The Essential Equipments

The Essential Equipments

Having seen those bulky and fancy machines and the free weights section in the gym, what are actually the essential equipments that i need to build a good home gym?

Continue reading to find out what you really need for a full body workout.

For those who are just starting to work out and looking to build a home gym, i would recommend the following items.

(1)  An adjustable weight bench with barbell support

(2) A pair of adjustable dumbbells (with weight plates of 1.25kg, 2.5kg, 5kg)

(3) A normal size 1.5m barbell ( a 1.5m barbell will be more suitable for home use as you would not want to swing a Olympic size barbell and hitting the stuff in your house)

The above items are what I strongly recommend to be on top of the “To-Buy-List” when building a new home gym. Of course, more equipments can be purchase if its within your budget, or when you are looking to expand your home gym into a more advanced training environment.

(1)  An adjustable weight bench with barbell support

Why do I recommend a adjustable weight bench with BARBELL SUPPORT instead of a normal      adjustable weight bench WITHOUT barbell support. The answer is simple, you can use the bench with barbell support for both barbell bench press and dumbbell bench press. You save money in the long run. Instead of getting just a bench without barbell support which you have to start thinking how you can do barbell bench press with it.

An adjustable weight bench allows the flexibility of adjusting the angle of the back rest. Therefore, you can do incline, flat and decline presses on the same bench. By adjusting the backrest to near 90 degrees, you can do shoulder presses on it.

There are weight benches in the market that comes with a leg extension attachment. It would be a extra bonus to the weight bench, as you can perform leg exercises on the weight bench. However, this is just a “bonus” feature to the weight bench and it is not necessary.

I will include in a list of the exercise that you can perform using the weight bench in future posts.

(2) A pair of adjustable dumbbells (with weight plates of 1.25kg, 2.5kg, 5kg)

A pair of adjustable dumbbells allows you to vary the weight you need for different exercises. For example, for dumbbell bench press, you need a pair of 17.5kg dumbbells, where else for shoulder presses, a pair of 12.5kg dumbbells. The adjustable dumbbells gives you the flexibility to vary the weight allowing to your strength for different exercises.

Rubberised weight plates will preferred as it do not rust and it provides a quieter workout session ( when the weight drops!!!)

A post on the different exercises you can perform with a pair of dumbbells will be post in the near future.

(3) A normal size 1.5m barbell 

A normal size 1.5m barbell will be able to hold a normal weight plate with hole diameter of about 2.55cm. The normal size barbell is much light and shorter than a Olympic barbell. A shorter barbell will be more suitable to be use in a home gym, as you wouldn't want a 2m barbell to knock into stuff around your house while trying to place them into position or while doing barbell military press!!! 

Hope the above elaboration adds on to your knowledge in building a home gym. 

Stay tune for more post on the different exercises you can perform with just the above equipments!!!!