Home Gyms

[elisas]

My apologies in advance; I posted this on the Equipment and Gear forum and got no responses so I'm going to give it one more try here. Does anyone have a home gym or experience with one? I"d appreciate hearing about any pros and cons and about recommended brands (or NOT recommended!)

Thanks!

Elisa S.

[Mary W]

and I have to say that right now I'm a bit overwhelmed by it all! It came with an olympic size barbell with 300# of weight! I got it mainly for the squat rack, and I think that once I get used to that huge (really long and 45# all by itself) barbell, I'll be fine. Right now the room we set it up in is not that organized, which really affects me for some reason

Anyway, for the price it's great. It was $350, and it has a fully adjustable bench with a leg extension, hamstring curl, and preacher curl pad included. The gym itself has a squat rack, a pulley system that has a lat pull down attached, and a bar for chin ups. I'm sure there's more, but that's most of it.

Good luck shopping. There's a lot to choose from!!

[DawnP]

Elisa,

Check out the machines available at NetMarket.com then you can go into stores with an educated idea of features and prices.

I agree with Mary, an adjustable (incline/flat/decline) weight bench is the way to go and a lat tower is great if you can't do pull-ups and want to work your way up. You have to find a rack where you can use the bench supports to perform bench exercises (bench press as well as overhead presses) AND you can squat safely using the rack - big plus.

Oh - don't get a cheap "standard-width" rack - it's so narrow you won't be able to get a wide enough grip, especially if anyone with big shoulders is going to share it with you. Get a mid-width - this will support a 5 or 6-ft barbell well. I'm not sure about Olympic-width, they do hold much heavier weights but the rack might be too wide for a 5-ft bar.

I found I don't really use my leg extension and leg curl attachment. I think squats, deadlifts, lunges and step-ups are very effective. But my hubby says he uses these at the gym when his knees hurt - so you might want them.

I finally stored the preacher curl attachment - I think my long upper arm bone just really prevents me from using it properly. In the end I've been working on my incline biceps curls and these are HARD - and effective.

The whole gym cost $120 at netmarket.com and they shipped it for about $30. Assembling these babies is not easy, plan on spending half a day. But it's worth it! You're so lucky to have the room for it, you'll really love it. I stuck mine in the family room and everyone sits on it to watch TV! But I work out on it just about every day. Worth every penny.

Good luck!
Dawn P.

[elisas]

for your useful advice. Still shopping...........

[Clare*]

Originally posted by elisas
My apologies in advance; I posted this on the Equipment and Gear forum and got no responses so I'm going to give it one more try here. Does anyone have a home gym or experience with one? I"d appreciate hearing about any pros and cons and about recommended brands (or NOT recommended!)

Thanks!

Elisa S.

Sorry, Elisa- this still needs to go back to the Equipment and Gear Forum. Now that you have some answers, hopefully more people will notice the thread and respond. Also, now that we have "Today's Active Threads", threads are a lot less likely to get lost when New Posts goes haywire or they log out.

Thanks for your understanding!

[Donna Marie]

My husband and I just completed our dream of having a home gym. Husband is very skilled and remodeled an old, no longer used, feed barn of 16' x 19' in to a home gym. After he finished all the labor we were ready to move in our equipment.

Here's how we got our "stuff". USED!. We scored a Hoist multi-station unit with squat rack in the paper. His weight bench is a Legacy and has 500 lbs of plates. Two sets of dumbells ranging from 3 - 20 lbs - husband built the dumbell rack himself. The best score was a set of 5 ballet mirrors from a woman who was closing her studio. She let them go for $125.00. It took a long time to scour the paper and did a lot of "go sees", but we realized our dream on November 3rd.

The only equipment and items purchased new were the Tuntari stepper (which I hate and am looking to trade for a treadmill ), my aerobic step and of course......over 100 video fitness tapes. I just purchased a Karen Voight weight ball recently.

Hope this gives you some more ideas for equiping your gym.

Donna

[elisas]

I'm still "finding my way" here.

[elisas]

Do you loan out your handyman DH? It sounds like he's key to the whole operation!!

[FitBoop]

I also have the Hoist multi-station gym with one weight stack, and various stations including lat pull-down, leg extension, squat, chest fly, chest press/seated row, low and high pulleys, roman chair for abs and various bars. I highly recommend it. It is adjustable so that people of all sizes can fit perfectly.

It's also very smooth and very sturdy.

[Donna Marie]

Abbe, these machines are all but silent (unless of course, you clunk that stack down by accident). I'm just learning my form and seat arrangements with a little help from husband who has been a gym rat for 25 years. The machine is a whole different world from free weights, huh?

I would highly recomment the extra investment.

DM