For my wife and I, our current gym membership is going to end on aug 31st.
Renewing will be 716 dollars.
Looking on craigslist I think I can get the bare essentials,
benchpress, squat rack, barbell, 300lbs of weights for about 300 dollars.
other needs 1. some good matting 50?
2. dumbells 50-100?
3. row machine 100?
What are some other things you guys recommend with the remaining 216.
Now that I'm at home I'm thinking i'll have more time and will start focusing on some other lifts like snatch etc (that I've neglected).
Do "rubber weights" really make a big difference? How often is a bar dropped etc? These things are wickedly expensive like 300-400 for 300 lbs. dollar per pound on craigslist.
Thats great that you're looking into acquiring some equipment for a home gym. Reechee has been picking up a bunch of stuff and has amassed a good collection of the essential equipment so I'm sure he'll chime in here.
ReplyDeleteA Concept 2 rower starts at $1,000 new I believe. Used probably run $300-700. Rogue Fitness was selling the rowers that were used at the CF Games this year for $700.
Bumper plates (the rubber weights you're referring to) make a lot of difference in my opinion with olympic lifts and workouts where you are doing high volume lifting as fast as possible (classic CrossFit workout). Most of the time I don't use bumper plates though since the gym I spend 90% of my time at only has 45lb bumper plates. There's really nothing wrong with getting some old fashioned steel plates.
If I were building up a home gym right now but didn't have an unlimited budget I'd probably spring for 25lb bumper plates and get a bunch of 5, 10, and 25lb steel plates. Having 25lb bumper plates will let you do whatever lifts you want at 95lb and give you the flexibility to drop the weight and with the smaller steel plates you can scale the weights up very easily.
I would get a pullup bar before the dumbbells and rower. You can easily substitute running for rowing in the near term and if you have a barbell with a couple pounds of weights you can do basically any dumbbell workout you need to.
Everyone has a different heirarchy for what equipment they would purchase first, my personal priority would be:
1. pull up bar
2. barbell
3. 25lb bumper plates
4. xlb steel plates
I think with that preliminary list of equipment you can do an infinite number of crossfit type workouts. In my book the rest (rings for dips, rower, box for box jumps, bench, squat rack, etc) are just gravy.
If you google: crossfit journal home gym there are a few good articles on basic starting equipment. There are also a few good videos on the crossfit.com site of people giving tours of their home gym's mtv cribs style that are pretty interesting.
great comment!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation on the bumper plates.. IT's helpful not having a good idea going into it.
Pull up bar is key didn't mention that.. Was thinking just one of those deals that attach to a door.
I do love dips though gunna have to figure that one out:)
I saw a picture of rings that you had set up. What did you attach that to?
What I also meant to say but forgot was if you don't necessarily want to buy all 300+lb of plates at once you could get a few light bumper plates and a few heavier steel plates for cheaper and workout with what you have for a month or so and see how you feel about the steel vs bumper plates and then look out/buy more of whatever plates you prefer for the workouts you want to do.
ReplyDeleteThe door pullup bars are fine, I have the one that screws into the door frame, it's not ideal b/c ideally my elbows swing out a little wider than my door width when I do kipping pullups and I also can't hang without my feet touching the floor but it's ok for doing random stuff in my apartment.
The rings hang from my pullup bar.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/819/photoaug0481305pm.jpg/
If you're big on dips I would definitely suggest getting a pair of rings to do the dips on. They're $60-75 online I think or you can also google how to make some of your own, I've seen some people who bend pvc pipe. Home made rings would probably run $20ish. Either way, they're a lot harder than fixed dips on a dip "machine" but those "machines" probably run several hundred.
Couple of the home gym videos from the crossfit site:
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_HomeGym-ThatcherCardon.mov
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_HomeGym-StevePlatek.mov
Also if I can find a bar and 2 25lb or 15lb bumper plates on craigslist or somewhere for $200 or so I'll most likely grab them.
ReplyDeleteOff the top of my head, if I had a bar and a few plates I could do the following movements:
back squat
front squat
overhead squat
shoulder press
push press
push jerk
split jerk
bench press on the floor
floor wipers
deadlift
snatch grip deadlift
clean
power clean
hanging clean
hanging power clean
clean and jerk
snatch
thruster
sumo deadlift high pull
weighted lunges
throw in the pullup bar, rings, pushups, situps, knees to elbow, toes to bar, burpees etc and you can probably come up with hundreds of workouts that would kick anyone's ass