Ep 8: Build the Ultimate Home Gym to Make Gains, Save Time, and Be Consistent
One of our big goals on this podcast is sustainability and consistency, and the whole process of going to the gym is a huge barrier for many of us.
The hassle of preparing your clothing, gym bag, nutrition, and then factoring in drive time, weather, convenience within our schedules, compounded by access to random equipment at the gym, sharing a rack or barbell with other members, and sometimes dealing with policies like “no deadlifting” are just some of the many reasons we find to just hit the snooze button and avoid our workouts altogether.
That’s why building your own home gym can be a huge factor in developing good habits and consistency with your workout routine. It saves a ton of time, you can choose exactly the equipment you need, you can control the entire experience, and you can be more flexible with your training schedule. It’s a simple but highly effective step you can take to eliminate excuses and keep making progress.
In today’s episode, we cover:
The pros and cons of a home gym
Where in your home and how much space you need for your home gym
What type of flooring to use
Basic equipment to get started for the main lifts
Extra equipment for accessory and bodybuilding movements
Nice to have equipment to cover almost everything else
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Transcript
This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.
[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.
[00:00:29]Welcome to episode eight of Wits & Weights. One of our big goals on this podcast is sustainability and consistency. And the whole process of going to the gym is sometimes a huge barrier for many of us to just that the hassle of preparing your clothes, your gym bag, your food factoring in drive time, whether.
[00:00:55] Convenience within our schedules compounded by access to random equipment at the gym, sharing a rack or barbell with other members waiting your turn. Sometimes dealing with policies like no deadlifting. These are just some of the many reasons we find to just hit the snooze button and avoid our workouts.
[00:01:15] That's why building your own home gym can be a huge factor in developing good habits and consistency with your workout routine. It saves a ton of time. You can choose exactly the equipment you need. You can control the entire experience and environment, and you can be more flexible with your training schedule.
[00:01:36] It's a simple but highly effective step you can take to eliminate excuses and keep making. In today's episode, we cover the pros and cons of a home gym. Where in your home and how much space you need for your home gym. What type of flooring to use the basic equipment to get you started and make tons of gains on the mainland.
[00:02:01] Then some extra equipment you might need for accessory or bodybuilding movements. And finally, nice to have equipment to cover almost everything else and build the ultimate home gym. First, let's start by talking about the pros and cons of. Jim, the biggest pro the biggest benefit of a home gym is just that you don't have to drive anywhere.
[00:02:24] It saves you a ton of time. It could be anywhere from 30 minutes, but more likely to one or two hours because of the entire process of getting ready and traveling and getting your session going at the gym. And, and doing that times two because of the round trip. And because you don't have that extra fixed time of traveling to the gym, you could split up your sessions for example, or you can have smaller or larger sessions, uh, much more flexibly.
[00:02:54] So there's flexibility with your time. You can squeeze in an hour at lunch. If you're working from home, for example, or you can sleep in an extra 30 minutes and just get a little bit more recovery before you work out, of course you don't need to pack a big gym bag or a change of clothes where, and you might forget something, you have it all right there, convenient to you.
[00:03:17] All of your equipment is there. Everything's waiting for you ready to go with the settings you'd like with consistently marked barbells, consistent weights between plates and dumbbells. And if you are taking care of your family, if you have children to care for where you need to be there for them, or you're single parent, it's just that much more convenient because you're in the same space.
[00:03:42] You're only a few steps away. So that's the big one related to time and convenience. The second thing is you could research and buy the exact equipment you need over time for your specific goals. The equipment will be consistent from one workout to the next. You know, I mentioned the plates and I mentioned the dumbbells, but you might also consider the barbell, the narrowing on the barbell, the height of your rack, the height of the hooks on the rack, the height of your bench, the angle of your bench, and so on.
[00:04:14] You could also make sure that it's safe. You know, you have the right pins in the rack, the spotter arm. You know how things are balanced, how things are level, you have complete control over the equipment to become familiar with it and make sure that it's safe, which is a huge component of lifting over the longterm and lifting, sustaining.
[00:04:35] And of course you can keep expanding your gym over time and add equipment as you need it. When you need it for your particular goals, this is your environment. And now that is a huge one. For some people you can wear whatever you want. You can throw on whatever clothes you want. Don't have to worry about the judgment of others or how you look.
[00:04:54] You can listen to your music as loud as you want, whatever type of music you want. You could change the temperature. You could change the light. For example, I actually have a smart bulb right over my rack so that when I do bench presses, I can dim or turn off the lights. So it's not shining in my face.
