Home Gym stock thread

[ak301]

You guys are going to laugh - my home gym is my live gear.

• Two 4-space racks function as heavy dumbbells
• I combine racks with a spare 1x12 cab for dips.
• The 1x12 is great for step-ups.
• Burpees plus step-ups get the heart pounding.
• Then it's typical sit ups and pushups.

Can't the Fractal amp collection substitute for a weights room

A few weighted squats with a heavy Mesa should get the heart rate going

See folks, i wasn't joking after all!

In all seriousness, WSM Eddie Hall says weight's weight. If you have no proper gym gear simply moving heavy things about can give you a decent workout

 

[plexi59]

Man I though I went overboard with my setup. This makes me feel better.

 

[iaresee]

There's still gear out there on Craigslist. I got lucky a few years ago and stumbled across a former commercial gym owner there whose wife had decided it was time to repossess the garage. Made for a nice setup here.

Gym equipment aside, that's a very interesting room aesthetic you have going on there. Like medival crypt meets bourbon aging cellar.

 

[solo-act]

There's still gear out there on Craigslist. I got lucky a few years ago and stumbled across a former commercial gym owner there whose wife had decided it was time to repossess the garage. Made for a nice setup here.

Holy Schwartzenegger Batman. That said, those 100+ dumbbells are lookin a little neglected - LOL

 

[Muad'zin]

You guys are going to laugh - my home gym is my live gear.

• Two 4-space racks function as heavy dumbbells
• I combine racks with a spare 1x12 cab for dips.
• The 1x12 is great for step-ups.
• Burpees plus step-ups get the heart pounding.
• Then it's typical sit ups and pushups.

That's not funny, that's brilliant! Brilliant improvisation skills.

Sadly for me the bloody government closed all indoor gyms, but I'm fortunate my local university gym has not succumbed to the lethargic bureaucracy that stifles any initiative and innovation and has created outdoor popup gyms and went all out on zoom classes.

 

[plexi59]

Usually universities are the very first to succumb to any nonsense. Some say that’s where all the nonsense originates in the first place.

 

[plexi59]

Oh yeah, the 150s & 170s are very, very, VERY neglected.

Good for one arm bent over rows btw, with some training obviously. One side on the bench, facing down, lift with one arm. If your grip is too weak (which in most people it is), use Krato bands or versa grips.

 

[Ben Randolph]

I'd rather not see this thread derail into matters of policy like the other one did and get locked. But, at the age of 48 I started a regimen of personal training in November 2019. I looked better, my shirts fit tighter in the right places rather than the wrong ones, and I could lift over twice what I started with by March 2020.

When the gyms closed, I though it was just a temporary thing for a couple of weeks. I thought, "No big deal, I'll get a few dumbells and a ball to hold me over." Oh, my sweet summer child self. Home gym equipment evaporated overnight. I managed to order a cheap dumbell set from Wal-Mart that kept getting delayed and delayed and then, after a month got canceled. I started using the jungle gym equipment in the park until THAT got taped over as off-limits.

Then, came the layoff. When neither myself nor my SO are working, paying minimum $600 for a dumbell set, much less thousands that would be necessary to have equipment comparable to what I was getting at the gym, was out of the question. It killed me to see myself lose those hard-earned gains and fall into flab and depression.

The gyms eventually opened back up with COVID precautions in place. The problem I had was my family. I got big pushback from my wife and daughter, because at the time gyms were the last place you wanted to be if you were trying to avoid COVID. I went back a few times, but the flack at home was too great. I'm not blaming my family since they had a point. I would have felt horrible had I brought COVID home and infected them.

I just got shot #2 of Pfizer last Saturday. I contacted my trainer and told her I'd like to restart. There's a road ahead of me, but I already have a goal in mind....just get back to where I was in March 2020.

 

[plexi59]

You don’t need a personal trainer to stay fit though. I can’t imagine paying $60/hr for someone to stand next to me as I exercise, especially if that someone gets like $20 of that in the end. Nor do you need any kind of gym, home or otherwise. Body weight training is a thing and it can be done with basically no equipment at all. Rubber bands are effective and inexpensive too - even in my home gym I use them to work on my chest (not a big fan of bench press) and upper back.

 

[Ben Randolph]

You are technically right (the best kind of right!). Since I was a newbie, I wanted a coach at least in the initial stages. My trainer is $40/hour. I'll have a few sessions with her at the outset, then ween myself off and go solo.

I just didn't find body weight training to be as effective in my case as a real, fully-stocked gym. It's just me. I'm sure there are pros who are real ninjas at body weight training.

A lot of it too was just falling into depression and overeating after the layoff. I couldn't even focus on playing guitar due to the stress. I was able to focus on building models, though. I found a better job, thankfully, that made the layoff a blessing in disguise.

