Home Gym Frontier

Welcome to the world of home gym training. Ironically, home gyms have been the backbone of gym equipment sales since at least the 1930s, although you wouldn't know that from today's muscle mags. Home gyms are only seen in the high priced glossy color ads selling them. Developing a personal home gym opens unimaginable vistas of freedom, intense workouts, and a steady course of gains.

Since retiring from the gym business, Mr. America, Mr. Universe, ("Mr. Almost Everything"), Bill Pearl has chosen to train a multitude of athletes who seek to work with "The Master"in his legendary home gym The Barn. Most of Frank Zane's Mr. Olympia victories resulted from training in his home gym, free from the noisy distractions of commercial gyms.

When I first got the idea for this series, the initial task was research: who's published on home gym training? Are there already resources? Two books surfaced, neither of which directly deals with strategies for putting together a workable home gym for a lifetime of enjoyable training and results. This series does more than fill in a big gap: it offers strategies and training methods for turning a home gym into a first rate training center.

Advantages for home gym training far outweigh the abundance of equipment found in commercial gyms. For starters, home gyms are available 24 hours a day seven days a week. No need to miss workouts. Home gyms don't have long traffic jams of people waiting for the next piece of equipment you need. Nor do you have to commute to and from gyms, making trips around the business of your workday. And once paid for, there are no more expenses -- the gym is all your own.

This series will facilitate success by teaching you principles. Generative principles -- principles you can put into practice, finding comfort and delight in how inventive and creative you become in applying them. Most home gym books don't nourish creativity and inventiveness -- instead, they offer a narrow set of examples, and that's it. A good core home gym can be added onto in innumerable ways, and be the basis of the "thousand and one exercises" that built John Grimek and Bill Pearl.

Home Gyms Are Not All the Same

Home gyms come in a wide range of prices and options. Professional athletes think nothing of investing upwards of US$100,000 or more on home fitness centers. After all, price is no limitation since they can write the expense off their taxes. These days US$30,000 is not a lot for home gyms -- a combo machine, bench, electronic jogger, video and music center, special flooring, and a little more.

Below those figures is where the rest of us live --
those of us this series is for.

In the days when the Rader's Ironman Magazine and York Barbell Company's Strength & Health and Muscular Development were the voice of the Irongame, home gyms were featured in every issue. Home gyms have long been the grassroots of the Irongame. In those days, the magazines were published by equipment manufacturers. But those manufacturers were not obsessed with ruthless greed: articles included photo spreads of homemade gyms, some full of equipment inventions. By applying simple principles, many a home gym included equipment recycled from auto wrecking yards, scrap metal yards, and much more. Rule one: keep your mind open and imagination flourishing!

The Low End is not the Bottom Line

Really low-end fitness equipment is not what most will need for a home gym. Such equipment is, too often, poorly designed, and certainly not structurally sound enough to support the kinds of weight most Irongame athletes will use. Low end is not the bottom line that will support average training needs. The low end includes those "solutions" found in major retail outlets -- including sporting good outlets, and discount stores. Although inexpensive, that kind of equipment will probably not serve you long. Home gyms should start with good equipment that will last for decades to come. Home gyms start with safe, reliable equipment.
Cheap is not the bottom line for home gyms. Quality can't be added later.

Seriously planning a home gym starts with understanding what you really need for good, safe workout equipment. Here's the list:

Power rack
Multi-purpose bench
Barbell and dumbbell handles
Free weights

How much does that add up to? Safe, reliable equipment for most home gym needs can be put together for as little as US$1,500 -- and probably less with competitive shopping.

Bottom line equipment is found in great abundance. Just do a Web search on power racks and power cages. In seconds myriad pages will appear. Wading through them, you'll find a wide range of manufacturers making equipment that all looks pretty much alike -- so much alike that it takes some training experience to tell the equipment apart. You'll also find a wide range of basic prices, along with shipping fees present or waived.

Some companies make very good equipment: both Bodycraft® and Hoist Fitness® are companies founded and run by athletes who train on the equipment they make. In both cases, those companies started on a quest to make better quality, better designed equipment for the founders themselves to train on. Their efforts included taking welding classes at community colleges. You can cut corners by doing so yourself. Be sure the equipment doesn't just look good, but is good.

