My Small Home Gym

I have always wanted a home gym, but finding a spot in our house is a challenge. Plus, there is not a whole lot of room in the budget to do anything fancy.

We live in an old house — the original part of it was built in 1787, and then an addition was added on to it later. I’m not sure when the addition was put on, but that part is pretty old, too.

Being an old home, the basement has really low ceilings, so it’s hard to do much down there in the way of working out, plus it isn’t finished.

The newer part of the house has a living/playroom in it.

It’s kind of an odd layout, and it runs from the front to the back of the house.

It’s where our couch and tv are, but then in the back of the room, there are a bunch of bookshelves and sliding doors to the back deck.

Up until about two years ago, the back part of the room was the kids’ play area.

It usually looked like this:

This was a typical view from behind the couch: 

Here is the other side of the play area:

Here is a view on a neater day:Here is the view looking from the loft area up above:

The loft upstairs is where my office used to be and it was also a dumping grounds for anything that didn’t have a designated home.

A couple years ago a professional organizer — Sue Duval from the Organized Hive — came and helped me finally clean out that area and organize it, and that became the kids’ new playroom.

It has taken me a looooong, time, but now the old play area downstairs is my workout space.

I love it.

It’s a work in progress. It doesn’t look exactly how I hope it will one day.

And it’s not big. It’s about 11 ft x 90 ft.

But it’s big enough for what I want to do, it totally serves its purpose, and I like being there.

I didn’t do anything fancy, and I didn’t spend a lot of money (hardly any, actually).

Here is the view of that side of the room now:

About five years ago, someone sent me a message letting me know there was an elliptical machine out on the side of the road in town. I managed to get over there and pick it up before anyone else.

It has moved around the downstairs, but now it’s found a home.

Do I really want an elliptical machine in my main living area?

Ideally, no.

But there is no other place to put it.

Plus it’s a really nice one, and I use it quite a bit — almost every day.

So until NYAM becomes a multi-million dollar company and I can build my own custom workout room, this will have to do.

Eventually something will be done with those shelves, but for now they are kind of in limbo.

Here is what I did on the other side of the room:

(I’ll provide links to the stuff I have — some are affiliate links which won’t cost you anything extra but will help me offset the costs of running my site should you purchase from any of them).

(Also, I am NOT a representative of Beachbody. I just like their workouts 🙂 )

So I have the following things in my gym:

1. Dumbbells (ranging from 3 lbs. – 20 pounds) — I have been collecting these gradually over the years. I got some at Walmart, and some I have no idea where the heck they came from.
2. resistance bands I think I got these from Beachbody when I did P90X a few years ago, but Amazon has them here.
3. exercise bands — these are the exact ones I have from Amazon
4. a yoga mat and yoga blocks
5. an ab wheel
6. a jump rope
7. foam roller
8. small fan
9. full-length mirror — I got this for $5.88 at WalMart

Four mornings a week I do the Beachbody on demand LIIFT 4 program. It’s four days of strength training, and each workout is anywhere between 28 – 39 minutes.

There is plenty of room to do those workouts in this space.

I use my iPad to stream the workouts, and I workout around 5 a.m. before anyone is awake.

LIIFT 4 uses dumbells, and so I use all the sets right here — they get quite a bit of use.

I have 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 20 pound dumbbells. I need to get some heavier ones now because I’m getting stronger and the 20’s aren’t heavy enough for some of the stuff I do, but I have plenty of open shelf space to the left on those shelves, so I’ll put them there.

I use the cheapo WalMart mirror to keep an eye on my form.

I printed out a couple pictures for motivation. Eventually that back wall of the bookshelves will be full of motivation.

I repurposed some of the baskets that used to have toys in them to hold some of my equipment.

(the kids have kind of abused my yoga blocks)

There is plenty of room for my mat.

I love being able to work out at home. It’s convenient, there is no travel time, I don’t give a crap what I look like, and I don’t have to pack a gym bag.

If you want to set up your own home gym, you don’t need a lot of equipment, and you don’t need a big space!

To get you started, you can check out these links — I have been collecting this stuff gradually over the last few years!

1. Dumbbells (ranging from 3 lbs. – 20 pounds) — I have been collecting these gradually over the years. I got some at Walmart, and some I have no idea where the heck they came from.
2. resistance bands I think I got these from Beachbody when I did P90X a few years ago, but Amazon has them here.
3. exercise bands — these are the exact ones I have from Amazon
4. a yoga mat and yoga blocks
5. an ab wheel
6. a jump rope
7. foam roller
8. small fan
9. full-length mirror — I got this for $5.88 at Walmart