Being able to work out at any time of the day with exclusive access to any equipment you need is the best part of having a home gym. Unfortunately, some people – in and outside of your own home – may not appreciate the sounds that come with working out. Training can be loud, whether its plates clanging on the ground, a treadmill reverberating on each step or the music you’re listening to. As a result, your home gym can quickly become a point of contention for you and those living around you.
Luckily, there are several solutions to contain the noise associated with your so that your home gym is essentially soundproof.
There are 3 main strategies to decrease the noise of your home gym:
- Utilize thick flooring to dampen vibrations
- Increase the density of your walls to absorb more sound
- Choose quieter equipment (i.e., bumper plates instead of metal plates)
Choosing Better Flooring to Decrease Noise and Vibration
Most of the sound created in your gym will come from the interaction between your equipment and the floor. Our own research into dropped barbells showed that they’re as loud as a nightclub or concert when they hit the ground.
Changing the thickness and material of your floor (or lifting platform) is the easiest way to dampen this noise and make your home gym quieter.
Increasing the absorptive properties of your floor/lifting surface could come in several ways:
- Putting rubber mats over concrete or bare floors
- Increasing the thickness of the rubber on your floors
- Adding a “sound dampening” specific floor
- Building a lifting-specific platform from wood and rubber
You may notice that these examples all end up with the same outcome: more material between your equipment and your base floor.
I’ve written extensively about the best home gym flooring, and how to have a home gym over carpet, but generally, increasing the thickness of your home gym floor does 3 main things:
- Dampens vibration and decreases sound
- Decreases impact forces on you and your equipment
- Increases the lifespan of your equipment
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Rubber Flooring for Your Home Gym
Rubber flooring in your home gym should be at least 8 mm (5/16”) thick. This thickness is typically used in commercial gyms where people don’t drop weights. An 8 mm thick rubber floor is sufficient to dampen the noise of a treadmill’s reverberation or the occasional dropped dumbbell.
If you are regularly Olympic lifting, powerlifting, or doing CrossFit style workouts then you should opt for 3/8” or 1/2″ thick rubber flooring. Dropping heavy barbells creates a lot of noise from the impact, plus creates vibration through the floor and foundation of the building you are lifting in. As a result, increased floor thickness is needed to dissipate the energy and vibration.
Sound Dampening and Shock Absorbing Gym Floors
You can also go a step beyond normal, thick rubber flooring by opting for noise dampening-specific flooring. Companies market these floors to home gym users and Olympic weightlifting gyms, specifically because of the noise and vibration associated with repeatedly dropping bar or lifting in an area that shares a foundation with another living/working area.
Eleiko’s noise dampening floor tile is extra thick, coming in at 30 mm or 1.18”. This means it has a huge thickness to absorb the kinetic energy of the weights being dropped, and the absorb the sound and vibration associated with the impact.
Very few companies have released a sound dampening-specific gym flooring option. I think this ultimately comes down to the cost vs. demand relationship. Most people don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to outfit their home gym with flooring.
An alternative to the Eleiko flooring is these 2.5 inch thick rubber tiles from Amazon. They’re the same size (2’x2’) as the Eleiko tiles, but twice as thick and about $10 less per tile. I have never actually seen these in person. Reddit threads suggest they’re a great noise cancelling option though.
A lot of people opt for crash mats to decrease their home gym sounds, like these from Rogue or from Rep Fitness. We performed an experiment and found that our crash mats decreased the noise of a dropped barbell by 26%. This was the equivalent of moving from a night club into a work office! Clearly crash mats work.
Crash mats are affordable options that are easy to move based on where you are lifting in your space. Crash mats are also easy to store and don’t take up much space, so they are the best option for most people.
Tip: The Rogue crash mats are about $40 more expensive than the Rep Fitness version. However, Rogue’s are an inch thicker, which means there’s more foam for absorbing the dropped weight. Plus, Rogue’s are 30″x24″ vs. Rep’s 29.5″x22.5″. The little bit of extra area is worth it when trying to control a missed Olympic lift. (Nothing is worse than a bar landing at the edge of a crash mat and bouncing back into your shins). I would invest the extra money and go with Rogue.
Lifting on a Dedicated Platform
A dedicated lifting platform one way to increase the shock and sound absorption of your main lifting area, without having to invest in more robust flooring for the rest of your home gym.
Lifting platforms are usually 6’ or 8’ deep and 8’ wide to accommodate powerlifting and/or Olympic lifting. The platforms are made of layers of stacked plywood with a top layer of rubber matting where bumper plates contact the platform.
This general technique of increasing layers underneath of you should sound familiar, as it is the main way to try to minimize the sounds associated with dropped weights.
One cool consideration that I have never seen be done before is building your lifting platform so that it accommodates your crash mats. This would require you to build the middle part of your platform (where you stand) so that it is flush with the top of your crash mats (about 6” off the ground). Then you would have your crash mats on either side of the middle part of the platform with a frame around them so that they don’t move.
I think this is a great solution for a couple of reasons.
First, one of the issues with dropping weights onto crash mats is that the mats are in front of you when you are lifting. Therefore, if you miss an Olympic lift behind you or have to bail mid-rep then you will miss the crash mat. If the mats are built into the platform, then you will always have them underneath the bar.
