In theory, bodyweight-only workouts should be all that you need to sufficiently train your body. Throughout our history as a species specialized equipment was never part of our evolution, so it would stand to reason that some pull ups, push ups, and air squats should be all that you need for an effective home-based workout. This is a nice theory except this won’t work when field tested with modern humans living in western society. Specialized training equipment helps to bring about balance in an otherwise unbalanced world.
Building up a home gym is a great idea even for our athletes that train with us in-person regularly. A home gym helps facilitate better results by creating more training opportunities beyond the few times a week that a client can train with us at Ruthless.
This is a nice theory, except this won’t work when field tested with modern humans living in western society. Specialized training equipment helps to bring about balance in an otherwise unbalanced world.
@RuthlessPerform
Our in-person athletes frequently get ‘homework’ which can range from a weekly total on a select set of exercises to full-blown rigorous strength training workouts with HIIT sets and more.
So whether you train with us in person, as an online client, or just as a fitness enthusiast looking to make the most out of some dead space in your home, below are a few of our suggestions for building up a home gym.
High-Quality Resistance Bands
Most of these suggestions are without a particular order of significance but resistance bands are a top-priority for your home gym arsenal. Resistance bands do a terrific job of providing training stimuli that could otherwise cost you thousands of dollars in equipment.
This is in no way a comprehensive article on the value of bands but these can help you train beyond the normal stimuli of gravity, create resistance in various planes, build ‘stabilizing’ muscles, and more.
Resistance bands provide the above mentioned benefits and do so while easily fitting anywhere. They are also highly packable which makes them great for travel and inexpensive to top it off.
Some of our favorite band exercises are side-lying clams, band pull aparts, archers rows, external rotations, pallof presses, unilateral cable rows, facepulls, and more.
We do not sell bands directly online but a few of our favorite band retailers are: Westside Barbell, EliteFTS, and Rogue.
Swiss Ball
The swiss ball can also be referred to as a ‘yoga ball’ or even as a ‘stability ball’. These provide a unique training stimuli and create tons of training options for a very affordable price.
As home-gym owners you’ll almost need one of these to ensure that you are getting ample hamstring work. Beyond training the hamstrings with banded isometric or dynamic leg curls, the swiss ball can provide another hamstring training option. Swiss Ball Hamstring Curls and their unilateral counterpart are great training options. The Unilateral SB Hamstring Curl is an advanced hamstring developer that you can do at-home for just a few bucks.
Other swiss ball exercises that we like are: Stir-the-Pot, Pike Roll Outs, Hack Squats, feet-elevated push-ups, and more. You’ll have plenty of training options with this tool and without much spatial requirements.
We don’t have a preferred vendor for Swiss Balls, but you can pick one up at most home-goods or sporting goods stores.
Suspension Trainer
The suspension trainer was one of the few pieces of gym equipment that I had at my disposal during the height of the COVID shut down which in no small part helped me maintain my sanity.
Of the suspension trainers on the market, the most recognizable brand is the TRX trainer. They have a few options on the market but if the price tag dissuades you, there are plenty of other cheaper options on the market that are equally as effective.
We use a suspension trainer at our mobility & fitness studio for a variety of exercises. In a home gym setting a suspension trainer’s primary purpose should be to stimulate the mid back. This is an area that is notoriously hard to get at without climbing a rock wall or with more conventional machines like a horizontal row / cable tower.
In the case of the mid back, we use the suspension trainer for ring rows, face pulls to rings, and we have a few ways to progress and regress these exercises on top of that. The simplest progression / regression to these exercises is changing the angle. If you’re feet are in close to the support the exercise will be way harder, if you’re further out it’ll be way easier.
We also use suspension trainers for fall outs, overhead extensions, and a few other exercises when we’re really trying to get creative.
Slam Balls
An all-important piece of equipment particularly when athleticism is at stake is is the slam ball. These things allow you to generate force in a variety of planes, add a non-traditional weight to an exercise that might normally call for a dumbbell, and more generally these can serve as the release of aggression that you may need after a long work day.
Slam balls are great for overhead slams, rotational overhead slams, overhead carries and lunges (overhead reverse lunges with a slam ball are a personal favorite), russian twists, med ball pitches and chops, overhead throws, and more.
These even have a military application. As I learned working with one of our clients at the Mobility & Fitness Studio in Pottsville, The Army Combat Fitness Test now has a standing power throw as one of its testing exercises. I was very pleased to hear that the military is starting to move away from its traditional testing but for the scope of this article, it speaks to the utility of slam balls.
We get ours from Rogue Fitness. These slam balls have held up well. The prices don’t seem to fluctuate too much from one company to another so I’d get a sturdy set of 6-25 and slam ’em on your driveway to your heart’s content.
A great conditioning set with the slam ball is a timed set for 50 repetitions at a fixed weight. Come back weeks later and try to beat your time.
If you’re really sadistic you can do that set multiple times with a short rest interval between sets.
Only have the budget for 1 or 2? If you’re over 155 lbs or over, I’d consider a 10 and a 14 lb.. Weigh less than that? A 6 lb. and a 10 lb. are good choices.
Olympic Barbell & Plates
Well this one should be damn near obvious… A barbell and plate set with some strategic programming will get you about as far as you can go on this planet.
One question that comes up frequently is how much weights to get? In short, I’d get whatever your budget allows for but even 315 lbs. will go along way–even for folks that can handle quite a bit more than that. Get what you can afford and slowly incorporate more and more. But make sure you’re starting out with a few different plates: 45’s, 25’s, 15’s, and 10’s have the most uses (35 lb. plates are for psychopaths).
You can get a very versatile training bar for under $500 or you can get one bundled with bumper plates. The bumper plates will end up extending the lifetime of your barbell–and probably even your floor.
Wrap up…
Consider visiting the EliteFTS blog as well. I’ve written a few pieces for them in the past, but not in about a decade. Their site is geared towards the powerlifting / home gym crowd and can help provide you with some ideas for your own training space.
Overall a home gym is an asset that holds its physical value and provides you with some of the best investments you can make in your fitness at the same time. There are dozens of other great pieces of equipment outside of what I’ve mentioned above, the utility of some vary by where you live, the set up of your yard, if you have a driveway etc..
Our Mobility & Fitness Studio began with just a few weights and a rack and grew very methodically into a complete training environment. If you’re thinking about having a new home gym installed, talk to us. We can help you breeze past some of the mistakes we made early on with a studio gym and help you build a home gym worthy of Rocky. And if you have a new home gym and want to test it out with a professionally designed training program, we can help you with that as well.
Shoot us an email to get started.
