Trying to figure out how to choose home gym equipment for a small space? Here’s the exact process we used to outfit our 16′ x 20′ shed — and you can see our full equipment list here. I spent quite a bit of time looking at other home gyms on Reddit and elsewhere to see what others were doing. However, in general, I feel like most people have their “dream equipment” and that’s typically the starting point. For us, a full set of dumbbells sitting on a proper dumbbell rack was the epitome of great home gym. The full range of weights easily grabbed and put back as you go. It’s where I tend to find myself the most in gyms. So, I suppose that makes us a “free weights” family. From there, it mostly became “add ons” the orbit the general approach of free weights. Our priorities were as follows:
- Highly accessible and complete set of dumbbells — effectively achieves every possible lift you could ever want or need to do
- Cardio machines — highly accessible cardio to fit into lunch breaks, early AM sessions, late night post kids’ bedtime session or as a means to warm up
- Floor space — enables bootcamp style workouts, diversity of workouts and space for using a barbell (barbells are surpassingly long when you think about gym space!!)
- Other — things like the pull up bar, the TRX, the jump box etc. are all “nice to haves” but have never been a major priority.
As you can see, this is 100% going to differ from person to person. Many make their top spot a power rack, from which they build upon and then every thing else just orbits it. Or some want a multi-solution cable machine that can be used for a wide variety of movements. It totally depends and comes down to 1) how much space do you have and 2) what are you actually interested in using?
Early layout sketches
Sketching the gym layout helps a lot for figuring out equipment. Here are some of my early chicken scratch drawings.
Cardio: the three we actually use
Peloton Tread+. The Tread+ is the centerpiece of the cardio side — big slatted belt, genuinely great to run on. Feels luxurious. This was a gym splurge buy and we’re loving it. But why not just use the great outdoors to walk or run? Well, with little kids, we want to be able to run or walk when they are sleeping, or alternatively we don’t want the elements, timing of day, etc to get in the way. Lastly, being either fully remote or even partially remote/ hybrid, it helps to be close to home in case we need to cut a lunch break short or whatever. (Note: this link is to the standard Peloton Tread; we bought the Tread+.)
Peloton Bike. We’ve had the classic Peloton bike since pre-covid (still going
strong!) and of course we were bringing it along for the ride. It fits in nicely as a
second (third?) cardio option. Which brings me to the next one:
Concept2 RowErg. The rower. This comes from my CrossFit days. I worked out at a local box about 2-3 days per week and wanted a good solution for our carport gym. The Concept2 Rower + barbell + jump rope trio was unstoppable for low footprint semi-outdoor workouts. This still influences the way I workout to this day (metcons!)
Strength: built to be dropped
CAP rubber-coated hex dumbbells (full set). We bought the whole set on Amazon. They’re sturdy, the rubber coating means we can drop them on the rubber mats without a second thought, and hex heads mean they don’t roll away. I thought about going Rogue for a moment but I couldn’t justify the huge cost. Sure, it would be a massive flex to have Rogue dumbbells, but what’s the point? I don’t have hundreds of people whirling around the gym like a CrossFit box. With Rogue, you’re paying for quality that can withstand volume. My home gym is just me, the wifey and maybe an occasionally family member or friend. Simply put they are overbuilt for my use case. But hey, if money wasn’t a question, I would have gone for it!
A multi-adjustable workout bench and dumbbell rack Of course if you’re going to rock the free weights, you need the bench. No getting around it. And the rack makes our weights accessible. For the bench, we had a cheap Titan bench for years and finally upgraded with the new gym. With that said, you can end up spending anywhere between pennies for a wobbly cheap bench, all the way up to a small fortune for something built to withstand a tsunami. I went somewhere between and ended up saving a lot of money for a high quality piece of equipment with French Fitness. French Fitness makes commercial quality gym equipment for a fraction of what you would pay walking into a local store or getting a name-brand piece of equipment like you see at your local Crunch Fitness. If you want you gym to match the look, quality and feel of a real gym, French Fitness or similar is the way to go. We went with the multi adjustable bench and 3-tier rack.
Rogue Echo Bar + HG 2.0 bumper plates. Okay, well speaking of Rogue and being overbuilt, a barbell and plates is where I do want it. Our barbell setup: the 28.5mm Echo Bar, HG 2.0 bumpers, and OSO collars. Rogue costs more but a barbell is good one to splurge on. They make a wide variety of options at various price points.
Rogue P-3 Pull-up System. Rogue makes these affordable enough and high quality. This is where they truly shine. Wall-mounted, out of the way, rock solid. Simply put there is no better back workout than pull ups. They are the pure test of strength, while also being high accessible. You can jump up and do a few in between sets. Not to mention, the added benefit of a wall mounted pull up bar is being able to attach stuff. I currently have a band for should warm ups and face pulls, as well as a pull up assistant band for getting those extra reps in.
The odds and ends
The Rogue bumper stacker with wheels for the plates, and the wall-mounted barbell hanger to keep the bar off the floor. The wall hangers for barbells are clutch. They are easy to use and keeps the barbell off the floor and from taking up precious wall space for windows and other equipment. For the plates, I thought a while about how to do this. Putting them on the wall looks awesome and makes them accessible, but it also takes up a lot of wall space! The Rogue bumper stacker makes it a bit annoying to get the heavy plates, but it keeps space efficient. Lastly, if we do every need to re-arrange on the fly, having the caster wheels helps.
Disclosure: Some links on this blog are Amazon affiliate links for the exact products we bought unless otherwise noted — we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
The Final Lineup
Every piece labeled, exactly where it lives in the shed:
