Written by Carly Freestone | 22nd January 2019
What does your dream home look like? For many of us here at Michael Graham it includes a gym or an indoor pool, leaving no excuse for not swimming those morning lengths or lifting a few weights before work. If you resolved to make positive health and fitness changes to your lifestyle in 2019, why not consider creating a home gym?
Building an extension may be an option, albeit a costly one, otherwise your home will already have a spare room or an outbuilding that can be converted to create a home gym. Under-utilised garages are a popular location as the floor has been built to take the weight of a car, so there’ll be no worries about reinforcing existing floors as there would be in an older house. Garages also have strong block walls which are well-suited to hanging equipment on. Wherever you choose, a ground floor location is best, or you will need to soundproof the floor. Rowing machines and treadmills kick up quite a racket.
Once you decide on a space for your home gym, a major consideration is the cost of gym equipment. You can buy a new treadmill for £200, but you can just as easily spend more than £10,000. Price varies widely depending on the added functionality, for example heart monitors, training programmes and fitness app connectivity, so decide what you need for your training programme. If your goal is all-round fitness, you need equipment for cardio and equipment for strength. A treadmill, rowing machine, exercise bike or cross trainer will all get your heart rate up and burn fat. For strength, a multi-gym with various pulleys, bars, and levers will work all your major muscle groups. However, they can be big, expensive and tricky to set up so if space and budget are limited, free weights such as kettlebells and dumbbells are equally effective.
The choice of flooring in your home gym is important for safety as it must be slip-proof and able to withstand the wear of weights and equipment. Specialist shock absorbent gym flooring made of high-quality rubber is ideal and can be bought online. Finally, if there’s anything left in your budget, you’ll need to make some audio and visual decisions. So whether you want to blast out up-tempo hits or play relaxing music for your yoga routine, you’ll need a good sound system for your playlist. A flat screen television on the wall for catching up on the latest Netflix series as you burn those calories is also a must-have for any home gym wish-list.
Gym membership or home gym? What would you prefer? Get in touch with us via our Facebook page or tweet us and let us know.