Home Gym

This is something that I have been meaning to write about for a while. A few months ago, I built a home gym. Or, I should say that I have started building a home gym, as there still is not much in the way of equipment.

I bought a set of P90X3 DVDs, and realized that I needed a few things. While I really enjoyed the difficult workout sessions, my living room is simply not big enough to be jumping around, and doing all of the moves that they do in the program, at least not without bumping into the coffee table or television. So, I decided to look into putting together something in the unused side of our garage.

I started by laying down two 4’x6’ non-slip indoor rug pads, that you’d buy for a carpet on a hardwood floor. I bought two sets of 24"x24"x1/2" puzzle exercise mat tiles, and taped them together with Gorilla Tape. P90X has you jumping around back and forth, so the tape and non-slip mats were important to make sure that first the mat doesn’t move too much, and also to make sure that it doesn’t pull apart.

A friend of a friend had a freestanding pullup bar that he wasn’t using and said that if I came to pick it up, I could have it for free. Score!

I had some resistance bands from a couple of years ago, which are nice to start with, but I also decided to get a basic dumbbell set, this one totaled up to 40lbs. I also bought a set of push up stands, since there’s lots of pushups in the routine, and I figured that they were cheap enough. I like them, and find that I can achieve better form using them.

I also used some tape on the top of the mat to mark out a couple of parallel lines like they use in P90X. The ones shown are not final, as I replaced the white duct tape with the same gorilla tape that I used on the underside, and changed the position slightly.

All in all, I am very glad that I decided to do this. I have been able to be fairly consistent with working out every morning with a dedicated space that I enjoy working out in, that is well suited to it. It was also fairly inexpensive to put together.

As an added bonus, since I started working out regularly, I have found that I have been enjoying more and more physical activity. I really wanted to get into better shape so that I wouldn’t be suffering at roller soccer (it worked). Since I started doing P90X, I also took up surfing, freebording, and swimming. (Still not sure if I’ll end up sticking with the freebord, but that’s another story.)

Note, this post contains affiliate links to Amazon. I linked to the exact items that I bought for this project.