5/10/09

  What comes to mind when someone mentions a home gym?  If you’re anything like half the people I work with and/or hang out with, what usually springs to mind is a bowflex or total gym that cost upwards of $1,000 or higher, depending on what doodads and thingamajigs you get additional.  Some hardcore weekend warriors would frown on anything less that several thousand dollars works of iron, lifting racks, smith machines, benches, full assortment of dumbbells, barbells, chalk, and mirrors.

  Why?  When it comes to fitness, basics are usually much better, not to mention cheaper.  Depending on which route you go, you can get all the equipment you could ever want or need for a long time for less than $500, which is less than a lot of year length gym memberships.  Yes, as you get more serious about your fitness level, you can start adding more equipment to your list, but in the beginning, right when you’re just starting, you can really get by on nothing more than 8ft by 4ft of floor, determination, and the right attitude.

  To give you an idea of what I’m talking about with a home gym if you don’t want to limit yourself to bodyweight exercises (there’s nothing wrong with sticking with bodyweight exercises, I just prefer using weights),  then there’s two routes you can take.  You can get more information on both of these routes from Dragon Door’s website (a link to them is located under the resources tab on my site).

  The first route to take, which has much more flexibility, would be by getting a set of kettlebells.  The three sizes that Pavel Tsatsouline (the person who re-introduced the western world to kettlebells) recommends are 35lb, 53lb, and 70lb for guys and 10lb, 14lb, and 18lb for ladies.  For a majority of people, this should hold them over for at least a year or two of consistent exercising with them, if not longer.  Don’t let their looks fool you.  After my shoulder injury, it’s taken me almost a full year to get back to pressing the 70lb overhead for reps, but I still get my butt handed to me doing cardio with the 35lb’er.  Trust me, when used correctly, they can easily humble you. You can do your entire workout in a space of approximately 6ft by 4ft without really worrying about hitting or breaking anything.  They’re also pretty portable.  Doesn’t take much to toss one or two in the trunk of your car for a great workout anywhere.

  The second route to take, at least as a start, is straight out of the book Power to the People, also by Pavel Tsatsouline.  In it, he shows you a very abbreviated workout that only uses a handful of movements/exercises and an Olympic style bar and weight plates that weigh together 300lb.  Last time I checked pricing on that package, it only cost about $200, but you could probably get the equivalent at a uses sporting goods store for about half of that.  The good thing about cast iron weight plates is you can make them look like new with just a good scrubbing and 2 coats of spray paint.  Now granted, this setup is going to take a little more space (approximately 8ft wide since the bar is 7ft, and at least 5ft from front to back, but that’s really pushing it safety and space-wise.

  Beyond that, it’s all extras and cool toys.  Not saying don’t get them, but if money or space is an issue, it’s better to stick with a few solid pieces of equipment rather than getting a boatload of different gadgets and toys that provide a marginal benefit.  The only other piece of equipment that I thing is a good buy for this route is eventually a lifting rack.  Between doing squats and deadlifts, you’ll pretty much hit just about all the major muscle groups in your lower body, but not having a lifting rack can make doing squats dangerous unless you really know what you’re doing.  If you don’t want to do floor presses (mentioned in the book), then a bench is pretty important.  Two routes to go with a bench.  With new research that’s starting to come out, a normal width bench has been shown to cause shoulder issues because when you’re lowering the weight, your shoulder blades get stopped from coming as close together as they should due to the width of the bench.  That being said, the first route is to find a bench that’s not much wider than your spine.  Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it sounds too comfy to be lifting heavy weights on what pretty much works out to be a piece of railroad track with padding, but it will save your shoulder structure from unneeded wear and injury.  The second route is to do what I did. I built my own bench out of plywood 2x6’s, 4x4’s, and a rubber mat.  I made my bench wide enough that when I lower the weight during a bench press, the bench touches/supports my arms right at approximately the halfway point between my shoulder and elbow.  That way, I have less of a chance/habit of bouncing the weight off my chest, which can be bad for a whole lot of reasons.  Plus, it’s harder to get pinned under the weight since your arms are supported by the bench, so you’re more able to maneuver yourself out from under the weight.  As a safety note, more people die from doing the bench press than all other weight lifting movements combined.   All it takes is for that weight to be too heavy to lift that one time, your arms give out, and for the bar to land on your chest or neck, and unless you have a spotter right on the spot, you’ll probably die. If you’re going to do bench pressing, please get proper safety racks.  That way, if you have to bail out of the lift, you can set it down on the racks instead of your body.  I’ve gotten pinned before, and if it wasn’t for my wife being there, I probably would have eventually suffocated because of the weight pressing on my chest.  A side benefit of using the racks is that you’re mentally more comfortable when it comes to pushing yourself harder.

  Hopefully this has helped provide food for thought about how little it takes to get into great shape.  Maybe sometime in the future I might post what I use for my home gym.