How to set up a home gym in a garage

Setting up your home gym in the garage

While your garage is a more industrial space than your bedroom and has a concrete floor instead of plush carpeting, at least you can find some privacy away from your family members (and not fall asleep)! 

You also don’t have to worry about damaging your hardwood floors or rugs if you are lifting weights in the gym. There is some equipment though that we suggest outfitting your new garage gym space with and weights are a great place to start — take a look at adjustable dumbbells so you can build your perfect routine and start small while slowly building up the weight.

Equipment you need for a garage gym

Back to those floors… Get a workout mat so you’re comfortable when exercising and to protect your weights when placing them down, especially if you drop your weights after intense exercises. We suggest a larger fitness mat, which is a bit more robust, longer, and thicker than a yoga mat. 

Another cool piece of equipment for your garage home gym is a set of resistance bands. Perfect for adding intensity to your regular stretches or engaging different muscles when performing weight lifting exercises, resistance bands don’t take up any space in your home gym! 

We are also fond of a workout bench and a workout mirror for your garage fitness routine. A bench is so versatile for a myriad of exercises from bench press to tricep dips and leg raises. A workout mirror helps keep you in check so you can see if you have the right form and technique. It’s always the worst to learn a bad technique and then have to unlearn it!

Garage gym exercises to do at home

Let’s make use of that garage gym equipment you got from above! There are a lot of cool exercises you can do with resistance bands, such as fire hydrants and donkey kicks for the glutes, lateral pulldowns for the upper back, and side plank leg lifts to get that core going. 

With your adjustable dumbbells, you can do anything from bicep curls to explosive rotation exercises, lunges, and squats, focusing either on one muscle group at a time or on a functional training program.