Building a Home Gym

I love working out at home. Thanks for the great ideas.

previous posts make this redundant but: power rack, bench, barbell. all you'll ever need.

Bumping

Equipment:

- Power Cage (aka Power Rack), Squat Rack or Squat Stands.
The power cage is ideal because you can get a stand alone bench and set the safety catches to the proper height to allow you to bench inside the cage and safely to do without a spotter. Basically, when you arch your back to bench, the bar should be able to touch your chest, but when you lay flat it should hit the safety catches. I had to put two pieces of plywood underneath my bench to get this to work properly.

- A standalone bench (if getting a power cage) or a bench press
Self-explanatory. Just make sure you read weight limits and think about how much you will be benching + your own weight. One that can vary inclines would be good too.

- An olympic barbell
A standard 45lb one; or if you're not that strong yet, you can find 35lb or lighter ones online. Most on criagslist will be the 45lb ones. Make sure the bar is not bent much when buying on Craigslist.

- Dumbbells: Olympic dumbbell handles (takes olympic plates) or dumbbells of varying weights

- Olympic Plates
No milk jugs won't work. lol Just get how much you think you'll need. Realize you'll need either two of each for barbell exercises or four of each for dumbbell exercises with olympic DB handles. You will need multiple 10lb plates though (for making the jump from one 10 to one 25, etc.)

- Olympic spring collars
Stops the plates from moving around on the bar or dumbbells.


Nice extras:

- Bumper Plates
Not just for olympic lifts, but any floor lift where you're starting with a weight less than the bar + two 45's. If you can't afford these (they're not cheap) consider measuring the 45lb plate from the center to edge and get cinderblock(s) that equal that height. You can place the bar on these to raise it up when doing less than 45's. I've done this for years and it's worked for me.

- A simple pulley machine
I never got one of these, but a pulley machine would add a lot of exercises that hit muscles that are hard to hit with just barbells and dumbbells (such as lats if you're unable to do chinups).


Conditioning Equipment (if you're into that sort of thing):

- Prowler
It's a weight sled that had two upright handles you can push it with and you can also loop a rope with some PVC pipe handles through the hole in the front to do backwards and forwards drags. It can give you a brutal workout. I absolutely love/hate my Prowler!

Farmer's Walk Handles:

Look around for "Pitbull Strongman Equipment". He has a Myspace (lol I know), but his email is around somewhere. He has the cheapest Farmer's Walk handles around ($105 with shipping), but they are very sturdy.


Well that's all I have. I doubt you'll want everything I listed, but I wanted to show you options. My home gym is just a remnant of it's former glory since I started doing my lifting at a gym. But I still have my Prowler, Farmer's Walks handles, and a place to do floor lifts. If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to help.

I use the mats because if I drop the bar I don't want to crack a 100lb plate that is expensive to replace. Or if I'm doing really heavy dumbbell bench and have to bail out by dropping the dumbbell, I don't want them hitting the floor and breaking, because they will. It also gives good footing compared to concrete. And even with bumper plates, it's nice to have the rubber floor when doing things like power cleans.

Sorry for bringing the zombie thread back from the dead, but bumping to read later. Moving into a new house next month with more bedrooms/basement/garage space than I know what to do with!