Months stuck at home during pandemic lockdowns have given home workouts a boost, and there’s no reason to stop now. Over time, a home gym can save you money on gym memberships and having it right there can help fit exercise into a busy lifestyle.
A multi-gym in the garage has been a popular choice for decades, but there are many options for building a home gym and before starting to put one together you should think about what you want to achieve, the most effective use of your space, and the best bang for your buck.
It doesn’t have to be all about pumping iron, maybe you want a space for yoga or mobility work where you can really clear your mind and concentrate, maybe you like bodyweight exercises, or maybe you like to mix and match. Let’s take a look at three approaches to setting up your home workout space.
There are only two things I consider absolutely essential in a home gym – space to roll out a mat, and a pull-up bar. It won’t work for bodybuilders, but add a bit of running or cycling for your cardio, and you can maintain an excellent level of fitness with nothing more than that and a bit of dedication.
Let’s start with the mat. You could just go with a yoga mat, but while you’re setting up a dedicated space, you might as well take it up a notch.
Look for 1m2 tiles of gym flooring. As many as you need for your room will create the perfect space for a wide range of exercises. A 3x3m2 space is ideal for most.
I’m not just talking about yoga here (although yoga is great), there are a number of options to suit different needs (add links), and the main thing is mobility.
Bad back? Stiff shoulders? Sore knees? A huge number of those nagging everyday problems that get written off as “getting older” are
frequently due to a loss of joint mobility caused by sitting at a desk or in front of the TV.
There’s absolutely no reason to suffer – simple stretches and mobility drills can restore your flexibility and have you feeling young again.
There’s no essential equipment beyond the mat, but you can add a few inexpensive items as you reach a more advanced level – blocks and straps to increase extension, a bar for mobility – but there are a million things you can do without adding a thing.
Look for apps that put guided flows on your phone, or check out YouTube for recommended routines and progressions – they have everything from 5-minute stretches to meditative sessions lasting hours.
Moving on to the bar, one of the simplest and most effective pieces of exercise equipment there is. You have a few options here, depending on budget and space. The cheapest is the kind of bar that fits in a doorway.
The next step up in price is a bar that you attach to the wall, which is not the easy task in Kiwi houses that it might be elsewhere in the world – check if your building can handle it.
Finally, there is the freestanding pull-up station – you might need to check your stud height before getting one of these.
Pull-ups are not only one of the best exercises for building upper body muscle – changing your grip can hit almost every muscle in your back, arms and shoulders – they are also great for strengthening the shoulder joint, improving mobility and giving you healthy shoulders for life.
Pull-ups and dead-hangs will do wonders for your grip strength – a key indicator of potential age-related disability. For core strength, one hanging leg raise is worth ten sit-ups.
A pull-up bar is also the perfect anchor for a suspension trainer like TRX. These trainers expand the range of exercises you can do and are a good way to add more strength training while still working on your mobility.
Probably the most versatile set-up, with this you can build muscle, work on mobility, and improve your cardio.
Start with the same soft-covered floor space as The Minimalist (I recommend 3x3m2, but fit it to your needs), but this time around add a solid pull-up station. Right off the bat, this will give you a wider range of variations for your pull-ups, letting you hit more muscles, but it will also give you dipping bars.
Dips are the inverse of pull-ups, a push movement to go with the pull movement. It’s always ideal to pair exercises like this. Your muscles are grouped in pairs (think: biceps/triceps, quads/hamstrings), and developing both equally will help avoid injuries and give you healthy joints and good posture.
While pull-ups hit your back, shoulders, and biceps, dips will build your chest and triceps. Together, they are everything you need to get your upper body jacked.
But that’s not all the pull-up station offers. You can also use it to hang gymnastic rings or a punchbag. Rings give you pull-ups and dips taken to the next level, plus many more exercises.
The instability of rings will really work your joint and core strength. Have you seen Olympic gymnasts? A regular ring workout alone can give you serious hypertrophy.
Punchbags are fun and challenging. Select the right weight for your level – if you haven’t boxed before and your bag is too heavy, you could be setting yourself up for a hand or wrist injury.
