Best Workout Equipment for Setting Up a Home Gym in a Small Space

Getting some exercise and losing weight can be a tough thing these days, as our time seems continually squeezed to the point that we no longer seem to have a spare moment left in our day. Setting up a home gym in a small room of your home might seem to be difficult, particularly given that ending gym memberships tends to be done to save money these days. One thing you have to keep in mind, though, is that for the most part, buying your own equipment second hand can save you a substantial amount of money over your life. For instance, consider that a gym membership might cost $50 per month. Over the course of 20 years, that comes to about $12,000!

Basic small gym equipment might seem expensive, but even the best workout equipment can be purchased for far less than that. Let's say that the small room you'll be converting to a home gym is a former bedroom, ten feet by twelve feet, and for the sake of simplicity, let's say that it's got hardwood floors. That gives us about 120 square feet to work with.

The first piece of equipment you should install is the subfloor. A rubberized gym floor helps prevent damage to the floor and reduces the noise transferred into the rest of the house. Many of these are sold in four-square foot sections for around $2.50/square foot. In our imaginary room, we're looking at about $300 so far.

Next, you can think about the machines that you want to put in the room. The obvious choice is a treadmill. In order to save space, choose a folding treadmill, and then position it with the head of the treadmill facing a window rather than in the center of the room. It doesn't have to be right in front of the window, mind you, but being able to look outside rather than at a bare wall can greatly increase your interest in getting on the thing every day. You can usually catch these on sale every so often, or you might luck out and find one at a yard sale. Retail price for new treadmills for your home gym starts off at around $400, so we'll keep it at that. So far, we're up to $700 for our home gym, or less if you happened to find a treadmill on the cheap.

Weight training is an important aspect of personal fitness, and every home gym should be outfitted with at least some form of weight training equipment. What do most physical trainers say is the best? Dumbells, of course! Now, whatever you do, don't buy these new. You can find them for a good price at a second-hand sporting goods store. You're not going to need a crazy number of these things, though. At most, the biggest weight you should need for most purposes is about 50 pounds. In addition to this, check out 40, 35, 30, 25, 20,15,10 and finally, 5-pound dumbells. Second hand, plan to spend about .50 cents per pound for the weights, and at most, $1.00 per pound. For the sake of our example, let's split the difference and go with .75 cents. That means that you'll be spending about $270 on the weights. That brings the total to $970, still less than a grand for a home gym.

Realistically, that's about all you really need for a good home gym. Going a bit further, though, won't hurt, particularly since you've just saved $11,000! Add a flat screen tv with a DVD player for another $400, some stretchy-bands for about $25, and a weight bench (that can be picked up second-hand) for around $75. Throw in some yoga step blocks, and you'll still be paying less than $1600 for essentially the same workout you'd get in a full size gym. All that remains is to keep yourself motivated, but there's no gym equipment in the world that can do that.

Sources:
Dave Draper: Setting up a Home Gym -- Part 1: www.davedraper.com