What’s in My Home Gym

I’m always interested in how other people set up their home gym.  When people post pictures on the message boards showing how they adapt their living space for working out I’m amazed at how little space it takes to have your own “home gym”.  For many it’s a 4’ x 6’ space in front of their TV.  I’m fortunate to have a spare bedroom and a basement where my wife and I do everything.  Being able to do the programs we do at home is one reason we have been able to stick to them so well.  If I had to go out to a public gym my motivation wouldn’t last very long.

Everything we have has been acquired over the course of 25 years of marriage.  It might look like a lot now, but if you add a little here and there over time you can build a pretty good gym gradually.  I’m usually pretty frugal, but when it comes to equipment or things that I know I will use regularly I don’t mind paying for quality and buying new vs. used.

The spare upstairs bedroom is where we do most of our work including P90X and Rev Abs.  On the left is a 20+ year old Nordicflex strength machine that basically serves only as a bench and a spare pull up bar now (not to mention a towel rack!).  I’ve used it for lat pull downs recently but found a better way to do pull-ups, so it doesn’t even get used for that anymore.  The bench is a good staging area for weights during the workouts.

We use dumbbells as opposed to rubber resistance bands for strength workouts like P90X.  Our set starts at 3 lbs (the small ones on the floor) up to 35 lbs.  Hex dumbbells like these retail for about $1 per pound, so this complete set would cost ~$325, and the rack another ~$100.  We have had this set for 12 years and it served us well through 2 rounds of the “X”.  I am now looking for some used 40’s to expand the range.  On the floor are two 2.5 lb ankle weights—I sometimes use these during plyometric workouts for a little extra work, but they also can be used on your wrists when you’re between weights (they turn a 20 lb weight into a 22.5 lb weight).  One bit of advice: if you have a rack like this put the heaviest weights on the top and fill in the gaps with the small weights—that will spare your back when you pick up the heavies.  (For anyone paying attention, yes, those are Shakeweights on the floor.  I bought those during my “I’ll try anything” phase in 2011 before I found Insanity and P90X!)

Next going around the room is our treadmill.  We bought a decent one for ~$1000 about seven years ago and have put a lot of miles on it.  Once I started doing high intensity interval training (HIIT as it’s called) with Insanity, I learned that the long slow slog on a treadmill just didn’t work for losing fat and getting in shape.  My wife still uses it occasionally on rest days, however, or to burn off stress during Red Sox or Patriots games :).

My pull up bar is the type that mounts inside a doorway and has screw-in supports for reinforcement.  Believe it or not but this is the oldest piece of equipment I have—I got this when I was a second lieutenant in the Air force way back in the 1980’s, and it spent many years as a clothes rack in our laundry room.  Now most people can’t do an unassisted pull up, I couldn’t a year ago when I started P90X.  On the DVD’s, however, they show how to use a chair as a pull up assist device.  Simply put one foot (or both feet) on the chair to take some of the weight off.  This is what I did starting out.  A better way is to use the pull up assist device that you see hanging from the bar.  It has a stirrup for one foot and comes with 3 elastic bands that stretch when you extend your leg.  When fully extended the 3 bands equal ~90 lbs of assistance.  As you pull up and contract the bands the resistance drops to near zero at the top of the move.  This device gives you the feeling of performing a real pull up.  As you get stronger there are two adjustments:  first you can remove one band to lower the assistance, and second you can adjust the length of the strap—the farther away the stirrup is the less help it gives you.  With the help of the assist I was able to build up to where I can now do about 15 pull ups on my own (when I’m fresh, or course; I still switch to the assist when I get worn out during a workout).

I have two TV’s in this room.  The upper one on the wall is an old tube-type TV plugged into cable so we can have something on in the background while working out.  The screen on the cabinet is a TV-DVD combo that I bought for ~$150 last year.  It’s pretty space efficient and I don’t have to worry about cables between a DVD player and the TV.  On the floor are two milk crates that I use to stage weights during a workout so I don’t have to keep going back and forth to the rack.  I use a pair of weightlifter’s gloves to improve my grip, and finally on the floor to the right are yoga blacks.  Yoga is one of the weekly workouts in P90X, and if you don’t think you’d like it, just wait until you try it and see how it makes you feel afterwards.  Like Tony Horton says, “it’s like a ride you’ve never been on before”.

On the floor I have 2’ x 2’ interlocking workout mats that I bought at a local sporting goods store.  Since this is over carpet and padding and on a second floor, this is only ½ inch thick.  The total area covered is 6’ x 10’ and is plenty for two of us to workout together, including plyometrics.

Finally there is the basement “Insanity studio” where my fat loss began in early 2012.  Again I have a small tube TV on the right connected to cable, and a TV-DVD combo unit on the left for the program DVD’s.  Since this is a concrete floor, I invested in the ¾” interlocking mats and that has been fine for all the jumping you have to do during Insanity.  Overall area is about 8’ x 10’ (except for the cutout on the left corner) and is enough room for both of us to do Insanity together. We’re fortunate in New England to have basements, and this room is perfect for high intensity cardio.  In the summer it never exceeds 64 degrees, and in the winter it never drops below 52.  (Along the wall you see remnants of past hobbies, my old model railroad layout which makes a great towel rack and water bottle holder!)