With the craziness of the world we live in, having a home gym is a saving grace. Personally, I’ve worked out more in my home gym set up in the last three weeks than I had in the previous 3 months. But one of the biggest reasons people don’t build a home gym is money. Luckily, you can start a budget home gym for less than $400.
Although $400 seems like it is still a big investment (and no doubt it is a significant investment) it will reap rewards. The equipment you buy will be with you for years. And because of that you can slowly add and subtract gear.
Soon enough you’ll find yourself with a home gym set up better than what you would find at most commercial gyms. Though you won’t get all of the home gym essentials for $400, you can create a space where you can get a lot of work done.
If I had $400 to build a home gym, I would buy a set of adjustable dumbbells, a set of bands, gymnastic rings, a med ball, and a skipping rope.
As an aside, I put together a list of affordable, do it all barbells for your home gym that you may be interested in too.
Adjustable Dumbbells
My #1 priority when starting a home gym is having equipment that I can lift with. I’m biased toward strength training, rather than bodyweight, cardio or HIIT type workouts.
Getting adjustable dumbbells means that you can continue to progress your strength. There’s nothing worse than looking at your weight set up and realizing there just isn’t enough there to make your workout hard. Having adjustable dumbbells gives you the flexibility to continue to progress a number of different lifts for a long time.
Also, having adjustable dumbbells means that you can do all types of lifts. Want to do squats – yeah, you can do that. Lateral delt raises – check. Bent over rows – yup! Farmers carry – sure, why not.
Adjustable dumbbells are just so versatile that any gym on a budget should make them the number one priority.
Personally, I would pick the PowerBlock Sport 24lb adjustable dumbbells. PowerBlock is the premier manufacturer of adjustable dumbbells. In college, our varsity weight room had a couple of pairs of PowerBlocks and they withstood 10+ varsity teams using them multiple times a day.
Straight up, our PowerBlocks were beasts.
The 24lb set is about $160 depending on the time of the year (check on Amazon here). These dumbbells have the ability to adjust between 3lb and 24lb with 3lb increments. That means you can slowly progressively overload your lifts and make sure you’re hitting the right reps for your goals.
To have the equivalent available dumbbell options that these PowerBlock 24lb Adjustable Dumbbells supply would require you to buy 8 different sets of dumbbells. No doubt that would be much more expensive (and take up way more room) than the PowerBlocks
Bands and Tubing
Second up, I would recommend that budget home gyms have a good assortment of bands and tubing.
The more years of training I do, the more often I find myself reaching for bands in my workouts. Whether it be to assist an activation exercise in my warm-up, work a smaller muscle group or to stretch at the end of a workout, bands always seem to be there.
I love that bands have accommodating resistance – where resistance increases as the band is stretched more. This usually corresponds with parts of an exercise where the movement is easier (think the top 1/3 of a squat), but the increased resistance forces me to keep pushing.
I also like that bands or tubing can help target some areas that are hard to get to with traditional resistance. Glute work (even for the guys!) is completely changed with bands as resistance. I also tend to use bands and tubing for a lot of shoulder and core work.
If I were to suggest just one band kit, it would be this one from Amazon. I love that it comes with long tubing that can be used for things like squats, rows, or presses. The long tubing comes in 10lb increments between 10 and 50lbs of resistance. And with the handle set up for the long tubes, you can stack the tubing together to get a whole lot of resistance.
The package from Amazon also comes with mini bands, which are more typically used for more glute and hip strengthening or activation. But the fact the package comes with 5 long tubing bands and 5 mini-bands for about $67 is pretty damn impressive.
I also just bout a few bands from Bells of Steel. They make some really great quality products that are fabric rather than rubber, which I think is super cool. I just got a Purple Light Band and a Red Mini Band to test out – but so far so good!
Bells of Steel also has a sick Glute Loop that looks awesome and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Read More: Start a COVID 19 quarantine gym for $100
Gymnastic Rings
Next up on the list of budget home gym essentials is gymnastic rings. Five years ago, I would have never said this. But after using gymnastic rings for the past few years, I think they’re a huge part of upper (and lower) body strengthening and conditioning.
Rings are so much more versatile than a pull up bar. Not only can you do pull ups with rings (in all 3 hand positions), you can also do horizontal rowing, push ups, lower body work and a bunch of core.
Unfortunately, you do need somewhere to attach the rings too. This could be a tree branch outside or via a couple of hooks drilled into a ceiling.
They really offer a great opportunity to hit nearly all body parts – provided you’re a bit creative. And it is easy to find tricks and tips on how to better incorporate rings into your workouts. (I just search up TRX videos and adapt those to rings). Check out the video below for some great ideas
Plus, rings aren’t expensive (check these ones out on Amazon).
The price plus versatility makes gymnastic rings a no brainer to me.
Medicine Ball
Med balls are also a pretty versatile piece of equipment for a budget home gym. Medicine balls can be used simply as extra weight in things in like squats, but I like them for more explosive movements.
I think power-based movements are often overlooked in general training plans. But med balls can be a relatively cheap method to introduce some more power into your training.
You can be really creative with how you use med balls, as shown in the video below. I like them for throws specifically. The fact that you can produce power just through the upper body or transfer it from your lower body through the upper body is great.
To start in a home gym, I would get a 10 lb med ball. I think that is the perfect weight where explosive movements can be done fast, but there’s still some resistance. But the ball isn’t so heavy that you lose the “power” aspect of your exercises.
I would simply grab this medicine ball from Rogue. The price point on it is similar to what you would find elsewhere. It’s got good bounce and grip, and comes with a year warranty.
Med balls are fun and can provide a great training stimulus. Plus, they help people train more athletically, and we could all strive to be more athletic.
Skipping Rope
Finally, if you’re trying to spend less than $400 on your home gym the best piece of cardio equipment is a skipping rope.
A skipping rope brings a ton of options, whether you want to go hard for interval training or longer sessions. Plus, skipping is a huge part of functional fitness workouts. So, you can easily incorporate skipping into the rest of your workout. You don’t have to separate things.
For me, skipping also provides an interesting challenge. I’m pretty good at single unders but as I fatigue they get hard. So, I think skipping brings the challenge of controlling your positioning, breathing, and coordination in a fatigued state. And you don’t really get the same challenge doing something like indoor cycling.
If you get really good at skipping, you can always progress to double-unders – which is FAR outside my current skill set.
For a basic skipping rope, you could look at this middle-school type rope from Rogue.
This adjustable length rope available on Amazon would be the next step up .
And if you are trying to do CrossFit workouts with double-unders for speed, I would go for the budget-friendly SR–1 Bearing Speed Rope from Rogue.
The Wrap Up
Hopefully now you see that you can get a great home gym started for about $400. There’s no doubt in my mind that you could make huge fitness gains with just the above equipment.
However, I’ve also written about my favourite equipment for under $100 and how to start a home gym for under $100 if you’re looking for more budget options.
A home gym can be had at any budget level.
Happy lifting.