Building a home gym in my small basement - Part 1

My Motivation

In the years since Covid sent everyone into lockdown, the home gym market has taken off. I had never really considered having a home gym up until mid-2023. For starters, I never had the money to build out something that I knew would have everything I wanted. I was in college until May 2022, and after having been working for about a year and a half I realized it was something I could do at my house.

I wanted to make a home gym because I recently have been trying to be more “hybrid”, and I have been running 3-4 days a week. For me, this leaves very little time in my schedule to drive to my gym, get a workout in, and drive home. Especially with work, and wanting to spend time with my girlfriend. This is when I realized that if could have my gym at the house I would be able to run and lift on the same day! I have been an avid gym goer ever since I got my driver’s license when I turned 16, so I knew that I would use my gym.

Why Have a Home Gym

Recent years have driven the home gym space into a big period of growth, now is a really good time to jump in and build your home gym because there is lots of competition in the market between equipment manufacturers driving prices down and products are getting better and more versatile.

Finding the Right Equipment

When figuring out the equipment you want to buy you need to ask yourself the question: what do you want out of your home gym?

Everyone is coming from a different place on their fitness journey. You can get very fit with a minimal home gym. If you’re looking to start from nothing and just have something at your house you can get away with an adjustable bench and some adjustable dumbbells. There are so many exercises you can do with just those two pieces of equipment.

The point is though that everyone is different, and you need to think about how much space you have and what equipment you will use.

For me, I wanted to bring home a lot of the lifts that I enjoy doing at the gym. I wanted to get a power rack so I could do barbell lifts since those were a high priority for me. Since I wanted a power rack though it takes up much more space than just getting bare essentials.

Configuring the Space

Thinking about how you will place equipment in your gym is especially important if, like me, you are building your gym in a limited space environment. I assume as someone building a home gym, were all limited in space in some aspects, but some more than others. Taking lots of measurements is important, you do not want to be surprised when everything shows up and something does not fit how you thought it would.

Flooring is also very important here, if you are planning or maybe even not planning on dropping weights you should consider getting some rubber flooring to prevent damage to your floors or foundation. It will also help with noise, but if you’re going for a truly minimal home gym and just getting dumbbells, this may be overkill for you.

If you decided on getting a power rack remember that if you get a rack that is 30 inches in depth, you still need to account for the width of the uprights. Most racks now are 3x3 so you should add 6 inches for a 4-post rack. This is also valid for the width of the rack as most of the time it is a measurement for the width between the uprights and not the measurement from outside post to outside post.

Order and Delivery of the equipment

When you are ordering and getting something as large as gym equipment delivered, most of the time it is going to be delivered by freight. Meaning the delivery is not coming through the traditional mail system and there is a freight carrier contracted to do the delivery. They will show up on a large truck, and from what I’ve seen online they can show up in a full-sized semi-truck for the delivery. I did lots of research online about this before I ordered because I live in a townhouse and a complex that is not as wide as a neighborhood. There was not much information online about this topic but I placed my order for my rack and adjustable bench through REP Fitness, they used a company called RL Carriers to do the delivery. Where I live in Charlotte, NC they showed up on a 28-foot box truck. I think if you live in an urban area they are more likely to show up on a box truck because the delivery hub is most likely to be closer and have more delivery truck options (this is just my theory). This will be different for everyone and I suggest if you are concered about a truck getting to your location you should reach out to the seller to get more information.