Home Gym, Yeah it IS Possible

Home gym, yeah it IS possible

I have long been a gym lifer. I friggin love being at the gym (I am a huge people watcher so that comes into play). I feed off of competing with whoever is working out next to me (yes, if you are next to me, we are in a serious competition, believe it!). And of course all the nice equipment, gym selfie mirrors, and sharing other people’s sweat. Yep, I adore the gym. But what I have a hard time doing is carving out the time to be there. Work + 5 kids + husband in school at night = NO TIME to be away from the house.

So the answer was to build our home gym in our garage. In what is way less expensive than what I thought, we have most of what you need to get a serious workout in daily. How? Piece by piece people.

We maintained our gym memberships while we slowly got the main parts needed to get a pump on at home. We started with the weight bench that included squat & leg press capabilities. Then we got free weights, punching bag, huge tractor tires to flip & pull X 2 (got those for free! Just hit up your nearest tire company that services big tires. They will willingly give you the big tires that can no longer be used!) elliptical, stair climber, mats, medicine ball, etc… you get the picture. Pretty much the basics everyone needs.

The equipment isn’t the best. It certainly isn’t all gym grade stuff, but it works and that works for me.

We got a lot of it from Academy. We also got some of the pieces from ebay (my husband is a huge ebayer) and Craigs List (elliptical!!) which has really helped to keep the cost down. Then you can always get things like sandbags to do weighted carries with (you have to cover it in duct tape though or the bags leak sand everywhere! NICE! L).

All we need is a pull up bar mounted to the ceiling and some jump boxes (in the works right now) and we would be our own little crossfit gym!

Once we got what we felt like we needed, we dropped our gym memberships. Kind of a sad day for me. No more secret competitions. But I have since learned to push myself harder. So yay! Winning! LOL

We are always looking to add to our gym. Jump boxes, more free weights, my football playing son wants a smith machine, etc. So it will likely never be done, but it works and we love it.

Now if I could only figure out how to NOT referee the kid’s arguments while I am trying to make gains, I would be a completely happy #girlswholift / mom!