My Garage Gym, Craig's Barbell Club

Over the years, I have trained at many gyms: small private gyms, like Stack's Gym, big globo gyms like Golds Gym, Military gyms, and Crossfit gyms. I have even trained at Planet Fitness a few times, and yes I set off their lunk alarm.   After moving home from New Mexico and getting settled in my  new home, I started going to Crossfit Ex.   This is was a great Crossfit gym where I really developed as an athlete.   I really like Crossfit and I learned a ton from it, but I was never fully cult like with Crossfit, as some people get with it. I like the training methodology especially when combining it with all of my previous experience body building and power lifting.   After being in my house for about a year, I decided to build myself a plyobox.  It was going to be a 20x24x30 inch box.  I really was just planning to build it to help with different stretching and mobility work I wanted to accomplish at home.  I found the designs for the box on Garage Gym Athlete website.   After the easy and effectiveness of building this box along with the gymnastic bar I built for my daughter the month prior. I started to think about other things I could possibly build.  

I had moved into the house with a really crappy barbell and about 300# of weight I had picked up from Goodwill for $99.  I was not really doing anything at the house with that weight. It sat in the corner in the basement because weights and a bar alone is difficult to use with out a rack of some type.  After making this plyobox, I started looking around  on the internet for how to build a power rack.  There are many examples of people building power racks out of lumber. I really thought this would be a fun project, and I had a great garage for a rack.   One primary issue with Crossfit, is that the gym was about 20 min from my house, and Crossfit gyms have set classes time.   If I could not make it right after work then I would not have time to get any training that day.   If I had a power rack, on days I missed the start of class or knew I would not be able to make it, I could get in some squats and presses done at the house.  I had no real intention of fully building my garage into a gym, that is, until I went through with building a power rack.   I also knew I had a baby on the way and wanted to be able to still train at home if needed because new born babies can take a little time out of your day. Except my wife is a rock star, and did so much to make sure I could still get some training in my day.

The design of my power rack is similar to one I found on YouTube from the Buff Dudes page.  I modified it slightly. I have a really tall ceiling in my garage so I left it 8 feet tall and changed the way the pull-up bar was added. I was thinking I might want to do kipping pull-up or bar muscle ups, so I wanted my power rack to have that capability.  It was March 2017 and my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday coming up in April.  They gave me a Home Depot gift card early for my birthday, I took my monthly blow money that my wife I get each month, and bought all the wood I needed to build my power rack.  I spent a total of $210 on all the materals to build the power rack.  This included the wood, all the screws, braces, and the 1 1/4 inch drill bit.  This did not include the new hammer drill I had to buy because I burnt my drill up trying to drill like 15 holes for the safety bars in each of the of the four of the 4x4.   I remember this being a really fun weekend project, and Charlie had a blast helping me paint it once I finished building it.  It was also fun having my dad come over to help me get the wood and assemble things.  I had Home Depot make all the major cuts of the wood which saved a lot of time.   One comment I hear a lot is "your power rack is made of wood aren't you worried it is going to break" to which I respond, your house and deck are made of the same wood do you not feel safe with 5-10 people standing on the deck or in your house.  A wooden power rack is plenty strong enough to hold way more weight than I am capable of lifting.    

This project gave me the bug to find gym equipment to have in the garage to get in a good work out.  I really only wanted the essentials.  So what do I think are the essentials if you are thinking of building a basement or garage gym? 

