Bodyweight exercises

The truth is most people do not need any equipment to start with and most people waste their time in the gym on machines performing isolated and dyfunctional exercise.

Training at home can be a real advantage especially in regards to saving time but before you go out and buy expenisve machines, kettlebells, free weights etc I recommend having a strong body first. Its called relative strength. Here are a list of exercises I recommend you do before moving onto anything foreign:
1. squat - ideally atleast 100 deep squats (if pain free) correctly, check out my previous article on the importance of the squat.
2. Full  pushups - Multiples
3. Plank position for more than 1 minute
4 Find a rail or tree or go to the kids playground and perform at least 1 full pull up
The progressions would then be:
1. Pistol (single leg squat)
2. Single hand pushup or muliples
3. Plank position for over 2 minutes - plus alternatives of 1 foot high, 1 hand high
4. Multiple pull ups to the king - 1 hand pull up. Also another tweak is wrapping a bar with a towel to make it thicker.

Here is a great book just released by an ex prisioner - who made mastering body weight exercises his thing behind bars. http://www.dragondoor.com/b41.html
Here is some inspiration from the 'Evil' Russian Pawel on bodyweight exercises http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef5O8AWnTTg
And then Steve Cotter taking the pistol squat to new heights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL_n0ITXxSw

Enjoy.