
What Gym Equipment Should Every Commercial Gym Have?
Many people opt for commercial gym memberships due to the initial financial investment that goes into home gyms. Therefore, as a gym owner, you must consider the variety and quality of equipment you have available. Additionally, updating the gym equipment in your space is essential to retain memberships. This applies to fitness studios to full-service facilities.
Whether you're a gym owner or gym goer. This post will inform you about the gym equipment that should be available in your gym. So, 'What Gym Equipment Should Every Commercial Gym Have?' and Why?
Strength Training Gym Equipment
Free Weights
Free weights are often the backbone of any strength training programme and essentially refer to weights that can move freely. It houses an array of equipment such as dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, plates, etc. They allow a wide range of exercise selections to hit multiple muscle groups and are easily modified (in terms of weight) to apply to all strength levels.
The most beneficial thing is that free weights easily allow for progressive overload. This term refers to gradual increases in intensity, volume and/or load. Subsequently, you are continuously experiencing stimuli for physiological adaptation, such as muscle hypertrophy and strength (Source). This is essential for adaptation; thus, providing equipment that allows members to do this (i.e., a range of weighted dumbbells) is crucial.
Additionally, free weights engage stabiliser muscles. Increasing stabiliser muscle strength is great for injury prevention and improves your ability to perform dynamic movements. Furthermore, free weights, such as dumbbells, are extremely versatile, taking up minimal space within your gym.

Benches and Racks
Benches and racks are also integral pieces of equipment. You may just think of a bench as a horizontal seat that allows you to do bench press. However, by investing in an adjustable commercial bench, you make your space so much more versatile. This allows you to perform bench presses, flies, incline presses, incline curls and seated shoulder presses. Additionally, this even allows you to perform Bulgarian split squats, tricep dips, bent-over rows etc. The list goes on.
Likewise, racks are also crucial, especially for those starting to lift heavier weights. Powerlifting, for example, is a sport that consists of completing maximal lifts of three activities; deadlift, squat and bench press. A rack is essential for both the squat and bench press. As a gym owner, this is essential to encourage and provide access for individuals to explore sports such as powerlifting. Also, the bench press and squat are fundamental exercises that require multi-joint movements. These exercises enhance neural activation and induce greater metabolic and hormonal responses for adaptation (Source). This highlights the importance of providing benches and racks within your gym.

Resistance Machines
Resistance machines are a great way to train without having to deal with any of the drawbacks of free weights. Free weight exercises are easily completed with improper form and are difficult to perform maximally if alone. Resistance machines, such as chest press, shoulder press and leg press offer a guided path. This helps beginners learn the proper technique that can be then used within their free weight training. Furthermore, cable systems for exercises such as lat pull-downs are often used for those who can't quite complete bodyweight pull-ups. Therefore, resistance machines offer a beginner-friendly method of training, that limits any technique-based injuries and still allows for progressive overload.
Additionally, for solo trainers, resistance machines allow you to train maximally (to failure) without risking getting trapped under the bar or having to drop weights, which could cause injury or damage to the equipment. This is great for improving safety and making beginners feel safe and comfortable within the gym.
Strength Training Gym Equipment Conclusion
So, why is it important to have a variety of strength training equipment in your gym? There are multiple reasons, however, they all link to providing an environment for individuals to be successful in achieving their fitness goals. For starters, having a variety of equipment is essential to allow for a diverse lifting regime that can hit a variety of muscle groups. This will make lifting more enjoyable and increase motivation.
Additionally, it allows gym goers to hit multiple muscle groups and most importantly add up to provide a safe environment to progressively overload to increase muscle size and strength.
Here is a summary list of essential strength training equipment:
- Free weights (Dumbbells, Barbells, Plates, Kettlebells)
- Benches and Racks (adjustable bench, bench press rack, squat rack, power cages)
- Resistance Machines (Chest press, leg press, lat pull down)
Cardiovascular Gym Equipment: For All Fitness Levels
Aerobic training significantly improves quality of life with substantial physiological adaptations to cardio-respiratory systems (Source). Performing aerobic exercise increases the demand for oxygen in working muscles. This causes increased heart and breathing rate, to deliver a greater amount of oxygen to the working muscles. Subsequently, cell signalling cascades activate AMPK (an enzyme) - simplify this, I don't even know what this stands for, which is key for adaptation to endurance training (source).
Similar to strength training, having a variety of cardiovascular equipment is important to cater for individual users' needs and preferences. A treadmill may be applicable for many, however, those who require or want more full-body modes of endurance training may want to opt for an Air bike or Ski Erg.
Exersci endurance equipment focuses on growing favourites such as the Airbike, Ski Erg, and rower. These items are well worth considering as a home or studio gym owner. These are self-powered machines, therefore, they don't have to be connected to an outlet to be used. This means you are not restricted when moving equipment or when organising the layout of your gym. This added convenience makes things less stressful during group classes, especially where machines are often moved. Furthermore, say bye to trip hazards, with no wires lying around! Additionally, being self-powered, means you still get the digital connectivity and performance tracking as you would with other machines.