[00:05:12] You have privacy to practice your form without other others commenting or trying to give you advice or bothering you. And for some people, this is much more of a problem than others. In some of these big box gyms, having a home gym helps you establish consistency and accountability. Because it's always visible.
[00:05:32] It's easy to access. It helps you stick to your routine. Totally eliminating that excuse of going to the gym. And of course you won't get the flu or COVID from those other disgusting gym patrons. I'm kidding. Or am I. All right now, let's talk about some of the disadvantages that might come up that we have to consider.
[00:05:52] The first one is it takes space. You have to have enough space for all your equipment, but it's not as much space as you think. And we can get creative with this. If you're able to find space for some of the other things in your house, you should probably be able to find space for if this is something serious for your life.
[00:06:12] In addition to two dimensional space. There's the three-dimensional space, the height that is required for not only pull and chin ups, but pressing. And we'll talk about the height requirements in a bit costs. Okay. Some people think this is a disadvantage because now you have to buy all of this.
[00:06:33] Expensive equipment or seemingly expensive. And there are strategies where you can shop used. You could simply acquire what you need over time, so it's manageable within your budget. But I would actually say that the cost could also be an advantage because the equipment you invest in can easily. Decades, if not your entire life, if well-maintained and comparing that to a monthly membership at a gym over time, there is a payback of probably five to 10 years.
[00:07:04] And once you get over that initial hump of equipment, after that, it's really more of an elective process of if you need this or that over time and small investments here. Now, the next advantage is really a more practical one. And that is that you're going to have limited equipment, at least initially, you're not going to have the 50 machines that a big box gym might have.
[00:07:29] So what you might do is keep paying your gym membership, which are usually pretty inexpensive, 20, $30 a month. There's really not that much for a typical gym membership, just so that you can go in maybe once or twice a week. Or every now and then for special equipment, like a calf raise machine or cable crossover, or some other specialized device that you don't have space or budget for in your home gym, or it just wouldn't be worth investing in given the cost versus how often you're going to.
[00:08:00] And I guess the last disadvantage is that for some people, a home gym is maybe too flexible. It's not structured enough and you may want the accountability of having to go to another place to work out. But even in that case, consider a hybrid option where you have a very basic gym and home for the big compound lifts, you know, the rack, the barbell, et cetera.
[00:08:22] We'll talk about and continue to use the membership, which gives you the option to go either direction on any given day for your work. Those are what I would say are the big pros and cons of a home gym and maybe I'm biased, but I think there's a heavy lean toward the advantages of a home gym and some of the disadvantages can be mitigated in most cases.
[00:08:46] All right. Now let's talk about the location in your home and the space requirements for a home gym, just so you can think ahead about this. Really plan it out. So you don't just start throwing equipment in some random spot in your house and then regret it a few months later, especially how heavy some of this equipment is.
[00:09:07] The first consideration is a solid floor that can support enough weight. This may seem obvious, but some of you might live in an apartment, a condominium. Be considering the second or third floor of your house. And you just have to make sure that the load that it can support is sufficient. This usually that leads to using a garage or basement, which tend to have concrete floors.
[00:09:34] Or some sort of extra room on the first floor or a corner of a big room. Now I actually have my gym in, what's called a bonus room. It's a room over the garage, but it's climate controlled and I'm fortunate enough to have the space there. I also know how the house was built because I built it myself and per today's code.
[00:09:56] You have to have these massive. Uh, laminated beams, it supports thousands of pounds of weight. I did the calculations. There's no way I'm going to exceed that in whatever configuration I use. Uh, garage in most places, you're going to have to deal with the climate meaning cold, cold space in the winter, a hot humid space in the summer.
[00:10:17] The humidity could be a challenge for your barbell and your plates, but plenty of people have garage gyms. It works. And if that's the best space for your gym, go for it. Basements tend to be a little more temperature controlled, a little more stable throughout. A little bit on the cool land, but stable. So those will work.
[00:10:35] The problem with the basement tends to be height. Uh, most older houses or even modern houses sometimes have a low ceiling as low as say seven feet. And we're going to talk soon about the need. Eight feet to do everything you need to do. If you can't, then you'll be limited in what you can do. Or you can split up in your house where you perform certain movements like pull-ups and presses might have to be performed in a different spot than everything.
[00:11:03] I would say maybe the best option is if you have an extra room on the first floor, climate controlled supports the weight. That's a great option. Something like a spare bedroom or office, or if there's a corner or a section of a larger room, most people don't want a bunch of gym equipment staring at them in their living room when they're hanging out at the kitchen or watching TV.
[00:11:25] So again, you have to consider all these lifestyle and comfort factor. Now, what about the space needed? All right. I was remeasuring my gym. I was looking at it again. I was checking out some equipment online and I think that a reasonable space to cover most of your needs for the vast majority of your early lifting career is 12 feet by 12 feet.
[00:11:51] And this will allow you to lay down. Some solid flooring, have a power rack clearance for your barbell. Consider that a barbells little over seven feet long. So when it's sitting in the rack, it's you need at least the seven feet, but you also need room to maneuver to the sides of the bar to load plates.
[00:12:13] And you don't want to be crammed up against the wall either. And you don't want to be slamming your bar into the dry. So you want that extra space. So 12 feet gives you the room and then 12 feet, the other direction, the depth gives you room for your bench or inclined bench to stick out as well as room in front of the rack for pressing, for dead lifting.
[00:12:36] And for other movements, you're going to want to do dumbbell movements, say with an inclined bench and you, you don't necessarily want that crammed inside your power. So the space of 12 feet by 12 feet should be fine. My own gym. It's about 13 feet wide, which has plenty of space. I actually have extra equipment on either side and then it's 12 feet deep and I actually even have a vertical leg press machine in the corner of that 12 feet in front of the rack.
[00:13:04] And it still gives me enough room to. And then as far as height, you need eight feet and that's because typically a pull up bar you'll want it to be about seven feet height. If you buy a, uh, economy, I'll call it or a value, power rack. The pull-up bar tends to be raised a bit, and it's at about seven feet, which is tall enough to hang from it and do your poles, but then you also need a one foot clearance.
[00:13:31] Above that for your head and your shoulders when you do those polls, but also for overhead presses or shoulder presses, consider that a six foot tall male would push the bar up to about seven feet, but then the plates that the radius of a. Is eight inches. So you definitely want that extra foot above the seven feet.
[00:13:52] And of course, if you're extra tall, you may need slightly more than that. So that then tends to limit you to a garage or a typical house has eight foot tall ceilings or many in many cases. First floors today have nine feet tall ceilings. And this goes back to my comment about basements being a little bit low.
[00:14:10] If it's not eight feet, you're gonna have to consider what to do in that situation. For pull-ups and chin-ups, you could always put a rig anywhere, basically a pull-up rig or a doorframe bar. One that sticks out enough. So you're not hitting yourself on the doorframe, but you still need that extra height for the overhead presses.
[00:14:29] Otherwise you'd be limiting to doing Z presses and seated presses, things like that. But what we really want to do the full standing overhead. The only other space that you'll want to consider is for the extra equipment you might have like a dumbbell rack or extra benches or a stand, a freestanding plant stand for your plates.
[00:14:49] And this is where again, like let's, let's talk about the plates for a second. I have played holders that attach into the holes on my power rack, that saves space, or there are wall mounted, racks, and shelves for different things. So you can get. Of course you can have other gear. You're going to have your dip belt and your shoes and collars and all these things.
[00:15:09] And for that, you can go with a storage bin or shelving or something like that. Now let's talk about flooring, right? We're working our way up from the floor on up. We've got our space and now we have to have florid. Well, In a garage or basement, you've got concrete flooring. I don't think you want to be doing certain movements and dropping your bar and dropping your dumbbells on right onto the concrete.
[00:15:34] And similarly, if you're in a carpeted area or hardwood flooring, you don't want to damage. So we want something that's hard, but somewhat shock absorbing and a very common solution. And one that I use myself and I'm sure there are superior solutions depending on time, money, resources, creativity. What I use are, is plywood covered by horse stall mats, and you see this as a very common solution, Google it online.
[00:16:01] You'll see floor plans to see how to do. But you can easily take, say half inch or three quarter inch plywood. Go ahead and get the finished grade plywood. That's really smooth that you can just lay right on your carpet, right on the concrete and then horse stall mats. You can go anywhere from specialized gym, rubber flooring, which tends to be a bit pricey all the way down to.
[00:16:26] The horse stall mats, a tractor supply, which is what I got. And they do give off a little bit of a smell initially to go through what's called offgassing. But if you let them sit in your garage for say a week, bring them in. They're fine. And they're great. They're thick, they're shock absorbing, and they make a perfect cover on top of the plywood to give you.
[00:16:49] Now, some people like to have a deadlift platform. In addition to that, you can make your own, or you can purchase one. They tend to be a little more expensive. And I'm not really including this in the initial equipment because you don't have to. When I do deadlifts, I don't throw the bar on the ground.
[00:17:05] Like I learned to do in CrossFit with bumper plates, I use iron plates. So I'm lowering the bar to the ground. If the flooring supports the weight and you've got some shock absorption, you should be fine. But if you're worried about it, there is something called the deadlift platform meant to absorb the shock from deadlifts and protect your floor further.
[00:17:26] You can also get dropped pads, drop pads. Go on either side of you, so you could drop the bar onto the past and they absorb the shock. The problem there is you need to then be on a platform yourself so that the bar isn't elevated anyway, that's flooring. And again, I would just start with the basic plywood and rubber mats and it should be fine for quite a long time.
[00:17:48] Now let's talk about the basic equipment. If. Can acquire the things we'll talk about in this section of the episode, then that will be enough to get you going pretty far before we become intermediate or advanced. And if it works for you, you'll quickly decide that you want to start gathering some of the other equipment.
[00:18:09] Cause you'll see how convenient, how much fun it is, but I'll let you get there on your own. Let's just talk about the equipment. The first thing, the most important piece of equipment, and one of the best investments you can make is of course, the barbell and we are looking for a barbell that will last you a lifetime that will support all the weight you could ever.
[00:18:31] That is of high quality that has the right markings, the right knurling that can be maintained. That has the proper coding. There's all these things. So we're looking forward to the standard Olympic or seven foot PowerBar or similar that has several features. And I'm going to tell you what I like about.
[00:18:50] And it's not what I had in my first bar. So when I bought my first bar, it was from a guy off of, I think, Facebook market. And I met him in a parking lot, but he was a college student who could deadlift 600 pounds. That's what he'd used the bar for was all of his training. I think he was. Football or hockey player.
[00:19:09] And he was going to be an engineer. He was upgrading his gym and he didn't need the bar anymore. And I think I paid something like 75 bucks for it, but that bar lasted me a long time and I did tons of work with it, but it lacks some of the features that I got with my current bar. My current bar is a rogue Ohio power bar, and you'll probably hear.
[00:19:30] All over the place. The more you get into this, because it's one of the most popular, effective bars out there. It's a high quality piece of equipment. Now I bought it as part of their bone yard sale. So this is one of my pieces of advice is just look for sales, buy used. When you can, as you build your gym, save some.
[00:19:49] Get the same quality. The boneyard bars from rogue are just bars that have some sort of imperfection that is non-functional. And I don't even know what the problem is with my bar, to be honest, it's a beautiful bar. Now here's some of the features that it has, that I would look for in any bar that will last you a lifetime.
[00:20:09] First of all. The knurling does it have fairly aggressive? Knarly knurling is the crosshatching that's etched into the bar and I would look for center knurling. Okay. So right in the middle there's knurling, which is great for squats because the bar will stick to your back. And then I would look for a smooth section on either side of that.
[00:20:33] And that's where your shins will be when you deadlift and then more knurling beyond that, up to the. On that outer knurling, there should be at least one ring grooved in either side at 32 inches apart. And this is the standard width for power lifting for the bench. And it serves as a reference point for bench pressing, pressing, um, So that you can standardize your lifts.
[00:21:00] This is one of the benefits of being at home and using the same bar over and over, you know, where your grip's going to be and you know how the bar is going to feel. The next thing is look on the end of the bar and you should see no hex. In the center of the end, you should just see it, it just look flat or slightly recessed, but no nut at the end of the bar, that indicates that it's a good quality bar that it's smooth at the end.
[00:21:27] The sleeves themselves should spin very easily. And then the material. I have a raw steel bar now, raw steel bar. It's gonna last me forever. It's strong. It looks great. It's just metal. And all I have to do is wipe it and oil it with three in one oil and a bristle brush. Occasionally. Now I don't have a human environment.
[00:21:50] It's climate control. I have a lot of leeway in half. And I do that. If you are in a human environment and you go with raw steel, you just have to keep it maintained to avoid rust and oxidation, but there are many other coatings and a lot of it's based on preference and feel, you know, there's zinc coatings as black coatings, different colors, different materials.
[00:22:12] So just do the research and pick something that you think will work for you. Now cost-wise a barbell. A good barbell should run you anywhere from, I mean, on the low, low, low end, maybe 200 and then up to mid four hundreds, $500. So the robo higher power bar last I checked was in the low four hundreds. And the version I got on sale, I think it was like two 50 or 2 75.
[00:22:38] So it was. But budget about three or $400 for your barbell, unless you get it used. And then you might get a great deal. And then to go with a barbell, we need a power rack, also called a power cage. In some cases, some folks go ahead and. A squat stand, for example, which doesn't have the full four or six uprights.
[00:23:01] It's not a box. It's just a stand. I would recommend going straight for the power rack because it's very versatile. It's going to provide you a lot more capabilities for accessories, for expandability in the future. It's strong. It's safe. It's just the way to go. Especially given the price difference today.
[00:23:21] It's not very much. I would go straight for a power rack. A power rack is simply a box of steel angle iron post. It's typically a budget or value, power rack. Like the one I have it's for upright posts with a base connected at the top with a couple pull-up bars with neutral handle bars, connecting the two polo.
[00:23:46] Mine has two by two. Uh, but you can find three by two or a three by three steel with holes at different, at different distances. And the holes are where you will Fasten the hook. So put your barbell in, you can put in your pins, your safety pins, your spotter arms, and in all sorts of other attachments like placeholders, a power rack is typically about four feet by four feet in terms of footprint, unless you go with bigger, more expensive, maybe one that has six upright, something like the soar and ax, or, you know, in the really pricey range, then you start to take up more and more space.
[00:24:26] But consider about four by four. And this is where you've got your power rack. You've got your bar, the 12 feet total with makes a lot of sense and the 12 feet depth, because it gives you all that extra space around it to get all your work. I would say today, you could get a decent power rack for anywhere on the low end, as low as potentially $300.
[00:24:48] If you go to Amazon or something like that, you can find decent power racks. You look at the reviews, you look at how it's tested. They hold up really well. Uh, but then the price of a power that can go up to four or four or five, $600 for pretty good one up to a thousand dollars and up. I mean, you know, sky's the limit depending on what your budget is and what you're looking.
[00:25:09] With the power rack, it should add a minimum, have safety pins or spotter arms. You have to have that for safety during bench, press and squats. So when you bench, you're going to set the pins between your chest and neck height, so that if you fail. You're just going to gently lay it onto the pins. It's not going to crush you.
[00:25:30] It is as the least safe movement when it comes to working by yourself. So you have to have those pins, squats. Similarly, you would set the squats low enough so that if you failed it, you could just, you could just drop the bar onto the pins. I would also recommend if the power rack doesn't come with J hooks.
[00:25:51] If it comes with these small hooks that don't have much of a vertical back to them that goes up maybe 6, 8, 10 inches along the upright to get a separate set of J hooks and J hooks are nice because then when you slam the bar back onto the upright. When you, when you push it into the rack, when you're racking it, they hit the back of the J hook and not the upright itself.
[00:26:17] So you're not going to wear or damage the uprights. You're going to push it on the hood. So we've got our barbell and we've got our rack, the other things we need our bench and plates. So let's talk about the bench at a minimum. You want a flat bench and there are many options there as well, but make sure the bench can support plenty of weight.
[00:26:40] And then look at the base of the bench. Look at the feet, make sure they're high. And there are some benches that are more like power lifting style, like a tripod. They may have a single leg in front to give you plenty of clearance for your feet, but almost any bench will work. And if you want to invest now in something that will give you more flexibility down the road.
[00:27:05] Adjustable bench that can go into an incline also called an FID, which is flat incline decline bench. So that allows you to incline press. And other movements like declined sit-ups. And then on top of that, if you can find an FID bench that allows for attachments, like the one I have now, I actually just acquired an FID bench that has a leg developer attachment for curls and extensions.
[00:27:34] It also has a preacher curl attachment. The more you want in something like this, the more it's going to cost. So from a starter perspective, a flat bench, that's a hundred, 150 bucks. Should be fine, but you can go all the way up to four or five, $600 for these more advanced benches. And finally you need plates of course, to go with your barbell and at a minimum, I would say you need at least three.
[00:27:58] Or four pairs of 40 fives, depending on how strong you are. If you're a pretty weak, if you're just getting started, then three pairs should be enough because three pairs will get you to 315 pounds on the bar. And you can always go a little bit higher than that with the smaller weights added to it, but get four pairs, if you're a little bit stronger than that.
[00:28:18] So three or four pairs of 40 fives, at least one pair of 25. At least two pairs of tens, a pair of fives and a pair of two and a half. Also, I would suggest micro plates, micro plates. You could usually buy a package of micro plates that give you a quarter, a half, three quarter, and one pound plates. This is for more incremental loading on something like the overhead press.
[00:28:48] And then when you buy your plates, make sure to weigh them, take out your scale, right? When the plates come in and right when you buy them, weigh the plates and make sure they're very close to what's marked you don't want a 45 pound plate. That's 41 pounds. This has happened to me a couple of times, and I had to reach out to the manufacturer and say, Hey guys, what are you giving me here?
[00:29:07] I need to send these back, send me something that's close to what. Now iron plates, cast iron plates are the cheapest. The last you forever. That's what I use. That's what most serious lifters use, who don't want to then invest in. Uh, Olympic or bumper plates, which tend to be more expensive, but they're nice because they save your floor.
[00:29:30] They're great to put onto the bar with dead lifts, you could do a hybrid approach. You can get a pair, one pair of bumper, plate, 40 fives, throw those on the bar and then use iron plates for the rest of the weight. When you do a deadlift and that'll soften the landing. When the. Is lowered when it's lowered, not dropped when it's lowered, because we're not going to be dropping our bars in our house.
[00:29:54] We're going to be lowering them. The price of plates can vary widely, especially in today's supply chain and crazy market. There's places like rogue and tightened fitness. And even Amazon that sells, I think the cap. And as long as it's a piece of iron with a two inch hole at ways, what you need to, it's probably gonna work.
[00:30:15] Now. The only other consideration wood plates are, where are you going to store them? So if you have a power rack, then you might be able to put on plate holder attachments, they look like the two inch rods that stick. Onto a base that attaches to a hole on the rack and you might need four or six of those to hold all your weights.
[00:30:37] That's how I do it. Or you can get a free standing plate holder that goes on the. And then don't forget to get bar collars. They might get thrown in with the rack or some of the other equipment, the spring loaded colors, and there's different variations of colors. But basically these go on to the end of the bar to hold the plates on for certain movements.
[00:30:56] I wouldn't use bar callers for bench presses, for example, because you might want to shift the plates off from a safety perspective, but any movement where the plates can slide off, you would use. And that's it for basic equipment that will let you perform the deadlift, the squat, the bench, press the overhead press pull-ups and chin-ups, that'll take you very far.
[00:31:21] And if you have just that, you can do a lot of your programming, even as you get into intermediate and advanced stages. And you can combine that with a commercial. For some of the other work and that's a pretty good, a reasonable approach. But if you want like me to continue to build your home gym and do more and more from home to the point where you probably don't even need to go to the gym, let's talk about some of the extra equipment that we'll cover.
[00:31:48] I'll say 10 to 15% of the remaining 20%. And the first is going to be dumbbell. You could either acquire individual pairs. They're not too expensive. They've definitely gone up in price over the last couple of years. This is 2022 and we saw them go up during the pandemic. And some of them are so fairly expensive or go ahead and invest in a pair of adjustable dumbbells.
[00:32:14] I have a pair that's similar to the Bowflex. I think select texts. There's similar to that, but it's an offering. There's also the power blocks. There's other brands coming out all the time. I would look for dumbbells that can go up to at least 90 pounds. Don't get the ones that are limited to 52 and a half, because those will just you'll hit a wall pretty quickly when you get to things like pressing or shrugs or something like that.
[00:32:42] So get as heavy as you can that you can afford. And these tend to be fairly expensive. Let's say anywhere from four to $800 for the pair or even more, but comparing that to a bunch of different pairs of iron dumbbells, it may be the better. And then you of course, need a stand or a rack to hold the dumbbells or even the adjustable dumbbells, but dumbbells open up a ton of movements where your arms can move independently.
[00:33:11] Whether it's bench presses, overhead presses, rose, shrugs, all sorts of bodybuilding movements like side laterals, front raises, and. And these are the kinds of things you will start to incorporate as you become more advanced, as variations of the main lifts or accessories for weak spots. And for bodybuilding, if you're really on a budget, you could just get dumbbell handles that you can load plates onto either the one inch plates, but then you would need to buy the special one inch plates or the Olympic size where you can throw your two inch plates right onto.
