Training from home increased in popularity significantly during COVID-19 for obvious reasons. This highlighted the accessibility that comes with having home gym equipment. Along with its growing popularity, exercise companies such as ourselves have understood the importance of providing high-quality equipment at a reasonable price. This means that you can build an effective set-up without spending a fortune. If you don't know where to start when building your home gym, don’t worry! This blog will answer the question, 'What Is The Essential Gym Equipment For A Home Gym?

Essentials Gym Equipment For Strength Training

Are you wanting to build muscle mass and gain strength at home? There is an array of equipment that can help you do this.

Dumbbells & Kettlebells

Dumbbells or Kettlebells are a great option to save space, train hard and progressively overload. Their small size allows you to organise your home gym and have the equipment practically out of sight, limiting the risk of trips and injuries. 

Additionally, the weight options for dumbbells & kettlebells range massively, but often in small increments. This means that you can progressively overload. This is defined as “the gradual increase of stress placed on the body during resistance training” and is essential to maximise the adaptations gained from resistance training (Source). Progressive overload works with the knowledge that to adapt, you need to provide the body with sufficient stimuli to meet physiological demands. By overloading the external load during resistance training, you are continuously placing the body under enough physiological stress to induce adaptation. This causes more adaption to neuromuscular, hormonal, and physiological systems, specifically muscle growth.

For a more affordable option, Adjustable Dumbbells are a great place to start and offer the same benefits as regular dumbbells.

Barbell & Plates

If you want to cover more compound lifts, such as squats, deadlifts, bench press etc barbell gym equipment is definitely what you need. 

Like with the dumbbells, buying a barbell with weighted plates or bumper plates allows you to progressively overload your workout. The great thing with barbell exercises is that movements can be as basic or complex as you require. Compound lifts refer to resistance exercises that require the activation of multiple muscle groups. This is crucial for building whole-body strength, with exercises such as squatting inducing increased circulating testosterone, an essential hormone for muscle hypertrophy and bone health. A barbell goes hand in hand with a squat rack. Having adjustable fail-safe bars also allows you to; 1) Lift heavily, and safely, as you can drop the bar on the fail-safe bars if the resistance is too heavy & 2) move the safe bars so that you can complete other exercises, such as bench press, without it hindering your movement. 

More complex movements can also be completed. For example, if you are looking to start Olympic lifting (Clean & Jerks or variations of such) check out our collection of Olympic Barbells.

For more information on Barbell lifting, check out our blog on 'Barbell Lifting for Beginners: Everything You Need to Know'.

Benches

Getting a bench for your home gym is essential. This will unlock a large portion of lifts and exercises that we suggest. From bench press to dumbbell step-ups, a bar is often the backbone piece of equipment to optimise your training.

An adjustable bench should be your go to. This will open many more avenues for your home workouts, making it an even more versatile piece of equipment. For example, by adjusting the angle of you bench press, you can target different areas of your pectoralis major, meaning greater overall stimulation within a session, thus greater hypertrophic gains. Additionally, it allows you to complete fundamental lifts, that are crucial for building a base and preventing injury.

Check out our selection of benches available for you.

Resistance Bands

You can use resistance bands to either add resistance or aid a movement.  For example, by standing on the band and grabbing the loose end with your hands you could complete squats, bicep curls, shoulder press etc. This will add resistance to the movement, making the exercise harder and increasing the stimulus for adaptation. 

They can also be used to aid a movement. For example, by wrapping the band around a pull up bar. You can then place your foot on the hanging band, which will help regress the pull-up movement. This allows you to complete more repetitions to induce sufficient muscular fatigue and stress for adaptation. 

You can find more information on resistance bands on our blog entitled 'Can I Build Muscle With Resistance Bands?'

Weighted vests

Weighted vests are one of our top-selling items, and they are for a reason!

By adding a weighted vest to your home gym equipment, you are widening the possible benefits of your workouts. This is also a piece of equipment that allows you to progressively overload, by adding additional weighted plates to the vest. This will help adaptations to multiple physiological systems that help; 

1. Increase Muscle Mass & Strength
2. Improve Cardiovascular Endurance
3. Aid Weight loss
4. Improve Bone Health

Check out our collection of Weighted Vests! And for more information on the benefits of weighted vests, check out our blog list which provides multiple blogs regarding the Exersci weighted vests.

Cardio Gym Equipment for Home Workouts

Cardiovascular exercise induces physiological adaptations that improve quality of life and increase longevity. Research dating back 40 years highlights that aerobic training can induce adaptations responsible for increasing stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped out of the heart per beat) (Source). This allows more oxygenated blood to be taken to your muscles whilst maintaining a lower heart rate. The oxygen in the blood is used during aerobic respiration, where glucose (carbohydrate) is converted to ATP (energy). This means the more oxygen you can get to the muscle to convert carbs to energy, the more energy you will have to perform exercise or daily tasks. Additionally, the more that this process occurs, the more calories are burnt. This is essential to increasing calorie expenditure and aids weight loss. 

So, what types of equipment can you buy to gain these crucial physiological adaptations from endurance training? 

• Treadmill
• Exercise Bike
• Rowing Machine
• Air bike
• Ski erg

The choice of which piece(s) of equipment you buy will vary on your individual needs. E.g., if you want a full body aerobic session, the rower, air bike and ski erg will hit lower and upper limb musculature. 

Check out our collection of Conditioning Equipment for you to add to your home gym. 

Flooring & Accessory Gym Equipment

You may notice that most commercial gyms have soft rubber flooring. Here at Exersci we believe this is also essential in your home gym. By having rubber tiles or mats you are providing a safer environment to train in. The rubber mats provide improved grip, to limit the risk of falling during functional exercise (e.g. weighted lunges). Additionally, having correct flooring will protect any weights that are dropped or knocked over and protect the floor that they fall on.

Also, what’s important is having a home gym that looks professional. This will increase your motivation to train. The correct flooring along with some decor, such as mirrors will do this for you!

Extra Additions for Serious Home Lifters

It’s important to know that creating your dream gym doesn’t have to happen overnight. When spread over time, purchasing gym equipment can be a relatively cost-effective process. For more information on the cost of home gyms, take a look at our blog post on 'Home Gym Vs Gym Membership: Which One Reigns Supreme?'

You will usually be told to invest in some form of cable machine to take your gym to the next level. Here at Exersci, we offer versatile pieces of equipment to hit cable movements and allow for compound barbell movements all in one. Our Exersci® EX2 Power Rack with Cable System allows you to perform a variety of exercises including, squats, bicep curls, triceps extensions, lat pull-down etc.

Conclusion

To recap, a home gym doesn’t need to be built overnight. You can build your gym progressively. We have discussed the pieces of equipment we believe are most important when starting to be a home lifter, such as dumbbells, barbells, squat racks, weighted vests, air bikes and rubber flooring. 

What’s most important is that the setup you decide to incorporate reflects your health and fitness goals. 

If you are keen on working out at home and creating your own home gym then head to our collection of home gym equipment. Here at Exersci we pride ourselves on our high-quality gym equipment and customer service, evidenced through our high-standard reviews. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and contact us.