Home Gym

I’d say the primary interest for this began when my dad died of a heart attack, and I had my thyroid gland removed due to cancer. We went to a local gym and did the boot camp there, so eventually we picked up a rower for at home.

The rower is by far the best piece of cardio equipment. You can make it as hard or as easy as you want.

Then we ended up with a training bar for practicing lifts with some light bumper plates. Rack and more plates came next, the regular bars as gifts to each other, and more equipment here and there as gifts.

We picked up rubber mats at Tractor Supply to do the floors last summer, and the 4 x 3 ones we got worked out great for our needs. They were easier to handle and didn’t get slippery from sweat or humidity like the horse stall mats the CrossFit gym used.

Grabbed a 32kg kettlebell last year and a sandbag over the summer. The sandbag was an excellent investment overall. It’s a great way to change things up and takes up less space than a bar. The smaller space required means it’s much easier to work out together in the garage. Especially since I got my own sandbag for Christmas.

We just got a sled, and that’s going to bring some fun and pain to the alley once we get a dry day to use it.

Last summer, we started following [Street Parking](https://www.streetparking.com/ “Street Parking Daily Programming”) ‘s programming, and for the most part, we’ve really enjoyed it. The price is right, too. They seem like they want to help people. Before that, I was doing my own WODs, but the problem was I’d tend to pick the things I liked (squats) and skip the ones I didn’t. They have most of the older workouts available on their website, so that helps me find something to do. I cannot recommend Street Parking these days. My opinion of the current programming has been very sour for the past year or so. It is cheap, and that’s the main reason I have stuck with it for the time being. Nothing else has looked interesting enough for me to consider switching.

Having our own gym in the garage gives us so much freedom and flexibility to work out on our schedule, not on someone else’s. Unlike CrossFit, we get to warm up and stretch as we see fit, rather than in a one-size-fits-all class setting. Weather or holidays do not affect our gym hours. I have done early-morning workouts before catching the train to a Phillies game. Another example is when my newly discovered sibling came to visit. I was able to get out there long before the sun came up to get a quick WOD in, so I could get a shower and try to control my nerves.

Although some of our equipment was a bit pricey when we bought it, 90% of it should last as long as we do, give or take a bit of minor wear and tear. It’s not unreasonable to think a kettlebell could break if dropped and land just right, or a bumper plate could wear out. We don’t abuse our shit and don’t intend to, so we shouldn’t really have much of a problem. We consider it to be an investment in our healthy futures.

Our garage gym is easily one of the best investments we’ve made in ourselves, and the whole pandemic thing truly reinforces that for me. Our home gym is always open. It’s even open during holidays and inclement weather, and at any time of the day we want to use it. Most of our equipment should theoretically last us the rest of our lives.