[00:33:46] The handles the downside of that is the inconvenience and the hassle of constantly taking off and loading the weight. Especially if you want to do something like drop sets or you want to change the load or go from one movement to the next, it really is kind of a hassle. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that if you can go ahead, right, for full dumbbells or the adjustable dumbbells that have the dial on it while you're getting acquiring dumbbells, you might want to.
[00:34:12] By one or two medium or heavy kettlebells, if that's part of your programming or what I have is actually a kettlebell handle. It's a plastic handle with a rubber insert where it wraps around the dumbbell handle in terms of the dumbbell into okay. The second piece of equipment would be a dip attachment for your power rack.
[00:34:35] You can obviously buy a separate dip machine, but you don't really need that. If you could just get either the Matador attachment or like what I have are two separate handles that go into the holes on the power rack, and now you can do dips. And if you have a dip belt, you can also do weighted. And dips are a fantastic movement as an accessory to your pressing into your triceps.
[00:35:00] All right, then the next big piece of equipment would be a lat pull down cable attachment, and you could buy a free standing all in one. Functional fitness machine is what I think they call them, which tend to be quite expensive. We're we're looking at maybe at least a thousand dollars just for that. But if you planned ahead and you purchased a power rack that can support a lat pull down that lat pull down itself may only be a couple hundred dollars as an attachment to the power rack.
[00:35:29] And that's what I have. And what's great about it. It is. So it's not a stack. If you'd rather have a stack, you're probably going to pay a little more for that it's plate loaded, but it has a cable at the top and it has a cable at the bottom and it attaches to the power racks of the rack itself provides stability.
[00:35:45] Now this is where if you have extra space and extra money, if I went back to square one and budget was no limit, I might actually consider. Uh, functional fitness machine or a crossover, a cable crossover machine where you have two separate cables, it's really opens up a ton of more movements. Things like flies and lots of other things, but you don't need that.
[00:36:06] A straight pull down cable attachment will still work. Lat pull downs with wide or narrow grips, seated rows, tricep, press downs, rope curls, one-arm cable variations, like flies. Lateral raises a ton of versatility. A lot of these are, as you can tell bodybuilding movements, but still we're talking about the next level of your home gym.
[00:36:29] All right, let's go through some more equipment. Um, and this isn't, this isn't an exhaustive list or a list where you have to get everything. This is to give you ideas. How you can add versatility and movements to your home gym and start to whittle away the reasons that you need to go to another gym outside your house.
[00:36:49] So the next thing is a landmine attachment and these actually are fairly inexpensive. They would attach to the base of Iraq and it looks like a cylinder on a pivot and the cylinder, which tends to be about maybe six or eight inches long. Is where the end of the barbell is inserted. And then there tends to be a tightening.
[00:37:11] And now you have a free floating barbell attached to on the floor that can pivot. And it opens up movements like T-bar rows and landmine presses, and you can get attachments that go in the end for those types of movements. So for example, I like to do T-bar rows occasionally really hit the lats, the upper back and load a lot of weight for not much extra investment.
[00:37:36] All right to enhance all of this are some smaller items that I would consider. One of those is an easy curl bar. An easy curl bar is pretty inexpensive. You can get one on Amazon for probably as little as a hundred dollars or less. And they're great for curl variations, lying, tricep, extensions, French overhead, press.
[00:37:58] And it's just one of those extra types of bars that you can get for very little additional investment. Okay. The next item is a box, a strong box, probably 12 inches high. Sometimes it's called a plyo box or maybe one of those wood boxes that you see for box jumps and CrossFit or a steel box, or you can make your own, and these would be four box squats.
[00:38:23] So it has to be low enough that you get. Below parallel or right around or below parallel, but they could also be used as a platform. You know, you can stand on them before you do your dips, or you could put your feet on them for deficit pushups. Very versatile. The next item is a bar holder. Now that you have an easy bar and the bar.
[00:38:44] And when we get to the next section, we talk about other types of bars. You may need a place to hold all these, or if you have dumbbell handles that are the two inch dumbbell handles, you might need a bar holder that can hold something like five barbells. The next item is a deadlift Jack. Now I only got one of these recently.
[00:39:04] I saw Jujimufu talk about how this is the first piece of equipment you should get, which I thought was a little bit of hyperbole. And I realized how useful it can be. It's basically what it sounds like. It's a. Jack and they come in different styles, different designs that you can insert under a bar, prop the bar up, and then load your plates.
