Over the past year I have been working out in my garage gym. When my old gym membership ended about a year ago, and they wanted to charge me $40 a month to renew, I realized it was time re-evaluate my options. I had a perfectly good garage, why not make a home gym?
Why not lift from home?
The more I thought about it the more I realized how well this would fit in with my life & workstyle. I work from home, and I have pretty flexible hours, so I often workout in the middle of the day. The only problem is that it can be a huge inconvenience to have to pack up a gym bag, drive to the gym, find parking, and get into the gym. Because of this process and travel time, the 1 hour workout can easily turn into 1.5 – 2 hours out of the office. That stinks. If I had my gym in the garage, I could literally be 5 minutes away from my computer chair. Then a 1 hour workout will be much closer to taking just 1 hour. That’s real time savings, and you know what they say – time is money.
Guiding Principles
- Focus is on free weights and compound movements
- Olympic sized barbells and weights
- Must be able to do powerlifting exercises, olympic lifts, and the basic bodybuilding exercises
- No permanent damage to my garage/house – no bolting into walls, floors, etc.
- Looking for safe, sturdy, and cheap equipment
Getting My Equipment Together
Barbells and weights
First things first, the home gym has got to be all ‘olympic sized’ – so all 2 inch bars all around. As far as weight, and one of my barbells, I got those from craigslist. Also some used weights from a local sports equipment store. Weight plates are one of those things that are too expensive to get online because of transportation costs. If you are lucky you can find it for $0.50 a pound (maybe a little rusty at that price). Anything less than $1.00 is ok. Don’t worry about rust; you can repaint iron weights if it matters to you and you can get a good enough deal.
I decided it made sense to invest in one really good barbell; one that would be safe to use with my heaviest squats and deadlifts. So, I did the research, and ended up getting a 1,000 pound rated barbell from Rogue; it was a pretty penny – but worth it IMO. Most of the cheap barbells you see are only rated for like 300-400 pounds. You don’t want to go for a heavy deadlift and completely warp the bar!
Garage Gym Flooring
One of the first things I realized was I needed to protect my floor. Metal weights dropping onto the concrete floor will just take chunks out of the floor. No good. I planned on doing deadlifts; and those would be devastating for both the weight itself and the floor. So my first requirement was I needed a deadlift area that would be safe for 500+ pounds being dropped.
This meant I needed an olympic lifting platform in my garage gym. Fortunately, it’s just a couple sheets of 3/4 inch plywood stacked on top of each other with a rubber layer on top.
I did some research and found out about rubber horse stall mats (aka ‘stall mats’). It’s basically just thick rolls of rubber. The most generic, but heavy duty, gym flooring you can get. The names comes from it’s original/intended use which is to serve as flooring in horse stalls. They want the horse to be comfy while standing there all day, so they throw down this heavy duty rubber. Horse stall mats are cheap, plentiful (easy to find all over), and very tough – I highly recommend using rubber horse stall mats to floor your home gym. I got a couple rolls of 3/4 inch stall mats, about $50 each for 6×4 ft rolls, and that was that. I got it from a local place I found online that does rubber plumbing stuff; but you can find this stuff at farm supply shops too. Like I said it’s everywhere; and it’s going to be better I think than any ‘gym flooring’ you might see out there. Plus these mats are so strong they work great as the ‘top’ layer of your homemade lifting platform.
Full Squat Rack
I wanted a good squat rack that could handle a lot of weight. I wanted it to be stable; so I opted for a full-rack that was 1,000 pound rated. That way there is plenty of room for growth, and I can always have confidence in my equipment. That piece of mind is worth something to me.
I’m a big fan of Rogue; but they are pretty expensive. I looked for similar racks out there that were more reasonably priced and came across the TITAN FITNESS brand. Though they did screw up my order, and made me wait a couple weeks to get everything squared away, I can say I have no quality concerns with the equipment. It has been great so far; very sturdy.
Rock solid pull-up support, and ‘fat bar’ alternate pull-up bar
Pull-ups are one of the best exercises; so naturally I wanted to make sure I could do them with my new home gym. There are all kinds of ways you can do these; but for me what was most important something safe and sturdy for me to use a lot of weight hanging from me. I don’t want some kind of doorway rig; I want something that’s not gonna budge. This was another reason why I opted for a full-rack. The pull-up bar is located at the top of the full-rack; it’s not going anywhere.
Dip Extension for Rack
Dips are an excellent exercise. It hits the triceps, chest, shoulders, and you can hang weight from a belt. Unfortunately, it’s much more difficult to do dips with a home set-up. This was yet another advantage of the full-rack that I went with. It has an extension that can easily add into the pins that allows you to do dips while being supported by the full strength of the 1,000 pound rated squat rack. I love it.
Opted for a Craigslist Bench Press
Bench is one of the essentials, your home gym has to include the capability for you to bench press – and preferably, with the ability to incline and decline too (but those are just ‘nice to haves’ IMO). The tricky part of the bench is just that, the bench – that thing you lay on. Technically, with a full-rack all you need is a reclinable bench and you can bench press — Rogue sells some really slick benches and I took a look at them — but in the end I went with a craigslist bench press. I got a full bench press setup, with a barbell, and ~250 pounds of weight – all for just $300. Good deals can be had on craigslist; it’s one of the best places to find weightlifting gear.
Gym Accessories
These are the ‘nice-to-haves’. Little creature comforts I have added to my home gym over-time.
- Fan
- Bluetooth speaker
- Dip Belt
- Quick-Release Barbell Clamp Collars
- Lifting Straps
- Lifting Chalk
- Bands of varying resistance
All in all, I would say I spent less than $1000 to set up my garage gym. Compared to $40 a month membership, this means the home gym will pay for itself in about 2 years (assuming just one person using the home gym). Really I think the benefits are non-monetary; mainly the time-savings, and how you have more control — you can play your own music, you can record your workout, you can have people over to workout, you can bring your dog into the gym during workout, you can workout at whatever time you want, you can do whatever exercise you want and there won’t be any lines, etc.
I’m very happy with my garage gym
Here’s me deadlifting in my garage gym