Building a Home Gym on a Budget (Part 1 of 2)

READ PART 2

With over 3,500 pieces in our archives, we’ve made the decision to republish a classic article every Sunday in an effort to introduce our more recent readers to some of the greatest, timeless treasures from the past. The first edition of this essay appeared in April 2019.

Allow me to reenact the usual scenario that arises each time you visit a commercial gym. After changing into your training attire and packing your gym bag with essentials like shoes, protein shaker, supplements, and other items, you leave the house or office. You get into your car and, like many others who live in densely populated cities, you find yourself stuck in traffic a few minutes into your trip. You sit and wait for the cars to clear out so you may work out and achieve your lofty objective. You reach your location after thirty minutes, two mental breakdowns, and four near-collisions. Warming up, you have to wait for the person doing bicep curls in the one and only squat rack in the 20,000 square foot facility that’s lined with an unending supply of ellipticals and treadmills. At last, you get into the rack, do your squats and ward off that one man who gives you form advice and tells you how great yoga is compared to weightlifting. Two hours later, your session is finally over, and you take a 30-minute journey home to eat.

Does that sound like you?

Let me now describe to you what a normal training session entails for me and the thousands of other people who have broken free from the never-ending cycle of gym memberships.

If it’s chilly, I put on sweatpants and a hoodie; if it’s warm, I wear no shirt, and I go outside into my garage. I head to my stereo and turn on some relaxing music to help me focus throughout my warm-up. I decide to try squats, so I rack my bar (the bar I use with my buddies; it’s better than any bar at the gym I used to pay $70 a month to join) and start progressively raising the weight. I pop on some good music, turn the volume up to 11, and get to work because I’m at my best set. About an hour later, I finish the attack on my body, create a protein shake, go ten feet inside my house to the most anabolic machine known to man—the refrigerator—and take stock of the hard work that has been done.

You’re probably thinking to yourself after reading that, “Man! That may sound pleasant, but… Nevertheless. The term that hurts a man’s mission the most. “But I’m short on cash.”

With that, I’m here to assist you. I’ll demonstrate to you today how to construct a home gym on a tight budget and how it’s more affordable than you might believe. You’ll be asking why you didn’t switch sooner after we’re through.

Check out our podcast featuring Coop on everything related to at-home gyms:

How to Construct a Home Gym for Less Than $1,000: The Useful But Affordable Equipment We Suggested Beginning With

Building a home gym may undoubtedly be costly. I’ve even saw individuals shell out more than $50,000 to build a completely furnished gym in their garage. However, just because some people choose to spend that much money exercising at home doesn’t indicate that it’s required or a smart choice.

In actuality, you can build a functional home gym for less than $1,000.

Really, all you need to get started are a few basic pieces of equipment. Almost regardless of your objective, you can achieve success with these products, whether you want to grow muscle or reduce weight:

• Olympic weightlifting
• squat rack with a bar for pull-ups
• Weight plates (iron or rubber, depending on your price range)
• level bench
• Leap rope

After these fundamentals are taken care of, we may suggest hundreds of other items of equipment.

If you’re looking to purchase these essential pieces of home gym equipment on a tight budget, you should look for products that are multipurpose and highly efficient. However, buying on a tight budget does not have to mean settling for subpar goods. Inexpensive equipment will be less satisfying, used less, have a higher risk of injury, have a reduced resale value, and increase the need for new purchases. Fortunately, you can acquire extremely nice equipment at low prices because more gym equipment is being purchased now than at any previous moment in history, partly because of the burgeoning garage gym community.

We’ve broken down our particular brand/product recommendations that satisfy this need to be reasonably priced and well-made below:

Olympic Weightlifting

The best piece of equipment for your gym is the Olympic barbell, which is what we recommend. The performance and lifespan of an inexpensive steel rod that some manufacturers call a barbell are very different from that of a high-quality barbell.  You will probably use the barbell more than any other piece of equipment.

For the majority of people—especially those who concentrate on the squat, deadlift, bench, and overhead press—we advise using the Ohio Power Bar from Rogue Fitness.  The OPB, which retails for less than $300 (as of this writing), features a bronze bushing rotation mechanism, a center knurl, aggressive knurling, and a 29MM, 205K PSI tensile strength shaft with powerlifting knurl marks. It may seem confusing to read all of the above specifications (you can read more about the anatomy and terminology of barbells here), but know that this is a lifetime warranty barbell that is made in the USA, can withstand almost anything you throw at it, and is something you will be able to use and possibly even pass down to your grandchildren.

We recommend the FringeSport Wonder Bar V2 if you’d rather a somewhat less expensive bar with a thinner shaft and no center knurl (which feels better for front squats and overhead presses because the knurl doesn’t scrape your chin). For little than $200, you can get the fantastic imported Wonder Bar V2 sent right to your door. The Wonder Bar comes with a lifetime warranty, a bronze bushing rotating system, a medium-aggressive knurl, and high tensile strength steel.

READ PART 2