So You Want to Build a Garage Gym!

what's going on guys aaron here from curls in the rack and on today's video what i wanted to do was a little bit of a gym walkthrough because i know a lot of people out there are trying to throw garage gyms together now because of the state of what we're in and so i just want to give my advice i'm going to give you the the what the why the pieces of equipment that i have the ones i like the ones i don't like and just a few different things that i went through to make sure that i had a great garage gym and maximizing this space so anyways let's get started okay so first off let me just start by saying that i'm dealing with an area that's 150 square feet the deal was when i moved into this house with my wife i got one half of the garage she got the other for a car she never moved her car in here but uh that's neither here nor there um so my main plan was to get everything off the floor that i could i didn't want to be tripping over plates i don't want to be tripping over equipment it can get pretty dangerous if you are holding something heavy and you trip over something so i wanted to get everything up onto the wall uh as you can see i have plate holders on the wall and what i did to get that going was i had an a-frame um plate rack one of the trees and i just cut up it into pieces and then i just mounted them to the wall so that way i don't have the a-frame sitting around instead i still have the plate holders but they're just mounted to the wall the two biggest pieces of equipment that i use are the timer and this is just an old ipad that i had sitting around and then i got this gym boss app and i went ahead and put that on there that way i can customize all my rest times uh one minute to a minute blah blah blah you know there's abs all sorts of different things but right on here and organized so that way i can start my rest time i know exactly when to start and uh that is one piece of equipment that i think is awesome i use it every single day the other piece of equipment that i use every single day is the wide erase board now i got this white erase board it said free it was in somebody's yard and so if you see something like that or at the goodwill or offer up people are always trying to get rid of these things because they have offices and then they close down or they have it at their house for a while and they just it takes up a lot of space so they're sick of it but i love this thing i can always track my progress i can write up everything all the workouts out here split them into days modify it really easy so i use that and the timer every day okay so i guess i'll move left to right and just go through the equipment and why i got it why i like it while it's why it's still here uh the first one is the uh the elliptical now i got this for my wife she just wanted something to do cardio when it was raining outside and i actually ended up using this on my days off it's a space saver one so it folds up nice and it doesn't really take up a lot of room and i like this better than a treadmill just for the fact that it's not hard on your joints when you're running you're clomping down on the treadmill and also i feel i can get more glute activation when i'm concentrating on pushing down through the motion so i really like this thing on my off days i'll hit it up do cardio of course you got the fan you need that on those hot days to get some air up in here uh the power blocks the first piece of equipment i ever got was the power blocks well that wasn't given to me the one i bought anyways now this is the uh elite set i believe um i bought these brand new from the company it was a pretty pretty big investment but uh i got the 50s and as i work my way up through the weight i got the 70s and then i got the 90s so it's kind of like my treat was getting some new equipment sticking with it any new pr's then i started upgrading it now the reason i went with the power blocks over the uh the bowflex or whatever there's a few other ones is because they're flat on the bottom so when you put them when you pop them up and you put them on your knee and you pop them up it's flat and doesn't hurt your knee now the bowflex ones have a big jagged piece that comes out so when you pop that up that's gonna you put enough weight on there 90 pounds pushing it up from there it's gonna leave indents in your knees and be very uncomfortable um so that's why i went with these ones they just they just work i haven't had any issues with them now the stand here is obviously not the stand that you can buy with it but uh if you go to harbor freight and there's some other guys online that'll show you some diy projects with these uh just you can build it for like 30 bucks it's a piece of wood you just custom holes there's a there's a like a shelf that you can buy from harbor freight you modify it a little bit tilt it down and then you got yourself a power block stand that didn't cost a hundred bucks uh just some random stuff down here foam rollers and and uh let's see i think there's an ab wheel some weird stuff i don't really use any of that stuff too much maybe the foam roller occasionally i got the rogue bumper plates i got those on craigslist craigslist has been my best friend since building this gym because i just set up search alerts for anything i want on there like the word rogue because i know