Functional Training Gym Equipment
Functional gym equipment such as resistance bands, cable machines, medicine balls, plyometric boxes etc., are also very important to incorporate into your gym.
Resistance bands
Resistance bands are very cheap and versatile additions to your gym. You can use them for variable resistance training (VRT), aiding movements, adding resistance to movements and for yoga practice. VRT started to become more heavily researched in the early 2000s. It is achieved by attaching resistance bands (or chains) around a barbell to the origin of the lifting point (i.e., the floor). The idea is that by doing so, there is a variance in resistance, often increasing throughout the movement. The variation of stimuli induces neuromuscular adaptations, resulting in increased strength. Meta-analysis (summarising research findings) found VRT to significantly increase strength compared to conventional resistance training (source). Therefore, VRT has become popular in athletic communities.

Cable Machines
You can use cable machines to isolate specific muscles or for multi-joint movements that require a range of muscle groups. They also offer relatively unique resistance in the vertical plane, allowing pulling motions downwards. This allows you to perform exercises such as lat pull-downs as a way to regress the typical pull-up or to better isolate the latissimus dorsi. Most commonly, cable machines allow for an adjustable handle, meaning you can perform upper and lower body movements. With the range of exercises that can be completed using a cable machine, yet the lack of space it takes up, it should be considered essential within your commercial gym.
Medicine balls
Medicine balls also offer a versatile piece of kit. They are often used by athletes that require a high rate of force development, especially in the upper limb such as boxing, MMA, tennis and field athletics (i,.e, shot put, javelin). These can also be implemented into the core stability sections of your training, for example, Russian twists to help tone and develop core muscles.
Plyometric boxes
Similarly to medicine balls, you can use plyometric boxes to improve explosive rate of force development define, primarily in the lower limb. Research indicates that for movements that require the stretch-shortening cycle (a muscle action where the muscle is stretched before rapid shortening), plyometric training significantly improves performance and increases strength (source). Therefore, this piece of equipment is also crucial to have readily available within commercial gyms to allow gym-goers to achieve their fitness goals.

Functional Space
It is also important to provide a space free for functional circuit or mobility workouts. This allows you to move and use some of the equipment mentioned above, which is often the case for grouped classes in commercial gyms. Therefore, you must consider what flooring and accessories (i.e., mirrors) you want.
In this case, rubber flooring should be your go-to. Rubber flooring offers a high shock and sound absorption, durability and an easy-to-clean surface. The Exersci EVA jigsaw mats offer a convenient installation process whilst being designed with an extra-thick construction to maximise comfort. Additionally, mirrors can be a great addition to allow people to assess their own technique and ensure safe lifting.
The importance of incorporating A Range Of Gym Equipment
Providing a range of equipment is essential to encourage and motivate people to train and is very appealing to gain new members. For newcomers, a variety of equipment will allow individuals to experiment and figure out what exercises and equipment best suits them. Additionally, it provides enough equipment to allow for a busy gym and not have members standing waiting for free machines.
Importantly, a range of equipment specifically regarding cardio and resistance training can allow for concurrent training. This refers to completing aerobic/endurance training alongside strength training and is popular within athlete training programmes. This hybrid style of training started gaining attention in the late 1980s. However, with the recent surge in Hyrox events, concurrent training has become ever so popular. Although not found to provoke strength improvements as significant as resistance training alone (simply due to separating workload between aerobic and resistance training), it can be used to provoke significant improvements in strength and endurance (source). Considering this is a common goal for fitness enthusiasts, providing equipment for this to be an option is crucial.
It is worth noting that adaptations to muscular strength and hypertrophy decline/plateau with greater training age. When more adapted, it is thought that the physiological responses from endurance training interfere with the cell signalling cascade responsible for muscle hypertrophy. Therefore, to counteract this, you should elongate the time between endurance and strength training. Or, if strength and hypertrophy are your primary goals, you should lower the frequency of endurance training (source). - This could be a different blog

Conclusion
Now you have reached the end of this blog, you should have an understanding of the essential gym equipment that you should include within your gym. It is important to consider that people attend the gym for different reasons and have different goals. Providing a space for functional workout classes could be the social event that keeps some people attending, whereas others may want to implement their own training with a variety of strength equipment to bodybuild and increase strength and hypertrophy. Furthermore, allowing equipment for individuals to complete aerobic and strength training concurrently will target a large population who want to improve strength and endurance capacity. This is also massively important for those involved in physical sports or competitive events.
By adding the aforementioned equipment, we are confident that you will increase member satisfaction and gain new members.
If you are looking to upgrade your home or commercial gym, explore our high-quality commercial-grade gym equipment at Exersci.co.uk. Alternatively, you can contact us to answer any of your queries.
If you want more information on essential equipment for home gyms, check out our other blog - 'What Is The Essential Gym Equipment For A Home Gym?'