What do we need to know to get the best equipment at the best price? That's very different from getting inferior or mediocre equipment for a good price -- or for an inflated price. Back in the 1980s I was a materials manager for a Fortune 100 corporation; in that time I learned a lot about competitive pricing, manufacture surveying, quality assurance, warranties and liabilities. Putting that knowledge to the task of surveying and reviewing equipment, some interesting discoveries shake out which I happily pass on to you to help you become an "informed consumer."

Cost of Investment

The first principle is expense. What does equipment really cost? Several points should be kept in mind:

Amortization: how long do you expect to use the equipment you're buying? Better put, should you buy it or invest in it? Buying it means you're looking just at how much it costs today, maybe for this year. Investing means looking at price spread over years of use. Cheaper equipment that may be poorly designed, apt to break down, or not be strong enough to support your strength improvements in a year or two from now will require replacement.

In 1987 I spent a then whopping US$225 on a multi-purpose bench, one ranging from flat to high seated press positions. That bench is sturdy, tightly welded. In time it will require some minor repair. Spread over a 20 year period, the cost of that bench is US$11.25 a year, or US$0.9375 a month. Such a bench will not be replaced due to outgrowing it or breakage.

An estimated US$1,500 worth of equipment roughly equals the cost of four or five years of gym membership fees. Just the fees, not the cost of commuting and drain on your energy. Gym membership fees never go away. Once you have a home gym, the workout floor is entirely yours - workouts get better and more intense, while taking less time. Savings in time and energy free up your life for other things. And you can train on your clock, when you feel like it.

What Do You Really Need?

It may come as a surprise to learn those equipment sales for home gyms is a thriving, multi-million dollar enterprise. Despite that, little attention is paid to home gym training in the muscle mags. That's why you never read consumer-oriented product reviews.

Here's an experiment: try remembering the last time you saw an article in a muscle mag illustrated with photos from home gym training. The only ones I can remember occurred in Dolfzine®, and I wrote them!

Only one print magazine includes methods for both home and commercial gym training: Steve Holman's series in Ironman. Otherwise there's a big disconnect in the muscle mags between training articles and those full page, color glossy ads for home gym equipment. And an even larger information gap for setting up and using home gyms.

What You Need

They're called power racks and power cages. The first one was invented in the mid 1940s by Bobby Peoples (See below).

Made of large construction timbers, Peoples' rack had a central role in his training. He did so well with it that at 186 pounds he deadlifted 720 pounds, a record that stood until the mid 1960s when Terry Todd broke it by a scant five pounds in the first AAU Senior National Powerlifting Champion-ships®. Todd trained with a power rack.

The first commercially-made power rack exploded on the scene in the early 1960s, a revolutionary product of the York Barbell Company®. Along with the rack came a version of training that has all but been forgotten: isometronics.

This series will include an entire issue dedicated to the lost art of isometronic training. York's founder, Bob Hoffman -- the Father of American Weightlifting -- so strongly believed in the importance of this new type of training that he gave away the store. That is, instead of cornering the market on power racks he published articles and an inexpensive book telling not only how to train on the rack, but how to build your own with metal or wood if you couldn't afford to buy a rack from him!

He even undercut selling weights by explaining how to make them from concrete. Hoffman's love of the sport came before mere money-grubbing, an ideal few manufacturers in our sport live up to today. The original Ironman Magazine, published by Peary & Mabel Rader, included many articles on power rack training in that time. Rader's book on isometronics is still in print.

By the 1970s the power rack became a specialized tool of powerlifters and those who coach them. Arthur Jones invented the Nautilus® machine in the early 70s, while the film Pumping Iron catalyzed a fitness revolution resulting in gyms full of Nautilus® equipment and other machines. The superior fitness advantage of free weights and power racks was overshadowed by the glamour of machines.

The power rack remains a centerpiece to strength training. The inventive genius of strength coach and powerlifter Louie Simmons and his Westside Barbell Club® is an unending source for power rack training. Also check out Simmons' student Dave Tate's work at the Elite Fitness Systems®.