they make good products and i go on there and people are always upgrading their stuff so you can get a really good deal on them the parallette bars don't really use those maybe when doing uh you know some like decline bench or or something like that but they were really good deal off craigslist so i just had to get them uh another thing about uh maximizing the space is you know hanging everything on the wall so i got the this little rogue holder up here also on craigslist good deal and i just throw all my bands my belts my dip belt um and i will say this i know said it in the other video before but uh this this dark iron fitness one is a lot better i also have a rogue one that comes with the chain but this one is awesome it doesn't pinch it doesn't pinch your uh your lower groin area so you can really focus on doing a dip rather than being it uncomfortable uh up here is the titan fitness uh viking press the version two i got that originally uh to do some push presses and some sort of core work where you're twisting uh it works pretty well i don't really use it that much anymore um i have the rogue lever arms now so i use those for push presses so it just kind of sits up there um this is a rogue multi-grip bar i know we did a review on the channel on this guy i do use this i threw this back into my uh my workout routine recently just because i like the fact that uh you can really with the close grip press you can kind of squeeze in on those bars and really really feel the activation in your chest um timer so i'll make a separate video on the fact that i have the the speakers uh in the wall and then i have i have two touch screens here uh and then also there is a computer behind this cabinet right here so i'll go on an in-depth video if you guys want on how to how to make that and what i did with that and there's also an amp in there with bluetooth so even if you didn't want to throw the computer in the wall you can still hook up your phone out here and you got all your music just not anywhere on the floor in the wall all right moving on barbells i got three different barbells well two two uh two uh regular barbells uh one is the black oxide cherokee bar that i did buy from rogue it's my favorite bar it's an ohio it's not the ohio power bar but it's the ohio bar cherokee finish i love this bar it's fantastic it feels great the other one next to it is the the echo bar which i got off craigslist i still use that one but i mostly use that when uh i'm using it for stuff from the floor if i'm gonna throw it in the the um the landmine here or the uh uh doing deadlifts and stuff like that i use that for one for my for my ground work uh the other one next to it is the extremely wide um rack mountable uh w curl bar from titan fitness that thing's a great bar too i haven't had any complaints with it and the best part is you can throw it up on your rack and the normal j hooks and uh load the plates up there you don't have to keep bending over and doing all that next to it is the ss bar from titan fitness i really like this bar too uh it was a good price and i think it functions just as well as the you know the rogue one that's quite a bit more at 400 bucks or something like that this is a great bar to have if you have poor mobility in your shoulders or if you're just starting out with squatting i definitely recommend this bar um the bench i got this bench i had another i went through like three or four benches uh you know like the x mark amazon ones and uh some various other ones this those ones are all rickety they move this one i got lucky because i i found this also on craigslist somebody was moving and this is like a commercial bench it's uh i think it's a nautilus one i went ahead and painted it black but um uh great bench super heavy to move around but i don't care i rather have stability underneath me when i'm when i'm pressing so it works great the rack is the rml fold out it's the monster light version uh fold out rack i got this originally because i thought i'm not gonna have a lot of space in here i want to be able to fold this thing back so i can get it out of the way so i can use the space i never fold it back i leave it out i might as well have gotten one of the racks that uh hit bolts on the back too but great rack uh i swapped out the top portion here that didn't come with it i swapped out the regular pull-up bar that it comes with for this one here and i got that from rogue too um of course we got the lever arms on the front which i've been utilizing more lately and uh have some video footage on the other videos on the channel about um got these guys little magnets on them so you can pop them on there and then you don't have to take up any space over the top of your other plates all right and then the spotter arms got the spotter arms here for this guy everything works really well with this rack and it's very sturdy i love this rack uh and then we got the uh the landmine attachment down here i got my uh my j j hooks down there those are the sandwich ones from rogue and then over here we have the ghg now i also picked this up off craigslist um somebody was selling it i think they got one of the full-sized ones but the full-size ones it's more expensive number one plus it i don't have the room for it like i said before trying to maximize the space in here this one works great uh came with the box