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During the pandemic, I built a home gym in a spare space at home for a couple hundred dollars. I'm never paying for a gym again.
by Victerius 5y ago
During the pandemic, I built a home gym in a spare space at home for a couple hundred dollars. I'm never paying for a gym again.
- LegitShady 5y agoduring the pandemic a couple hundred dollars wouldn't even buy me enough weights for a bench press, let alone the rest of the necessary equipment.
- m463 5y agoI was going to say there is always used gym equipment available (used a handful of times), but then I never tested the market in the middle of the pandemic.
- LegitShady 5y agoduring the pandemic (and somewhat even now) the price of used equipment was extremely elevated. Even basic weights were expensive. Used plates in my area went from 50c/lb to $1/lb+. The prices of equipment similarly jumped. It was a bad time to build a gym, financially, but necessary.
- tshaddox 5y agoUnfortunately in most of the Bay Area, even just the floor space to have anything remotely usable as a home gym would cost many hundreds of dollars per month.
- dataflow 5y agoI think the point here was "see if you might already have enough space to spare", not "get extra space for the sake of a home gym".
- jjeaff 5y agoAnd the next commenter's point is that space is so expensive in SF, that no one just has an extra room on hand that they don't already use.
- dataflow 5y agoThe Bay Area is way bigger than SF, and it said "space", not "dedicated room". Obviously not everybody will have any room whatsoever but some folks in the Bay will be able to spare a bit.
- kornhole 5y agoThis takes creativity. Gymnast rings cost ~$10 which you can hang from a tree branch. Someone gave me a barbell, but I had no weights. So I screwed rings into some heavy logs and am now deadlifting ~400lbs. I get to do all this in my bikini in the sun while maintaining my garden between sets. I look like a fitness model and spent about $30 on my yard gym.
- dunefox 5y agoIf you can afford to live there you can surely afford weights, but the space for storing logs (of all things) just isn't practical.
- WalterBright 5y agoYou can go pretty far with: 1. dumbbells 2. screw a pullup bar into the ceiling joists 3. burpees
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> I'm never paying for a gym again. I believe for most gymgoers, a primary purpose of going to the gym is to hang out with your gym friends. If you just want exercise, you can do body weight exercises for free; a couple hundred dollars is overkill.
- jlawson 5y agoNo, not the case. I've been going to gyms for years. Have never spoken more than a single sentence to anyone there and 99.5% of the other people I see there are also training and not socializing. In fact I can specific remember one pair who were socializing in the gym once; I saw them about 10 months ago, it was very irritating and so unusual that I still remember it now. Bodyweight workouts can't come close to the effectiveness or satisfaction of a proper set of weights.
- johnqian 5y agoThis doesn't ring true to me; most people at the gyms I've been to don't talk to anyone. I think most people actually want the equipment, mainly the squat rack, bench press, and treadmills. I personally love bodyweight exercises but I still feel I'm missing something without heavyweight squats and deadlifts.
- WalterBright 5y ago> treadmills Just go out for a jog. Fresh air is far better for you anyway than stinky gym air.
- TylerE 5y agoTell that to my allergies.
- WalterBright 5y agoBeing in or outdoors made no difference to my hay fever. It was miserable for 6 weeks of the year, the rest was fine. I use the past tense, because getting older means my allergy has abated. It only gets bad if I mow the lawn, so now I wear a mask doing that.
- wrycoder 5y agoCost me $1000 for a rack and weights, but I’ve already saved it back in gym fees.
- UweSchmidt 5y agoSame. Also better music, relaxed dress code and light chores in between sets.
- wrycoder 5y agoAnd the women are friendly.