The Rack Advantage

Hardly anyone writing about home gyms puts the power rack at the top of equipment lists. A good rack is fundamental to a home gym. Without one, the best you have is a pale shadow of a robust gym for all seasons. Today's home racks turn out to be both the safest and most cost-effective training investment one can make. But to accrue those benefits, you've got to shop around and know what you're looking for.

Power racks are as versatile as your imagination. Not only do they offer personal safety otherwise impossible, but do so at a fraction of the price of commercial machines. With lat machine attachments, you can put together the basis of a flexible home gym for under US$700 in basic equipment. With the know-how you'll get from this series, you will find hundreds of uses for your home rack.

Here's a training exercise that applies to both power racks and benches. Do a web search on power racks. You'll quickly have hundreds of pages to wade through. Everybody seems to be making racks, and even large numbers are selling them over the web. And they all look pretty much the same. That's because appearances are deceiving.

The racks powerlifters use differ from home racks in one important way: heavy-duty racks are welded together. They have to be welded to support the tonnage lifters train with. That makes them really bulky for shipping -- like the size of two huge refrigerators welded together. Home gyms come as kits that you put together with wrenches and screw drivers. They cannot hold as much weight as the welded type.

Weight load capacity. Remember that phrase. Get on the phone every time you see a rack or bench (or both) you're tempted to purchase. Call the manufacturer or sales outlet at their toll free 800 number to ask "What is the weight load capacity of your power rack or bench?"

I sure hope you share in my sense of horror when the party on the other end of the line tells you, "I don't know" or "I guess it must be 700 pounds." Remember that when you use that rack for bench presses and squats, you will be relying on its horizontal crossbeams to catch and hold weight in case you cannot finish a rep. When that happens, you don't want to find the weight load capacity reported to you to have been a grievous overstatement. Most manufacturers and sales outlet reps simply do not know. They haven't been forced to test their equipment for weight load capacity. There are no industry standards. With this article, we're starting a consumer advocacy movement!

Just the other day I considered buying a used vertical leg press. I called the manufacturer: they guessed it would hold 400-450 pounds, admittedly not much for leg presses. What the heck, I figured. Can always do leg presses one leg at a time. When I saw the machine in person I was horrified. It may support 400 pounds. But I sure wouldn't test it by putting myself under it. Worse still was the safety pin system -- if you can stretch your imagination far enough to call it that.

The lesson: the parts were all there, but not orchestrated with a design resulting in safe, durable equipment.
The devil is in the detail. So you have to develop an eye for detail when looking at equipment pictures.

Compare them to see how the rack or bench is bolted together -- and where the bolts go. Bolts should not be less than half-inch for anything -- if you value your safety and peace of mind.

Find out what gauge steel is used to make the rack. Are they painted or surfaced treated to really inhibit destructive rusting?

Are the horizontal circular steel tubes or solid steel? If the square type attached to runners on either side, are they welded together? If not, say no! I did close to two months research before purchasing a Bodycraft® rack slightly more than a year ago. I've been very happy with it.

Racks plus. Today's home gym power racks often include optional attachments. The most important is known as upper/lower lat pulley. In setting up my home gym, the lat machine option was very important. One reason I picked the machine I bought (Bodycraft®) is the placement of the lat machine at dead center rear of the cage.

With the lat machine there, you can place a bench in front of it then use a barbell to form a t-bar so you're held down when doing heavy lat pulldowns. Other racks put the lat machine in places where you can't use your equipment to form a t-bar. I was actually poised to purchase a Powertec®, but stopped when I learned that theirs accepts only Olympic size plates. The second reason for having selected the rack was being able to use standard plates for the lat machine. More on standard plates below.

Some racks have other attachments. Most common is a set of plug in parallel bars. Beware: such parallel bars are not going to stand up well with lots of additional weight around your waste. Nobody knows what weight load capacity applies to parallel bars!

Look at the photos of John Grimek (above) using the first York rack: note the superior dipping parallel bars. Bodycraft® has recently unveiled an add-on upper/lower cable crossover attachment, signaling that everyone else will be making a version soon. The upper/lower lat pulley already present with most racks works just fine for one arm cross over movements, curls, etc. A double pulley system, however, competes with features found only in commercial gyms.

