Long gap between posts due to the pandemic, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about this project. With all gyms being closed, maintaining my level of fitness has become a bit harder and has got me thinking about my home’s gym space. A fair warning, this is going to be a pretty geeky post.
While I know the value engineering of my home’s design might change the space or layout of the current floor plan, having no access to a gym right now has made me focus on what I’d want in the home’s gym. The closed fitness center where I currently live is actually pretty good for an apartment building gym. Besides the required high-use treadmills, semi-useless ellipticals and a spin bike, there are a bunch of very specific functional training (cables and weight stacks) stations for pulldowns, rows, and chest and overhead presses. Oddly nothing for legs. But the real jewels of the gym are its free weight dumbbells (5–50 lb sets), its dual station adjustable functional trainer, and its half rack cage with a decent bar and plate set. Almost everything is Technogym commercial equipment, so for the most part its really decent stuff.
While I’ve done weight training at various times throughout my life, I really started going heavier around five years ago when I had to ramp down my distance running due to constant ankle injuries and with my knees starting to go. It’s been an interesting and fun journey for someone my age, but the benefits have been huge. So much so, that I want to continue that for as long as possible. For that reason, designing my home gym needs to cater to those needs and the level of fitness I look to maintain and grow upon. I started with the current floor plan of the gym space, researched equipment and started drawing things to scale to see how I can pack as much stuff into the space I will potentially have. Below is my current thinking.
The biggest piece of equipment is the half rack with plate storage and an integrated, single stack, adjustable cable station (top). The rack will be used primarily for squats, bench presses, and pull ups off the top, as well as dips with an attachment. The cable station attached to the back will allow pulldowns, extensions, various cable curls, cable rows, face pulls, etc. Finally, with the bench stood up and the safety arms removed from the cage, there is plenty of room in front of the rack for the various deadlift movements. The weight plates store on the rack, but there is a bar stand to the left to store the various bars I’d use. Below that is a rack to store dumbbells and kettlebells. It’s a three tier rack to hold sets from 15–60 lbs and a few select kettlebell sizes. I’d look to hang a TV over that. The middle area is for boxing – a newer passion I’ve discovered these last few years and have gone full in on during isolation. So hanging a heavy bag and putting in a good speed bag area would be nice. Lastly, for some good full body cardio (that’s pretty low impact), I’m thinking about a rowing machine. I’m not 100% on that yet, but every time I’ve used one, its totally kicked my ass, so it might be a nice compliment to the strength training and boxing workouts.
Of course, getting to an approved, buildable plan is priority. But given the odd times we’re living through, its nice to imagine and realize the possibilities. Besides, my current living room has slowly transformed itself into a gym at this point, so I’ve already made a dent in acquiring some of the equipment (mostly bars, plates and dumbbells – see header). Now if I only had room for that half rack and an exposed beam to hang a heavy bag from…