Apps are your friend here too. Set the number of rounds and how hard you want to go, and your phone can shout “1, 1, 2, 1, 4” at you like the coach calling the shots at the boxing gym.
Round this out with some weights. Now, you could go for a couple of traditional adjustable dumbbells – easy to find, and they’d get you a long way. But what I’m going to recommend is kettlebells.
Ancient Greek warriors trained with something like the kettlebell, but the ones we have today originated in the Russian Empire. They are essentially cast iron balls with a handle and range from 4kg to 50kg.
In contrast to dumbbell or barbell weightlifting, the off-centre weight of kettlebells is used for more dynamic, ballistic movements, that combine aerobic and anaerobic workouts in a way similar to high-intensity interval training (HIIT). So, you get fitter and stronger at the same time.
If you were looking at pull-ups and dips and wondering what happened to leg day, kettlebells will set you right. Classic powerlifting moves like the snatch and clean and jerk are key kettlebell exercises providing a full body workout. The foundational swing movement works every part of your legs from your toes to your glutes.
You can use one kettlebell for a unilateral exercise that brings in your core stabilizing muscles or go two-handed, and there are several schools.
“Hardstyle” is all about raw power and strength and takes its inspiration from Olympic powerlifting.
“Fluid”, also called “girevoy”, which is just the Russian for kettlebell, is the competitive form, which emphasizes endurance as well as strength.
“Juggling” usually uses a lighter kettlebell and adds catches and releases – fantastic for grip strength.
Kettlebells provide a truly holistic training experience that works full-body strength, coordination, mobility, balance, and endurance. Good weights for a reasonably fit person starting out are 12-16kg for women and 16-20kg for men and aim to move up a couple of levels from that as you develop proficiency.
And if you enjoy that, you could give a mace a go.
This setup covers all your bases – flexibility and mobility work, strength and power training, and aerobic and cardio development. But what makes it a winning combo is the variety, dynamism and sheer fun it offers.
Crank your favourite tunes or cue up a podcast, and then take out your frustrations on your punchbag, or blast through a 20-minute hardstyle workout that leaves you dripping sweat and exhausted. This home gym can cover every aspect of fitness.
And if you need that space for something, you can just roll up the floor mats and stow everything away in a couple of minutes.
You might call this the classic home gym set-up – a multigym or power rack in the garage. Both options are all about strength training, but the approach is a bit different, so you’ll need to think about what your objectives are.
Multigyms are the simpler option. The key difference from a power rack is that although they are both used for a lot of the same exercises, the multigym has its own built-in weights or resistance.
This can be a good space saver - a simpler one can be fairly compact and take up no more than a corner of your garage. On the downside, it puts a limit on the maximum you can do, and smaller machines will have a lower limit.
So, what do you get? A typical basic functionality set would include variations of pulldowns, chest presses, and leg curls that enable you to exercise most of your muscle groups in a way that’s designed to emulate traditional weightlifting.
If you have any compromised abilities or injuries, a multi-gym can let you work the rest of your body around the affected part. It’s also a good option for a less experienced person looking to lower their injury risk as they improve their fitness.
A power rack will take up more space – you’ll probably need a 3x3m2 space to safely use a basic one, and then there’s a near-infinite number of add-ons to expand functionality. Rather than having the resistance built in, you use it with a barbell – the rack will support your weights in the start or finish positions, providing some safety backup if you’re working out without a spotter.
The power rack is what you want if you’re going for squats, deadlifts and bench presses – the tried-and-true path to big gains. But it can do more than that too. Just like the basic pull-up station, you can use the power rack to hang punchbags and rings, or suspension trainers, so you can also use it for cardio, flexibility and rehab.
With free weights, the only limit is how strong you get. When you can lift more, you just add more.
So, if you are a beginner who wants to get fitter, looking to maintain a decent level of strength, or if you have safety or physical factors you need to consider, look at a multigym.
If you are an experienced weightlifter, who knows what they are doing and what they need, who is interested in ultimate strength, or being the biggest guy on the street, the power rack is your friend.
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