Tell us about your home gym....

[Jared Traveler]

Do you have a home gym/dojo? Do you solo train? Do you teach others out of your home? Do you train your kids? What gear or equipment have you found useful?

I'm curious about your guy's home gym. Purpose, set up, gear?

 

[Alan0354]

I workout at home. I have two heavy bags hanging in the garage and a weighted deflated speed bag for stick practice. I even have a 12lbs medicine ball in the net hanging for punching as shown on the upper right corner of the picture.

I do my weight training at home also. I use different elastic bands to do bench press, bicep curls, pull down and other exercises. This is what I use for bench press. I have the 200lbs, I still have to tighten the band more as it's really not 200lbs, my estimate is about 160lbs only. So I have to shorten the middle to make the bands stretch more to give more resistance. I can do incline and decline press on this also. I put a stick through the two loops so I don't do it like in the picture, more like a real barbell bench press. It's hard to hold it like in the picture doing heavy weight, all the pressure on the thumbs.

I also have a set of 50lbs adjustable dumbells with 2.5lbs increment and some loose dumbells.

For legs, I walk in deep stance like in Karate/TKD with one leg forward bend about 90deg and back leg straight, just walk back and fore for 7 1/2 minutes non stop. This one is quite dreadful!!!

I spend half the time doing weights. I am surprised I can make it work at home. 2 years ago, everything shut down, I could not go to the gym, I have no choice but to set up at home. It work out so well I don't even want to go back to the gym anymore. I talk too much in the gym, I actually work harder at home. Also saves a lot of time driving back and fore.

I put in about 7 hours a week total.

I am thinking about putting in a 3rd car garage, not for an extra car, but use it as a workout room. Then I can actually put a cage for real bench press and all that. Right now, the space in the garage is very tight because we do put both cars in the garage. I would like to hang more stuffs.

 

[Cynik75]

Pull up bars, kettlebells, resistance bands, ABS wheel, push up handles

 

[Alan0354]

I forgot, I have pull up bar, dip-attachment and twist bar also:

Above is the Dip-attachment hooking onto the pull up bar(1) I wear 35lbs weights to do dips.
Also, see (2) That is for me to lie on my back, then use the handles to pull myself up with body and leg straight. I put myself up, hold for 5 sec and repeat 15 reps each set. I might have to wear some weights soon.

I also have these Twist bars for chest and arms:

One can do a lot without going to the gym, I worked harder at home than in the gym because I don't have friends to talk to. Only thing missing is the JAW exercise. I lost over 10lbs since I workout at home without eating any differently.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I'm curious about your guy's home gym. Purpose, set up, gear?

 

[Jimmythebull]

I got a decent Set up at home. Weights, incline bench, free standing chin/dip station. Squat stands, preacher bench...other Extras.
End of the day I've seen people get good results with just a barbell Set.

 

[_Simon_]

Yep have never gotten a gym membership, bought my own stuff ages and have never looked back! Got an adjustable incline/decline bench with lat pulldown and leg curl/extension attachment and squat rack sort of, a separate cable machine (lat pulldown, machine chest press etc), barbell, EZ curl bar, dumbbells, heaps of weight plates, resistance bands, chin up bar, portable dip bars, and a heavy bag hanging on its own stand.

The main stuff (bench, barbells etc) have lasted me almost 20 years, how's that for value! Haven't had to replace anything.

People have said to me I must be really disciplined to train at home, and I just think it's so much easier to be honest. I enjoy it so much that it was never something I felt I had to force myself to do, and a habit I built that nowadays it's just something I do without question or effort.

 

[Jimmythebull]

Yep have never gotten a gym membership, bought my own stuff ages and have never looked back! Got an adjustable incline/decline bench with lat pulldown and leg curl/extension attachment and squat rack sort of, a separate cable machine (lat pulldown, machine chest press etc), barbell, EZ curl bar, dumbbells, heaps of weight plates, resistance bands, chin up bar, portable dip bars, and a heavy bag hanging on its own stand.

The main stuff (bench, barbells etc) have lasted me almost 20 years, how's that for value! Haven't had to replace anything.