Benches

Of all components for a home gym, benches are a real minefield. For more than forty years I've enjoyed sampling many commercial gyms, always enjoying trying out the latest equipment. Decades ago new equipment meant new innovations in benches and pulleys, not much else. These days it means new machines. I've grown confident that most equipment is designed and manufactured by people who never work out. Or never had an original thought of their own!

Remember that phrase weight load capacity. It really applies to benches. As with power racks, the best are welded. And welded ones cost more to ship. Most benches are kits you assemble. Bolts again. Lots of bolts. Bolts holding the bench frame together -- hopefully tightly held together, more likely somewhat loosely, loosely enough to wobble when you need it to be stable. Bolts holding backrest and buttrest to the frame: the smaller the bolts the more the wobble. Of course, it doesn't matter that the instructions are not for the current bench: you'll figure it out. Having visited some show rooms, I began calling manufacturers with the weight load capacity question. Most guessed a total of 400-450 pounds weight load capacity.

Think about it: 400-450 pounds. Most guys working out weigh between 175-200 pounds. So subtract bodyweight from the total weight load capacity to get the number for how maximum weight you can use on the bench: a 200 pound man usually does much more than 250 pounds on the bench press. But the average US$200-300 bench probably isn't safe with 250 pounds since that is the high end of maximum.

Since manufacturers don't publish weight load capacity ratings, and generally don't know them anyway, what are they thinking about? The choices are:

They don't think, just copy designs.

They don't care until they are hit with a liability law suit by a personal injury attorney.

They think the public is uninformed and won't notice.

Since there is not a generally-accepted industry standard for weight load capacity, it is not a major concern for mass-market manufacturers

Combinations of or all of the above.

Absence of common sense among manufacturers deepens when we look into multi-purpose benches.

The concept of a multi-purpose bench is simple: it goes from an 18-20 degree decline through flat to varying degree of incline -- all in one bench. Some simply go from flat to incline. With one exception, I have yet to find a decline bench showing an understanding of decline bench principles. How so?

When on a well-made decline bench, you gain stability through a roller brace stabilizing the front of your ankle, and another stabilizing behind the knees -- either as another roller or as a build up of padding on that portion of the bench. With such stabilization, you can safely do decline work; without it, you will hang from the bench precariously, a reason to give up doing declines altogether.

Here's the key for determining if a bench has proper leg stabilization support: does the support system have a single roller placed very far forward from the bench -- that is, does it look more like a situp roller?

Most manufacturers are confused: they think the support for declines is the same as a situp roller. And that's dead wrong. How so? In a decline position doing presses, the force of gravity will push you downward if your legs don't have that double roller system to hang on to.

Weights and Bars

I cannot recommend purchasing Olympic barbell sets for home gym use. At a minimum of US$0.75 per pound, I find no justification for paying US$0.50 per pound more than standard plates cost. Assuming you equip your home gym in a manner that includes making up sets of dumbbells as well, you'll need 600 to 1,000 pounds of weight -- unless you want to dedicate a fair amount of each workout to changing weights. One thousand pounds of Olympic weights will cost you about US$500 more than standard weights.

When setting up my home gym, I did buy a standard barbell of Olympic quality -- the only one made, the Ivanko® seven foot standard barbell. Its weight load capacity is such that it will not easily bend as heap bars do. The Ivanko® bar easily ran US$80 more than inferior bars, and is the working core of my power rack. Even with 400 pound loads it barely springs. Ironmind® sells heavy duty dumbbell handles equivalent to the Ivanko® bar.

Here are some ideas for saving money on weights. First, haunt garage sales and thrift stores. It's always a pleasure paying five cents a pound for weights. Fitness equipment has become a section of classified ads in many newspapers. While that section is at any time heavily populated with hardly used Bowflex® for $700, Nordic Tracks®; occasionally a good deal shows up. Also watch the moving sale classifieds; most folks do not want to move weights. Used equipment is always readily available. When cruising the garage sales, take cash with you. Too often folks do not realize that used equipment has little resale value. Bargaining the price down with cash in your hand can bring you real bargains.