and everything i just sanded it down threw some decals on it then it mounts back here to the wall as you can see one thing i did notice is it i don't know if you can see this on the floor or not but it comes with this piece right here that bolts in here that kind of wedges underneath here but the thing always would flop out and it didn't really hold it well so what i did is i took a 2x4 and i attached it to the box then i put a hole through it so that way it could go through the um the piece the uh i guess you call that the uh what do you call that and whatever it is you the piece that attaches to the wall that holds the the rollers here so um that has made it so it does not move at all next i got this when i bought the rack is the dip bar the matador dip bar i love that thing and again it's up on the wall it doesn't take up any space uh another thing is that's a little bit unique about this one is there's a i got this ac infinity blower so what this does is i can set it to whatever temperature and it will start exhausting all of the hot air that's in the garage outside so you can be sucking in cold air from the inside while blowing it out because it gets pretty hot in here in the summer then i got the board here and got another fan now this hurricane fan is pretty cool i found this on amazon and what it does is it actually moves in a figure eight so it goes everywhere you are in the gym so you're never gonna be in a space in the gym where you're not getting hit with some uh cool air so this section over here is where i have just mounted a little shelf here so that i can use um the markers and the uh the pens and then i got some of the the wrist straps and that kind of stuff over there and then all of the attachments for the titan fitness pulley system i mounted those underneath here so that way they're right here wherever i need to use them in this in this section then i got the rogue change plates over here also craigslist and that is about it uh let's not forget the flooring the flooring is the uh horse stall mask that you can get from any sort of feed store nah not feed store but like some sort of big animal feed store i recommend going with these over those foam ones that you see a lot of people use the little puzzle piece ones those are garbage they're going to rip plus you're going to sink into it and when you're pulling stuff off the floor you want to you want a stable base with a tiny bit of resistance um plus i used to have iron plates i don't want to uh drop them on the concrete floor uh so these stall mats are like 50 a piece i think uh great investment i i drill into them all the time i gouge them they've they've held up i think they'll help they hold up forever i used plywood originally and i did plywood everywhere that way i could hang stuff up and not have to find the studs as long as it wasn't too heavy i could hang it up you know move things around so that was really good and then what i did was i just put a an add-on offer up and so anybody that was getting a new fence they usually just toss the old distressed wood so what i did is i just got in my truck went over picked it up i did that you can you'll notice in some of the videos how i'll have half of it done that's just because i'm waiting for somebody to give it to me for free so i finally was able to finish it up and i think it makes the gym look a lot better so just something to consider when you're doing yours one more thing i wanted to address is the fact that i used to have a giant preacher curl in here and it was a big metal old school looking thing it looks like it came out of a 80s gym and it was heavy it was hard to move around but i liked it because it has the pad you can get that full extension on the muscle before you're going up everybody likes that a cheap option and it's definitely a space saver is i got rid of that thing and i got one of these guys which is a uh just this one's from titan fitness but just like an arm blaster something like that it's a piece of metal with uh you know pads on the side you put it over your neck and then you can stand up and get that full extension the way you would normally get on a preacher bench so definitely better option than taking up space if you're limited all right well there you guys have it hopefully you learned something you can take something away from this video haven't seen it and go oh damn i never thought about that maybe i'll do that now i will say that you know it's gonna be hard to get some of this equipment now from even the companies everything's on back order and then also the people online on offer up and craigslist have realized this and they're gonna start price gouging you so hopefully you can find some equipment somewhere and get a good deal or you can wait till this whole thing blows over and then you can go get something but anyways uh hopefully you enjoyed the video uh i'd love to see in the comment section on anything you guys have done to your garage gym that maybe i can get some advice on and change something up and uh please subscribe hit that like button we got free workouts over at the website curls in the rack.com so anyways until the next one peace bye

Channel: Curls in the Rack

Views: 32,809

Rating: 4.9513183 out of 5

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Id: skrQDF7YT7k

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020