What Equipment to have for home

Home gyms can be something simple as a bench press starting from around $150 up to in excess of $15000 with a full range of strength machines, weights and cardio equipment that rivals some small training studios.

One of the biggest factors in determining what equipment you can have in your home gym apart from your budget is how much space you have.
If you have the room for it – a simple power cage, bench and free weight set up is an ideal place to start. Power cages can also come with an attachment to do pulldowns, seated rows and pec dec exercises as well as the large range of free weight exercises you can do with the cage.
If however you are not able, or comfortable performing free weight exercises such as squats, deadlifts and military presses, you may instead opt for a multi – station home gym.

The multi – station home gym can be either pin or plate loaded, and they allow you to perform a wide variety of exercises for the whole body while taking up minimal space. Some also allow more then one person to train on the equipment at a time – a plus for the family situation. Many people also feel safer training on a machine type set up where they don’t have to worry about dropping weights or getting stuck on a lift.
If you have more room and a larger budget you may choose to buy a few pieces of equipment like a leg press or hack squat, a cage and bench set up, some free weights and dumbbells and a cardio machine or two.

The Differences between free weight home gyms and multi-station home gyms

Free weight home gym
• Allows the body to move through its own natural range of motion.
• Suits people of any size or shape.
• Fairly low cost to set up.
• Can take up a bit more room then a pin loaded machine to do the same number of exercises as on the multi-station.
• Can be a risk of injury if proper form or technique is not used.
• Can be a bit slow to change weights around between exercises.

Multi – station home gym
• Body forced to move in alignment with machine.
• Sometimes is not suitable or very adjustable for different heights and body shape.
• Can be a little more expensive then basic free weight set up.
• Can be more space efficient then some free weight set ups.
• Low risk of injury from dropped weights.
• Some machines can have multiple users exercising at once.
• Easy to change pin loaded weights between sets or exercises

Perhaps the most basic yet highly functional and versatile set up you could utilise at home would be a combination of Swiss Ball and a set of Adjustable Dumbbells. These very simple bits of equipment will allow you to undertake a versatile whole body workout and will take up an absolute minimum of room.