Discussion on Home Gyms

kazzer

Im looking to turn a spare bedroom into a home gym, and would like some opinions and advice from other serious trainees who have gone the home gym route.

Is an upstairs bedroom (empty, about 9' x 9') suitable? Im really concerned about the weight a bedroom can safely hold. Im guessing I might have about 300kg of equipment.

Now heres what im looking at getting, some of you out there can describe your own set ups.

Heavy duty rubber matting for the complete floor.
- Power Rack
- Heavy duty adjustable bench
- 140kg olympic weight set
- Adjustable dumbell set

So what do you think? Anyone out there with their own home gyms?

BrianD3

I am getting a similar setup. However my room is a little bigger @ 10' x 11' plus it is a ground floor room with a concrete floor

With 9' x 9' you'll have 1 foot clearance either side of your olympic bar. I'd say that's not ideal but it should be OK for mounting plates. There may be a possibility that you could gouge a lump out of a wall if you lose control of the bar on a lift and it comes down unevenly but I think this is unlikely. Your power cage and bar will take up a lot of the space but you should still have enough room outside the cage for deadlifting and olympic lifts. You could look at getting a 6 foot or even a 5 foot bar for these as it will be a lot less critical for space, obviously for the power cage you'll need a 7 footer as they all seem to need this size.

I wouldn't be worried about putting 300 kg of equipment in an upstairs room as long as a) the weight is well distributed b) you're not dropping heavy loaded barbells from a height. In your situation I wouldn't like dropping a barbell even with rubber mats on the floor. This may limit you when doing olympic lifts and deadlifts. In any case you should do some research on building standards just to confirm that 300 kg of equipment is OK in an upstairs room, I think it should be but you never know.

kazzer

Thanks Brian,

Im still not sure if ill go ahead with it because of the weight issue, its just where to find this info...?

BrianD3

kazzar, search the misc.fitness.weights and uk.rec.bodybuilding newsgroups, there have been discussions before about doing weights in upstairs room, strength of floors and joists etc. IIRC it was concluded that heavy weight training could be done upstairs if you were reasonably careful. Don't take my word for it though!

One thing I forgot to mention was height of the room. If you are tall you might find difficulty with overhead lifts as a plate could hit the ceiling. Remember that the plates stick up a fair bit above the bar itself. You might have to use smaller diameter plates if this is the case. Also for chin ups, check the height of the chinning bar in your cage. I believe they are designed so that an average height person can grab the chinning bar and have his feet just clear of the floor. If you are taller than average you might find yourself unable to hang from the bar without feet hitting the floor. You could put mats/blocks under the cage to raise it but if you do that do you have enough space at the top to do a full chin up without hitting your head on the ceiling.

One thing you shoud be wary about with a home gym, is lifting too much weight without a spotter.

Putting some cheap lino offcuts over the floor wouldn't be a bad idea. Might protect the floor from accidental droppages.

kazzer

Thanks for that great info Brian