I Want to Build a Home Gym From Scratch!

I last had a gym membership 8 years ago. I didn’t stop training, but I did stop paying a monthly fee to communally use a bunch of gym equipment with lots of other sweaty people. This makes me happy. That’s not to take anything away from gyms or people who like to frequent them; the gym provided me with tons of support at critical times in my adult life and I will be forever grateful for that. There were the college years where it provided me greater confidence; my early professional years where it gave me a social outlet, way to meet other people, and camaraderie; those same years when it provided me an outlet while suffering heartbreak. No matter why or when I needed the gym, it was there for me.

My Home Gym Build By The Numbers

I rationalized this choice by looking at it partially from a money perspective. My gym membership was around $40 per month. That’s almost $500 per year! Couple that, literally, with my wife paying the same amount. I could invest a year’s worth of gym memberships into some equipment and get a sweet setup that would fulfill almost all of my needs. Of course, I didn’t stop there. Still, I think it continues to pay dividends from a health and financial perspective. I might have even romanticized the idea of training alone in my basement; don’t laugh, you know you’ve done similar things. Anyways, here’s the chronology of how I built my home gym.

• 2013 ($950): Inherited a Concept2 erg. Was gifted an olympic bar as a wedding gift by my wife (she gets me). Bought a 260-pound set of Olympic bumper plates from Vulcan Strength.* Bought a half-rack squat rack. Then I bought a kind of mid-level bench off of Amazon. All told it ran me about $950. For Christmas I asked for a pull-up bar, so no cost to me there.
• 2015 ($150): Bought some small weight plates (2.5# and 5#) and a kettlebell. The small weight plates enabled more precision in selecting weights during lifts.
• 2016 ($2,700): OK, so this was a big spending year on gym equipment. But, I had just spent 4 months overseas for work and got a set of dumbbells as a gift to myself when I got back (Hey, at least it was more responsible than my car purchase when I did this back in 2011). I bought a set of commercial-grade, round rubber dumbbells, and a rack to go with them. 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 pound pairs. 
• 2017 ($1,100): Bought a Nautilus treadmill ($850) and a new barbell ($250). I had to drop the old barbell while doing box squats. I misjudged how far back the box was and the bar landed fully-loaded on the box and bent it to hell. Sorry to my wife for ruining her wedding gift to me. The barbell I bought was a Rogue Ohio Bar (<—Not yet an affiliate link. They declined my application because I’m not popular enough. Womp womp.). If you’re in the market for a bar, this one is great.
• 2021 ($40): Bought a set of elastic bands to help fill in some of the gaps in equipment and help with rehabbing a rotator cuff injury. They’re fine. I don’t feel strongly enough about them to affiliate link these for you, but you can find tons of them on Amazon or any of the fitness retailers.

All told, I’m standing at about $5,000 for my home gym setup. Had my wife and I continued with our gym memberships, we’d have spent around $9,000 in that time and would have nothing in our basement to show for it. Sure, it made our move a little bit more difficult on my part (no movers + lots of weights = questioning my own intelligence), but it provides convenience and is an overall great asset.

Home Gym: Guidelines & Equipment

All this being said, what would I recommend if you want to build your own home gym? It’s hard to say definitively because everyone has different needs and different monetary/space constraints, but I have some general guidelines that you might find useful.

