babyracer

Hi all,

I’m here to get some suggestions for a mini gym. We are using our garage to keep all the unused stuff and now plans to convert it as a mini gym. Recently, I got a job and it is hard to manage the gym and office. Need time to travel to the gym after the work. So I decided to build a mini gym at home itself. The floor is concrete and it is damaged and needs repair. I am thinking about trying some epoxy floor coating to make it perfect. But I think the cost for doing the epoxy coating is very expensive. Has anyone tried building a gym at your home? Please suggest a good flooring for my gym. Waiting for your reply.

Thanks in advance.

TofuProductions

I personally have not, though I have quite a few friends that do.

One of my friends has some sort of rubberized coating on his floor in that half of the garage that he uses for his mini-gym, I can ask him what material/source he used.

babyracer

Thank you. I would appreciate if you can ask him about the material he used.

WilloW

If you want to still park in your garage then get a Titan T3 Folding Rack. I have one and it is worth every penny.

I'm using 24"x24"x1.5" suppression tiles for my deadlifts. They're great for block pulls or deficit pulls without destroying your floor.

Invest in a decent barbell like the Texas Power Bar and it should last you a long time while meeting your needs in benching, squatting and deadlifting.

Get a landmine attachment, all the various bands (Amazon, EliteFTS or Rouge), a dip attachment to go with the rack, a dip belt. Lastly, pick up as much 45 plates you can from craigslist and have fun.

Edit: I would never ever go back to a commercial gym.

Manga_Spawn

I was going to suggest rouge as well. They have some really nice racks that can fold against the wall. My brother has some of their stuff in his garage and is still able to park his car in there. As for flooring I did a urethane coating on my garage floor before moving in and it has held up really well. Having some stiffer rubber mats on top of that if you plan on dropping weights would be a good idea. I say stiff since you don't want something to soft that will cause your footing to be less stable.

vader1

I have a gym in my basement. First, the flooring is the puzzle piece heavy duty foam from http://www.greatmats.com/

They have lots of different types of gym floor depending on your needs. It can be expensive depending on the size of gym and some flooring is better for some things. I spent about $1k on the flooring and the heavy foam stuff is great for weights but if you are doing aerobic/plyo kind of stuff it is not easy for jumping up and down on. We then put a carpet remnant over the foam flooring for the aerobic/plyo area. Unfortunately the softer puzzle pieces have a different pattern so you can't connect heavy foam on one side of the room to softer on the other.

If you want Cybex quality home multi gym for lots of different things look at Hoist. I have a Hoist C5 with leg press and it is great. Still commercial quality movement 15 years after I bought it.

As was mentioned, get all your plates and dumbells off of craigslist. I have seen a full set of dumbells going from 10-55 pounds with rack one time for $150. I think I paid at least $600 to buy all mine at the store.

I would also make one suggestion. If you think this is a long term thing, look at plate loaded machines over free weights just because as you get older and maybe use it less frequently or whatever and still want to go heavy, you don't need any kind of spotter and less chance of injury. I have the Powertec chest press/shoulder press machine and it has been great, although I like the range of motion better on this:

ProClub Line Leverage Bench Press Inbox Fitness

My setup is Hoist C5 multigym with leg extension and press, Powertec Chest/Shoulder Press, Pullup/Dip/Ab Raise tower, full dumbbell rack, about 400 pounds of plates, curl bar, a few kettlebells, and a roman chair. Then there is a 10X10 carpeted section for Insanity/P90x type stuff with TV/DVD player.

You most likely will want to have your music when you lift but totally under-rated is buying a cheap Roku or other smart tv that can wirelessly stream YouTube to your gym. Lots of great amateur/professional trainers are putting plenty of fun, cool, and challenging workouts online to stream for free just to build their channel and make a name for themselves. It is nice to mix in variety instead of bench-curl-legs day after day, after day.

Have fun.

WilloW

If you have a truck then get some horse-stall mats. If they can handle horses then they can handle your 5 wheels deadlifts. This is the most affordable option.