1. Power Rack with pull-up bar
2. Barbell
3. Weights (You need more than you can lift) 
4. Bench. 
5. Mats to protect the ground

At this time, I now had a power rack, some weight and what some might have called a barbell.   I was really lacking  on this list of essentials, but what you are about to find is that I took things way beyond the essentials with my garage gym.  I really needed a better barbell.  The one I had was actually bolted together in to two spots in the middle of the bar.  It was a very cheap bar and dangerous to load much weight on.   I only had about 300# of weight.  A few months before building my rack, I squatted 300# for 20 reps, so I would say I needed to get more weight.   I also needed a bench.   I really enjoyed building things for the garage.   I really liked the idea of Do it yourself (DIY) projects for the garage gym.  Since I had a really high ceiling and I wanted to do Crossfit style workouts at the house,  I added a mount for a climbing rope and gymnastics rings (not really an essential).    I found a cheap set of rings and rope on amazon and added those to the gym.  I also bought two stall mats from the tractor supply store. I also had an extra 2x8 board that I turned into a peg board. It was around this time I became obsessed with looking for gym equipment on Facebook Market Place, Craigslist, Letgo , and Offerup yard sale sites.  I didn't want to spend much money to build out my garage with basic equipment.  In May 2017, I probably found a deal of a lifetime.  I was able to pick up 440# of bumper plates with a horizontal weight rack for $300.   This same person sold me some more stall mats at $25 a piece.  This left me even more obsessed with trying to find deals on gym equipment.   I was still going to a Crossfit gym, but now that I had bumper plates I could do so much more at my house.   The problem was trying to do Olympic lifts with such a horrible bar.  By the end of May, I had found an industrial bench press and recovered it for about $40, and also found a 20# wallball for $20.  It was at this point I started to train at my house at least 1-2 day a week.  I was still looking for new ideas for DIY gym equipment and deals on year sale sites.   I built my own adjustable kettle bell and 50# slam ball, although the slam ball didn't last through more than a few workouts.  Another amazing deal I found was a set of Powerblock adjustable DB.   These start at 5# and make 2.5# jump all the way up to 85#.  I  got these for $200.   In about 4 months, with no real intentions of building a gym, I had a full gym.   I really  loved finding a good deal and building pieces of equipment to add little things to the gym.   One cool thing was since I had built my power rack, it was very easy to add some steel pipe to connect resistant band.  This is great for doing banded dead lifts and squats.

I  found designs for adding a reverse hyper to a power rack and decided that I would build my own to my power rack as well.  This is a great assistance piece.    It is a little bit of a pain to setup with the power rack but it takes up very little space in the garage. Most reverse hyper machines are huge.  I made a loose agreement with my wife that we would always be able to still park in the garage, so I am always looking to make or have things that can easily be stored.

I was able to find an almost new Airdyne bike for $60 and then shortly after found another one for $25. I sold the newer one for $150.   I bought a Bike monitor for a road bike and attached it to the Airdyne.  I calibrated the calorie count on the monitor to match the calorie count on the newer Airdyne.   This monitor cost me $30.  In September 2017, I decided to buy a brand new bearing Olympic bar for $200, this is one purchase that anyone investing in the garage gym should purchase new.    It is very hard to find a good bar used although they do come up now and then.  You want to make sure you get a bar that is rated to hold over 1000# or has a tensile strength of 150000 psi. Most of the cheap barbells are only rated for 500#, which may sound like a lot, but there are plenty of videos of bars breaking.

In October of 2017, I found a concept 2 erg used for rowing for only $125. This is another one of my purchases that was an amazing deal.  Purchased new, a concept 2 erg is about $900, and used they normally sell for about $800.  At this point in my build of my garage gym, I had a full Crossfit box, and I was training more at home than at the Crossfit gym. I built  PVC parelletts. These are used for gymnastics moves.  I bought a gym wall clock/timer new.  Those are hard to find used.   It was not needed because you can always just use your phone to time a work out, but it definitely is nice having on the wall.    I picked up a used tire from Firestone and with some scrap wood and PVC I built a tire sled. The kids have fun sitting on the sled, and I pull them down the street.   I had some scrap 4x4 pieces and I came up with a design to build farmers walk bars.  I was starting to have all the essential pieces of equipment and lots of great accessory pieces to go along with it.