People have said to me I must be really disciplined to train at home, and I just think it's so much easier to be honest. I enjoy it so much that it was never something I felt I had to force myself to do, and a habit I built that nowadays it's just something I do without question or effort.

i used to work in a Gym but honestly the privacy alone is worth it. Even when i trained after work people used to ask me questions. Now i can train when i want & train in my boxers if i want.

 

[Jimmythebull]

these i have. cut 10 cm shorter so i can use them for benches too. Squat stands are great & save space. A Power rack is great but too big for me.

 

[Jimmythebull]

Talking of Home gyms.. one guy who trained a lot at home was Bill Pearl who sadly just passed away.
I never met Bill but i phoned 3 times with him & he signed a book for me. was a great guy.
I remember one time when i phoned he told me he was just out in his Home Gym in a big Barn training. I said as a joke , hey bill i´ll train with you sometime and he laughed & said why not. RIP Bill Pearl.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

We don’t have room for any dedicated space, and no place suitable for indoor training. I have a collection of gear and exercise bits that I use. Most of my solo training is fitness (mostly kettlebells and a pull-up bar), forms (since they don’t require a partner), and some shadow-boxing and shadow-grappling.

 

[MetalBoar]

I owned a very small commercial gym before the pandemic killed it. I kept the the best of the equipment for my home gym so I've got high end, commercial quality machines:

• chest press
• pulldown
• shoulder press
• seated row
• prone leg curl
• 4 way neck
• hip extension
• leg press

I plan to get a FID bench, a power rack with pull up bar, and the associated free weights, but I'll either need to open a new gym, remove some shelving from my garage, or figure out some other way to make the space.

 

[Alan0354]

One thing I really miss that I cannot do it at home is the simple Military Press(Just pushing weights straight up when sitting). Not that the gym has equipment I don't.

For the life of me, I CANNOT swing a dumbbell over 30lbs up above my shoulder from resting on my thigh. People make it look so easy, just rest on the knee while sitting, then bounce with the knee and the dumbbell goes right up. For the live of me, I just cannot do that!!! It's embarrassing to see a guy smaller than me, bounced a 50lbs dumbbell up without breaking a sweat.

There's no equipment in the gym that can help me. I actually asked someone to hold the dumbbell on my left side, I use both hands to get the dumbbell on the right side up, then have the guy hand it to my left hand!!!! I could do 55lbs dumbbell military press in the gym for 10 reps. Now, I am alone, I have to just settle with 30lbs dumbbell and do 40 reps a set!!! That really are not the same. My big boss would not be able to hold a heavy dumbbell for me like those guys in the gym.

People kept saying it's easy to swing, I just cannot do it!!!

Only way is to have barbell setup on the rack, so I can sit below and push the barbell off the rack to do military press. But I don't have the room. I cannot set up in family or living room, big boss is going to kill me for that!!!

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

There's no equipment in the gym that can help me.

One time I did my double heads in my 24 hours fitness gym, everybody were screaming and ran away.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

There's no equipment in the gym that can help me.

There is no equipment in the gym that can help me to develop this.

and this.

 

[Jimmythebull]

There is no equipment in the gym that can help me to develop this.

View attachment 28935

and this.

 

[Jimmythebull]

the machine we had in the Gym you could lower the pad below the knee.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

the machine we had in the Gym you could lower the pad below the knee.

I have tried that. I have one in my garage.

Sometime to replace tradition by modern is not easy. I have tried to use this

to replace this.

But in the modern gym, I still cannot find anything to replace this.

 

[Alan0354]

Sometime to replace tradition by modern is not easy. I have tried to use this

View attachment 28936

to replace this.

You just want things to look creative and fancy. I've seen a lot of these in kung fu movies in the 70s.

The gym machine works. Look at all the athletes now, so much improvement AND more importantly, still on the tip top shape over 40. It's a different world now. You just need to LEARN how to do it, it's NOT so simple, you don't blindly pushing.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

You just want things to look creative and fancy. I've seen a lot of these in kung fu movies in the 70s.

Those traditional training equipments had existed in China over 1000 years.