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QUESTION:
I just bought a house and am
already laying the blueprints for my home gym in the garage.
Do you have any recommendation for a particular brand multi-gym?
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ANSWER:
There are a variety of considerations
when considering how to equip your home gym. Cost, space, and your
training objectives are just a few important concerns.
When I designed my own home gym (also
in my garage), my objective was efficiency— to have the smallest
amount of equipment which would allow me to perform the largest
variety of exercises. (I can’t seem to convince my wife that
the gym is an inappropriate place to park her car, but I’m
still working on it).
Based on these criteria, here are
my suggestions:
Start with dumbbells
because of their immense versatility.
With a good set of dumbbells you
can apply resistance to virtually any muscle without the aid of
any other equipment.
If you don’t have room for a
complete set of dumbbells (which are expensive in terms of space
and money), Power Blocks are an unbeatable choice. Power
Blocks are basically selectorized dumbbells — you determine
the weightload by simply re-setting the pins, just as you would
with a machine.
I also suggest buying the stand which
is designed to hold the Power Blocks— without it, you’ll
have difficulty inserting the pins.
The second choice
is an ABS-Pro Swiss ball from Sissel USA.
The ABS-Pro can be used as a substitute
for a weight room bench, and is a hell of a lot cheaper as well.
In addition, the ball allows for a multitude of strength training,
flexibility, and stabilization exercises which are unique to the
ball alone. At less than $30, this is the most versatile tool in
my gym. (Please go to www.swissball.com
for more information).
Thirdly, look into
purchasing an Olympic style barbell set.
These can be obtained for less than
$100, although I’d suggest a higher quality set if you can
afford it (a nation-wide chain of stored called Play-It-Again Sports
sells every imaginable type of pre-owned sports and fitness equipment
at rock bottom prices— check your local yellow pages for one
near you).
Olympic lifters and power lifters
may have to shop around for properly gauged and engineered bars,
otherwise any set should do.
Fourth on the list
is a power rack.
I rank it fourth not because it’s
not as useful, but because it costs a bit more (you can easily find
a good rack for less than $300 though— I’d check out Bigger
Faster Stronger at 801-974-0460 as a starting point) and takes up
a fair amount of space.
The power rack enables you to perform
exercises from various heights and easily and quickly adjusts to
different heights for your partner. A good rack has a pull-up bar
at the top, and most importantly, a system of adjustable pins so
that you can perform benching and squatting variations in complete
safety.
Although the power rack takes up a
bit of space, you can store a lot of your other equipment inside
of it when not in use.
Finally, there are scores of useful
tools you can equip your gym with — medicine balls, trap
bars, squat harnesses, wobble boards, grip developers, etc. I love
having lots of options available, however, I can train myself and
my athletes without them when the ‘extras’ are unavailable,
as long as the basics are there.
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