceps and shoulders to unique conditioning via kenpo and yoga.

The program centers on “muscle confusion” which involves varying exercises to avoid fitness plateaus and constantly challenging your body to adapt to new conditions. In order to achieve P90X’s results, users only need versatile resistance bands but can opt to purchase dumbbells and a chin-up bar instead. Before the program begins, P90Xers are advised to weigh, measure and take a picture of themselves in order to record their eventual progress.

Each workout lasts anywhere from one hour to 90 minutes about six times a week, but users are encouraged to rest when they are feeling wasted. Although the DVDs promise that varying levels of participants can stomach this system, P90X is not for beginners.

The 300 Workout

When director Zack Snyder unleashed his groundbreaking war epic, 300, international audiences fell to their scrawny knees at its multicolored portrayal of a badass. The movie poster says it all: King Leonidas, played by Gerald Butler, stretches his chest -- a sword in one hand, a shield in the other -- screaming while a bloody battle rages behind. Despite the protective gear, despite the testosterone-scented manliness, Gerald Butler stands half-naked wearing nothing but a crimson cape and a leather Speedo -- just as Snyder wanted it. Since its 2006 release, 300 has become synonymous with cartoonishly ripped bodies.

Before filming began, Snyder was looking for a trainer who could achieve this sculpted ideal of the male body. Enter Mark Twight, a hardcore trainer who still preaches the “no pain, no gain” mantra, free from the smiles and coddling of the modern instructor. Film actors entered Twight’s invite-only compound in Salt Lake City known as Gym Jones, where the crew prepared for the film five days a week, two hours a day with additional fight training. Although people in the movie followed varying regimens, the now not-so-secret "300 workout" looks something like this: 15 bodyweight rows, 25 bodyweight squats, 15 push-ups, 50 jumping jacks, 20 mountain climbers, 10 close-grip push-ups, and 15 bodyweight rows.

The Ultimate Home Gym: Hoist Half Cage Ensemble

Infomercials love home fitness systems; these empty promises of transformed bodies through devices so strange that it just might work attack us late at night, when we are sleepless and vulnerable. When oddly shaped packages arrive, heavy under the weight of a kettlebell, regret gradually surfaces. Don’t let these mistakes shadow your faith.

Hoist’s Half Cage Ensemble promises something new -- but at a cost of over $3,300. With the investment for what potentially could end up as a garage dust collector, the Half Cage Ensemble boasts hundreds of workouts under one frame. Superior architecture allows users to switch between resistances effortlessly, dual directional lifting and over ten positions for free-weight exercises. Versatility is key.

Unlike competitors, the Hoist Half Cage Ensemble can replace an entire gym within the comfort of your home, making it a worthier investment than any gimmick that guarantees unattainable goals.

Home sweet home

Home workout systems are like diet fads: several come and go, a friend of a friend has tried one out and apparently swears by the results and, no matter what, we always seem skeptical to adopt them as our own. Replacing our gym routines with something accessible within the comfort of our living space appears too good to be true -- almost paradoxical.

Nonetheless, a new wave of at-home fitness players have arrived, not with empty infomercials or schemes, but with methods that inspire results --
without the fanfare of our crowded gyms.

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