Other authors I've read recommend Play It Again Sports® for weight and equipment. Personal experience gained here in Tucson, Arizona suggests otherwise. PIAS® sells new weights for US$0.49 per pound, while Wal-Mart® has the same quality for US$0.25 per pound and Sports Authority® for US$0.39 per pound (PIAS®' price for used weight). That makes PIAS® one of the higher priced sources of weight, new or used. I have benefited from buying used equipment from PIAS®, but buy as an informed customer who bargains on the price. I've also noted PIAS® prices for dumbbell handles is twice that of Wal-Mart®.

Weights used to be made by foundries in the USA: today, almost all come from China and Taiwan. The older American-made weights were better made, especially if you have a precision bar like the Ivanko®. Sports Authority® 25 and 50 pound plates sometimes fit, but mostly don't fit my Ivanko®. Close examination of the hole diameter shows considerable build up of flash with the Chinese plates, indicating worn out plugs and no quality control in place. A great nuisance, so I quit buying Sports Authority® weights.

Dumbbell handles are cheap, even when new. You will find that making up a series of dumbbells in varying weights is very useful.

Footprint and Environment

The O'Neill Gym: Great but Running Out of Space

How much space will a bench, power rack, and weights all together take up? And how much space will you comfortably need for working out? In two years time, I've managed to fill up an old-sized, one-car garage. Even though I'd like more equipment, I'm fast running out of space for it. You will, too. So planning is imperative.

Power racks are always shown with their associated bench inside the rack. When you use it, that bench will be outside the rack as often as it is inside. Any kind of bench-based dumbbell movements require moving the bench out from the rack so you can spread your wings. And you can't have the bench there while doing squats, deadlifts, and other movements. Hence, you'll need enough space to put the bench elsewhere and use it.

Bodycraft's F320® multi-purpose bench offers a new approach to the footprint problem. Through its range of adjustable positions, one never has to move the bench itself. The higher the incline, the lower the bench goes toward the floor. That's a power rack dream come true. Moving benches is half the movement normally done with a power rack. The higher you select incline setting, the higher you have to move the barbell and supports. Bodycraft's® design has solved that problem. At this writing the F320's leg support rollers are unsatisfactory; however, Bodycraft® is working on improvement. Nevertheless, the F320 is far ahead of the pack as a creative, innovative solution.

Lay out a drawing of your floor space. Then get the dimensions of the rack you're thinking of getting. Remember that if you get the lat machine attachment, the rack has automatically grown deeper than dimensions given for just the rack. Make sure to have plenty of space.

Where do you live? Can you train in your garage or basement year round? Or will you need to make allowances for heating and cooling? A US$40 rugged fan becomes mandatory for training in the hot Sonoran desert summers. By Memorial Day all that changes -- work out from 4:30 a.m. or forget it on workdays. A closed garage goes upward to 120 degree during desert summers. What are the heating and cooling requirements of your locale, and how much extra space do you realistically need for cooling and heating circulation?

Homegrown Equipment

Not everyone can afford laying out hard-earned money on equipment. Welding classes at your local community college offer a low cost entry for making your own equipment. Ironmind® sells a book entitled Tight Wad's Guide to Home Gym showing you how to make a lot of home gym equipment from wood. Little more than a drill, a saw, nuts & bolts, wrenches and a screwdriver is needed. All proceeds from the book go to the meritorious Paul Anderson Youth Home.

Paradigm Pioneers

Its visionary paradigm pioneer championed the modern power rack: Bob Hoffman. Since beginning this series, I've talked with a number of equipment manufacturers. So far only one has indicated some interest in a new approach to the power rack. I'm still looking for a paradigm pioneer to work with in bringing out a feasible home gym, bench, and more.

The marketing officer of one of the major equipment manufacturers told me just the other day that a redesigned rack would not sell: people want the racks being sold today. Asking how he knew that, he sure did not have market surveys to back up his claim. From looking at the equipment available today, very little innovation is evident. Instead we have copies, all variations on a very common theme. Rather than serving customer expectations, the industry simply copies the standard power lifting cage of the 1980s -- thus not considering how it might be usefully adapted to home fitness training.
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Ken O'Neill can be reached at kayoneill@longlifefitness.net for consultations, home gym design, personal training, and workshops.