Setting up a home gym without dedicating an entire room to it
KristyMost people who want a home gym imagine a dedicated room. Then they look at their apartment and give up. That's a shame, because a dedicated room is almost never necessary.
Start by measuring, not buying
You need a clear space of about two meters by one and a half meters to lie down, do lunges, and raise your arms without hitting furniture. Take a tape measure and check your home before anything else.
Also check the height. With your arms extended above your head, you need thirty centimeters of clearance. This determines whether you can do overhead presses or jump rope.
The floor before the equipment
This is the purchase everyone postpones and that is most useful. A thick mat protects your floor, dampens noise downstairs, and prevents you from exercising on cold tiles.
Without it, two things happen. You leave a mark on the floor the day a weight drops, and your downstairs neighbors hear every footfall.
The ten-second storage principle
This is the real selection criterion, and it's more important than the quality of the equipment.
If taking out your gear takes five minutes, you won't work out on tired days. Yet these are precisely the days that make a difference over three months. Everything you buy must be quick to put away and quick to take out.
- Equipment that folds flat fits under a bed or behind a door.
- Equipment that empties, like water dumbbells, takes up almost no space once the session is over.
- Wall-mounted equipment, such as a pull-up bar, takes up no floor space.
In what order to buy
Don't set up your gym all at once. Buy one piece, use it for a month, then decide on the next based on what you were missing.
- A good floor mat.
- Adjustable weights, which replace several fixed weights and avoid repurchasing with every progress.
- Something for upper body pulling exercises, which bodyweight alone doesn't allow well.
- A bench, only if you've already maintained three months of regularity.
Noise, in a co-ownership
Three sources, in order of importance. Weights put back on the floor. Jumps. And vibrations from a machine placed directly on the floor.
The first two are solved by changing exercises or by setting weights down instead of dropping them. The third is solved with a mat.
What I won't advise you to do
Buy everything in the first month. This is the most common mistake, and I prefer to sell one item to someone who comes back in six months rather than five to someone who gives up in three weeks.
A well-thought-out space with three items beats a room full of dusty equipment.
Kristy