[00:39:25] It holds the bar up just high enough. So you can load your plates and avoid the awkwardness of trying to Jimmy on all of your 40 fives before you do your deadlifts. The next item is an app. Yeah, as seen on TV from the 1990s infomercials, but the app will is still around because AB wheel roll outs are a fantastic app.
[00:39:47] Exercise also called a roller AB roller there's the traditional wheel with the two handles. And there's something like the Sora annex roller, which looks more like a rectangular frame. That's flat on the ground with. Great for AB workouts. And then the last piece of equipment might be a calf. You could make your own, just look it up, how to make a calf block, make it out of wood, or you can buy one made out of metal.
[00:40:15] That's a simple horizontal bar, or some of them are triangular to put your feet on a wedge at an angle. And these are for you guessed at calf raises, CDs, seated, or standing calf raises. It just gives you a nice stable platform so you can get the full stretch and the full range of. With your calves. And finally we get to the ultimate.
[00:40:39] Gym equipment. You've covered all the other bases. Here are a few other things you might want to add to your gym. And again, this is like kind of like a menu. These last two sections here, the one I just covered in this one, in that you can pick the pieces from each that makes sense for your programming and your goals.
[00:40:57] I have some pieces from all of these lists, but I don't necessarily have them all. So for ultimate equipment, the first one. Cardio machines. Now I talk a lot about how cardio isn't all that important when it comes to lifting for strength, but it's still important. And cardio machines can come in handy for warmups.
[00:41:19] You know, if it's a cold day and you want to just jump on your assault, bike, your fan bike, they're good for a quick. Session right. High interval intensity interval training. Or if you're just trying to get an extra steps or low intensity cardio on the bike, on a rower, on a treadmill, whatever works for you, they tend to be a little more expensive.
[00:41:42] I personally have a fan bike. I think I got it from tightened fitness. I'd love to have the rogue echo bike. It's it's super smooth, but it's very expensive. So. You have to balance budget with quality with your needs. So a cardio machines are going to take up space, but they could be a great addition to your.
[00:42:03] The next item would be something like a glute ham developer, a GHD machine where you could do back extensions and glute ham raises. Now I have a very simple version of that where I could do back extensions, but I can't do . So I tend to do those at a commercial gym, but if you can get the all in one, which tends to be more expensive and it takes up more space, then go for it.
[00:42:28] Great hamstring workout. Great. Lower back. Great posterior chain. So related to this would be a reverse hyper reverse hyper extension machine. We're getting into very specialized equipment here, but the footprint isn't very big they're plate loaded. And if you've got back issues, or this is a important part of your workouts, if you follow the west side, a conjugate programming, you do a lot of posterior chain work.
[00:42:56] The reverse hyper could be useful. The next item would be one or more. Pieces of equipment for legwork, and I'm thinking the leg press the hack squat. I have a vertical leg press. It really doesn't take up much space. It's maybe two by two and it's plate loaded, but there are more expensive machines and some of them are multifunctional with the track, you know, for the hack squat or the leg, press the track of the plate loading.
[00:43:24] They take up more space. They cost more. If you have the room and that's part of your programming again, it's something to consider. And even more specialized piece of equipment would be a calf raise machine standing or seated calf raises. That's basically all they're good for. I don't have one of those.
[00:43:40] I like to hack up my calf movements. I'll either do a calf raise on my leg press or I'll rig up some sort of donkey raise with a barbell, or I will do seated calf raises with. And then finally there are lots of different specialty bars. There's a specialty bar, which is the kind that has multiple hand positions and angles.
[00:44:09] There are safety squat bars. There's the transformer bar by. Kabuki strength, I think which can go into multiple positions for things like front squats, there's Canberra bars. For example, if you want to get really deep into a bench, press a Canberra bar can be a great tool. And there are lots of other variations of bars out there.
[00:44:32] If you want to look for them, as you can see, although you can eventually build your ultimate dream home gym with time and money, all you need to start are around. Bar bench and plates. At the very least, you should be able to do one or two full workouts from home each week, as you design and build your home gym over time.
[00:44:54] I personally find that the option to roll out of bed, throw all my gym clothes, get in a good session from the comfort of my home is a big motivator when compared to the hassle of going to a gym, but I still have a membership so that I can work on specific movements like reverse hypers since I don't have that.
[00:45:13] Look for deals, buy used. If needed, check out Craigslist or Facebook, get started on creating that fun space for you to make gains at home. And as always hit me up with questions by email or Instagram.
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