Secondly, dropping onto the crash mats would be a quieter alternative than to drop onto a regular platform’s sides.
Third, it is often annoying and time consuming to maintain the “dropper sides” of a platform. The plywood underneath the rubber topping often splinters and can even start to disintegrate after a lot of use. This turns into saw dust shooting out on each dropped rep. A crash mat should last significantly longer than plywood, and when the mats are eventually worn out then they can easily be switched. Plus, buying crash mats is probably a cheaper option than layers of plywood, especially with the price of wood these days.
Acoustic Panels on Walls and Doors
One often overlooked method of soundproofing your home gym is by using acoustic panels to trap the sound. These are commonly seen in recording studios and home theatres, but I haven’t seen much about them in the home gym world.
Although a lot of the noise associated with home gyms comes from vibrations moving through the subfloor, there is also noise from weights clanging together and music. All these sources add up to a noisy environment. Acoustic panelling helps to absorb the more traditional sound sources.
Acoustic panels, like these available from Amazon, are made of foams that trap sound waves as they hit them. This limits the sound waves’ opportunity to bounce off the wall and reverberate around the home gym. Thus, deadening the sounds that normally would bounce around the room and dramatically increase the volume of noise in the home gym.
Acoustic panelling is particularly important for home gyms because there usually aren’t highly absorptive materials spread around the space. Instead, home gyms are filled with metal equipment that is highly reflective, and typically have bare walls.
The consensus from soundproofing professionals is to cover about 20-30% of your wall space with acoustic panelling. However, starting with less coverage can still have a big impact on the noise escaping your home gym.
These panels from Amazon cover a 6’x4’ area of wall space (24 sq. ft.). Therefore, you could probably get away with 2 of these in your home gym.
Choosing Quieter Equipment
The clanging and banging of equipment is definitely the biggest contributor to your home gym’s noise.
It makes sense that we should consider quieter equipment to reduce the noise we make. There are three main areas to make improvements here: your weight plates, cardio options and sound system.
Bumper Plates
The rattle of metal plates on the ground for large deadlift sets can drive even the most hardcore gym user crazy. Your neighbours probably don’t love it either.
Easily the best equipment upgrade to decrease your home gym’s noise level is to switch to rubber bumper plates.
Bumper plates are designed to be dropped repeatedly. They make significantly less noise when hitting the ground (or each other) than metal plates. Bumper plates also help to protect your gym floor.
I cannot recommend them enough, even if they are generally more expensive than metal plates.
I always recommend that you buy bumper plates in large quantities to save on shipping or wait for a sale where shipping is free. Also, wait for a sale on the weights themselves. The major retailers will have a few sales each per year where you can easily save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
I personally have the Rogue Competition Bumpers and Rogue Echo Bumpers. The competition bumpers are probably more than what I need, but they are beautiful and so nice to lift with.
The Echo Bumpers are much more budget friendly and will certainly do the trick for even the strongest of us.
I’ve also heard really good things about the Synergee Competition Bumper Plates. Amstaff is also a big player it the Amazon fitness world and have a solid looking set of bumpers.
Cardio
I think that people underestimate the sound of cardio equipment.
As a kid, I used to absolutely dread the Saturday mornings that my dad decided to run on our treadmill at sunrise. Someone may as well have been hitting me in the head on every step he took. It was the worst way to be woken up.
Treadmills are notorious for the reverberation that comes with each step.
Even air bikes, like the Assault Bike, and Concept 2 rowers can be pretty loud once the fans get going.
I find that regular stationary bikes are a lot more noise friendly than air bikes, treadmills, and rowers. Direct-drive indoor bike trainers are also a great fit. I use a Wahoo Kickr direct-drive indoor trainer for my conditioning (when I’m not cycling outside).
A good old skipping rope can also be a great, nearly noise-free alternative to some louder cardio options.
Sound Systems
Improving your sound system to reduce your home gym’s noise may seem counterintuitive. Wouldn’t getting a better system make your gym louder? Not necessarily.
I think we’ve all had a friend with a bad sound system in their car. It’s muffled, has a ton of bass and you can’t even tell what song is on. A lot of us have a similar set up in our home gyms.
Most people, especially when starting out, will buy a cheap Bluetooth speaker for their home gym. This will not adequately fill the room. Or people will re-use a decades old subwoofer and speaker set that is overpowering for their gym.
In either case, the music playing doesn’t fit with the room. On one hand you must max out the small speaker to even hear the music. On the other, the speaker set will shake the room, even at low levels.
Instead, you should outfit your gym with a high caliber, appropriate sound system. This will allow you to listen at an appropriate volume without distortion, and without shaking your house.
I always recommend getting a couple of Sonos One Gen speakers from Amazon. (Hint: the non-voice controlled versions are way cheaper and can be found here).
I did an overview of how to pick your gym speakers based on room size and that can be found here.
The Wrap Up
Gyms are going to be loud at times. However, there are a ton of things you can do to have a quieter home gym.
I think starting from the ground up is the simplest, and most effective way to approach the problem. I would love to hear your thoughts on helping to make your gym more soundproof.
At the end of the day, you should remember to be considerate to your housemates and neighbours. Try to avoid lifting early in the morning or late at night. Don’t listen to obscene music and high levels and don’t drop your weights more than you need to.
Happy lifting!