• Focus on what you like to do, and invest in that. There’s nothing worse than toiling through a workout doing something you dislike. You’re less likely to use whatever equipment you’ve got if you hate to use it. I like to lift weights and I like to run, so I bought accordingly.
• It’s not feasible to try and replace every piece of gym equipment. For weights, choose the ones that offer the best bang for their buck and the most versatility. Here is how I would rank equipment, overall:
  1. Olympic bar and weight plates. If you were stuck on an island with just these two things, you could still get world-class workouts and be very well-rounded.
  2. A half-rack or full rack. If you’ve got the height in your home gym, try to ensure it has a built-in pull-up bar. I opted for a half-rack because of cost.
  3. An adjustable bench. Allows you to do far more than just bench press. Rows, jumps, box squats, etc.
  4. Adjustable dumbbells (believe me, I regretted going with a full set when we had to move). I’ve recommended these to friends and family, but have never personally used them, so I’m not going to affiliate link you with them. I have used Bowflex adjustable dumbbells at various gyms and can tell you first-hand that I think they’re garbage quality.
  5. Any sort of specialized equipment that you need. I got a back hyperextension station because I have a strange spinal fusion.** It’s what got me hard into weight training to begin with, so I guess I’m thankful for my weird genetic abnormality?
  6. Floor mats. For rolling around on, stretching, etc. It’s difficult to overstate how healthy you can continue to be if you spend more time on the floor as an adult. Thanks to dogs and a baby, I’ve had more than my fair share recently.
  7. Any kind of cardio machine add-on. This is one that you must base on what you’re enthusiastic about. That said, roads and sidewalks are usually accessible and a good pair of running shoes is very cheap compared to a treadmill (you’ll need them anyway if you have a treadmill!). Or you could get a sweet bicycle and try to use that in lieu of your car for errands. If you go this route, I award you 50 bonus points and personally thank you for making that choice.
• If you don’t own your home, keep it small and lightweight.
• You don’t need to make your home gym Instagram-worthy. I’m not on Instagram, so I won’t see your photo anyway, which is obviously why you would even go this route. See how much money I just saved you!?
• If you decide to finish a room in your home and want to put gym flooring in, you’ll quickly find that it’s quite expensive. I’ve seen home gyms that use luxury vinyl tile and it tends to hold up pretty well. If you want to ensure your floor never wears out or gets shattered by weights, then the prevailing wisdom is to buy 3/4” thick horse stall mat (NOT an affiliate link—I’ve not installed this stuff myself, but I plan on doing so when I get around to it) from Tractor Supply Co. or other such supplier. Seriously, check out the reviews—they’re mostly about home gyms.
• Remember that you don’t have to buy or build this whole gym all at once. It’s like tools—you build up what you need/want over time. 

Should You Build A Home Gym?

So after all this, how do you know if you should build a home gym? There are a few things you must keep in mind when considering this.

1. Are you certain that you will maintain the motivation to keep using it? This is the top consideration for a good reason. No matter which way you slice it, working out alone is different. Working out in a commercial establishment is far easier from a motivation perspective because you are in front of other people who, believe it or not, force you to be accountable. Fear of looking like an idiot in front of people is a powerful tool to make you train harder. This external motivation is sorely lacking if you’re working out in your own gym. If, on the other hand, you find yourself to be mostly internally motivated to train, then the home gym is for you. 
2. What is your goal for the gym in your home? Is this a stripped-down gym to use at your convenience when you can’t make it to your commercial gym? Is this going to be your full-time gym?
3. Are you sufficiently knowledgeable about your fitness discipline that you can avoid injuries and use the equipment you buy to its maximum potential? The last thing anyone wants is to load up a barbell with more than you can handle and end up dropping it on your neck. This is where the adjustable dumbbells would come in handy, by the way. 

I sincerely wish you the best of luck if you embark on this effort. May you not join the ranks of those who use their NordicTrack to pile shirts/pants onto in the weeks leading up to ironing day…

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*I really liked this company because it was a good value. The materials are great, the customer service is excellent, and you get a good quality product for the price. It’s far and away better than cheap Amazon-available garbage. However, after going through the affiliate partnership application process with them (and being granted it), I found that Rogue has what I consider to be similar-quality products available at cheaper prices. As a result, I can’t in good conscience recommend Vulcan’s products. I’ll be more than happy to change my decision if they demonstrate that they deserve it in the future…

**Lest you dismiss me for being a wimp for owning and using one of these, take a gander at this recent study from Norway: Andersen, Vidar et al. “Comparison of Muscle Activity in Three Single-Joint, Hip Extension Exercises in Resistance-Trained Women.” Journal of sports science & medicine vol. 20,2 181-187. 5 Mar. 2021, doi:10.52082/jssm.2021.181