 

[plexi59]

It's not easy, I agree. I prefer weight training myself (+ cardio on the "off" days). For me the key thing is to get at least some exercise in every day. Otherwise things slide and I give it up eventually. Giving it up feels great initially while the gains are still there, but after a few months things start to deteriorate and I start feeling like shit, and starting again is a real drag until I get back into the groove, which takes about a month. Best to just do at least something every day, like brushing teeth, and not even think about it. Now obviously heavy training every day is a bad idea, but half an hour of HIIT cardio only speeds up recovery after heavy training. To make this less onerous, I watch movies when I do cardio, and that's pretty much the only way I watch movies at all.

 

[plexi59]

layoff a blessing in disguise.

I've never been laid off, but I did not get the job I thought I wanted a few times, as well as left jobs I was pretty attached to, on my own volition. 99% of the time it's for the best. In late 00s I was in a job that was making me depressed, and I didn't even realize it was the cause of my depression until I left. It was a back-stabbing corporate environment, and I thought this was "normal", and something was wrong with me because I didn't like it. Men especially are taught to "suck it up" and "deal with it", which often is counterproductive. A lot of us should "move on" more instead. I then took up a job at Google, and Google at the time wasn't like that at all (probably still isn't). I kept waiting for someone to stab me in the back for 6 months or so, and it never happened. Then I realized it's not going to happen, and they actually want me to do my best work, for a change. It was a cathartic, eye-opening experience that I have later replicated at several other companies where I led teams. Moral of the story: don't hold on to shitty jobs, they can ruin your health (both mental and physical) worse than you think.

 

[Kabala]

You don’t need a personal trainer to stay fit though. I can’t imagine paying $60/hr for someone to stand next to me as I exercise, especially if that someone gets like $20 of that in the end. Nor do you need any kind of gym, home or otherwise. Body weight training is a thing and it can be done with basically no equipment at all. Rubber bands are effective and inexpensive too - even in my home gym I use them to work on my chest (not a big fan of bench press) and upper back.

I feel the same way - love staying super fit but would never pay someone a nickle to help me do it (although my thing is long distance running so that's kinda easy and FREE LOL).

 

[plexi59]

I actually don't mind paying if something valuable is being taught. I plan on paying quite a bit of money to someone qualified to teach me the technique for olympic lifts (snatch, clean and jerk). That kind of thing is mostly about technique. But my experience with personal trainers is they just stand around and take notes most of the time. What they really should be doing is spending a couple of hours teaching how to do exercises properly in the beginning, and then checking on the trainees every now and then. But that wouldn't generate sufficient revenue, so they stand around with notepads.

 

[Ben Randolph]

I actually don't mind paying if something valuable is being taught.

I think it's just like a guitar teacher. I'm on a year without lessons after years of taking lessons. Those first couple of years, there were big revelations. After a while, like any diligent student, I developed a measure of self-sufficiency. Weekly lessons didn't have the same impact.

Now, I'm glad I took lessons rather than just meander around the guitar. I learned a ton that made me self-sufficient. I think the same can be said for personal training. If you just go to a gym as a n00b not knowing what to do, you risk getting no results and worse, even hurting yourself. The goal is to get self-sufficient.

Paradoxically, the trainer like a good guitar teacher, has the goal of eventually getting themselves fired.

 

[plexi59]

A good teacher will focus on how to create music IMO, as well as how to improvise. I’d pay for that if the teacher is good. Technique is not as important as we guitarists think. My third formal lesson ever, many many years ago, the teacher just started playing a chord progression and told me to play over it. I had pretty decent technique at that point as far as mechanical aspects, but I couldn’t improvise. I can’t say I’m good at it to this day, though certainly better than before.

 

[Severed]

If you want free personal training, this guy is really good and has years of videos that clearly demonstrate proper form and techniques for everything from stretching to heavy body building.

https://youtube.com/c/athleanx

Also, reading the forums on bodybuilding.com website is great because you can find people that are same level as you that talk about whats working and what's not.

Biggest thing is healthy eating habits, after dropping 60 lbs of fat and 6 years of living the lifestyle, I could never go back to processed / fast food, and sugary drinks, and will never sit in a chair all day again.

 

[alicemorel]

Happy to see here such motivated sporty people! It is so uplifting to have a common interest with the people who are keen on sport activity too!

 

[USMC_Trev]

+1 on the Max Trainer. My wife happened to call me as I finished my first workout on it.
Her: What you doing.
Me: Having a stroke.

I have one. It's brutal. Not like any elliptical I've even been on. That thing doesn't help you out at all. With an elliptical there is a lot more momentum stored up when you get it going, but the max trainer the rotational energy stored up bleeds to zero very quickly even with the resistance down to minimum. Also it's a much more awkward movement compared to a (for example) Planet Fitness LifeCycle elliptical trainer.