It was around this time I stopped going to the Crossfit gym altogether.   There are a few main reasons I stopped going to Crossfit gym altogether.   The first is probably obvious, I had built a full gym at my house.  The other is it saves so much time, I didn't have to drive to the gym and I didn't have to wait on a class to start.   The last reason is when I train at home I love having my kids come out and see me lifting, while they are playing.    After I stopped training at the Crossfit gym, I wanted to have a good program to follow.  I first joined the garage gym athlete online program.  This was a very good program, but just not exactly what I was looking for.  I have actually recommended this program to many people.  I  joined Mash Elite Performance online team.    This was it, I have a personal online coach that writes my program and gives feed back on video analysis of my lifts.  I joined the team in November of 2017 and have been training with my coach ever since.

After joining Mash Elite Performance, I really started to focus on Olympic lifts, while still doing Crossfit metcon, and I decided that I needed to build some jerk blocks.   These are very useful for doing jerks from blocks to drop the weight on from over head.  They are also great for doing many lifts from different heights, cleans and snatches.  After one year I think had dropped about $1900 on my garage gym, but I had access to more equipment than I did at most Crossfit boxes.

Over this past year, I continued to add to the gym.  I added fresh paint to the power rack, inspirational quotes to the wall, lifting platform,  fully covered the floors with stall mats.    One amazing thing I was able to add to the gym was the strongman sandbags. These are just like the Rogue sandbag, but my aunt made them for me.  She was able to make me three for under $80. I have a 200,150,100# sandbag.  These would have cost like $100 each from Rogue.   At the end of 2018, I decided to rearrange the entire gym, along with adding paint, in order for it to have more a feel of a commercial gym.

Here is the reality, if you are interested in having a home gym, you don't have to spend a lot of money at one time.    You can buy used because in general weights don't go bad and so many people buy gym equipment but are not committed to using it. A couple years later they decide to sell it for pennies on the dollar, their lack of motivation is your opportunity to start your home gym.   If you are handy you can also build lots of equipment based on others design.  This is how I built most of my equipment.   Alternatively, you could buy new starter garage gym package from Rogue fitness.  This get you just enough to get started and will coast you close to $2000.  I will take my $1900 gym over a year way before getting the starter package from Rogue.   I am two year into my garage gym I have spent a total of $3100 for an average of $130 a month.  That is less than most Crossfit gym memberships.  I can train when I want and how I want.   I estimate that I have about $12000 worth of gym equipment if I were buy everything new and name brands.  If you are new to lifting weights, then I don't recommend you start by building a home gym.  You should join a gym and get your feet wet, possibly hire a trainer to teach you the basics before jumping to training alone.  If you are consistent and have a busy life then I highly recommend you the find a place in your home to build a gym.  It is an investment in you health, life and time.  Check out my equipment list and a video below showing the evolution of Craig's Barbell Club.    Feel free to contact me if you have questions about building a home gym.

Equipment List

Power rack $210
 Steel plates and bar $99
 Climbing Rope $50
Bumpers $300
Rings $35
Peg board $25
White boards $15 20#
Wall ball $20
Bench $30
New fabric $10
Chalk $10
Diy kettlebell $30
Two more mats $60
Callors $20
Mirror $5
Fat grips $20
Bar,weight tree,2-25# db $20
Sold bar ($20)
Sold dbs ($30)
Power block Dumbbells 5#-85# $200
Reverse hyper attachments $80.
Band attachments $30
 Dip belt $15
Airdyne $60
sold for ($150)
Airdyne $25
Bike monitor $30
 Oly bar $200
 Concept 2 $125
Parrelletes $30
 Farmers walk bars $55
Axle bar $40
30# wall balls $35
 Battle rope $25
Clock $135
 Jerk blocks $165
20,30,40,60,60# Kettlebells $160
 Crossover symmetry $45
Stability ball $5
Landmine and t-grip $25
200# Weights $0
Fan $60
35# slam ball $36
Plywood platform/ decal/stain urathain $100
100,150,200# strongman sandbags $80
 Macebell DIY $50
Tire Sled $0
 21 Stall Mats $445
 10# bumper plates
$25 Wall Decal $40