In our modern world, it can be hard to stay on top of your health. Especially during times like a flu outbreak or bad weather, when the gym you might use to go work out in can be closed for good. Unless you’re skilled in body weight exercises or have a home gym in the garage, you can very quickly slip back into bad habits with a loss of muscle mass while adding fat. Whether you like it or not, there’s no debating that exercise is a key component of living a healthy life.
If you have been shut out from working out in the past and own your own home, you should consider building a home gym in the garage. It may just turn out to be one of those things that drastically changes your life for the better. The data on various other home renovations seems to support this, with almost one-third of people who renovate their kitchen saying that it impacted their lifestyle in a healthy way. The same can probably be said about a home gym, music studio, or game room.
When you dwell on it for a little while, it just makes sense. In the same way that having a luxurious television and gaming system will make it more likely that you’re a couch potato, having a home gym in the garage simply makes it easier to choose working out over other activities. If getting healthier and stronger is something that you’ve been meaning to improve in your life, than you owe it to yourself to investigate the possibilities of building your own gym.
In this article we’ll discuss how to properly prepare a home gym in the garage, including what things to look out for. This will vary based on your personal space, but can include looking for mold and pests, redoing the surrounding asphalt/floor, installing amazing speakers, and much more. Come along for an intellectual ride with us in trying to make sure that you craft the perfect space to pump iron and get buff in. The greatest part is that you’ll still be at home when you’re done!
Take a Look at the Surrounding Area
When you’re planning your home gym in the garage, make sure to take a look at the surrounding areas inside and outside your home in preparation. If your driveway leading up to your garage is old and torn up, you may consider calling an asphalt contractor so that it doesn’t become an issue in the future with destroying your home gym. In a similar vein, your indoor floors, kitchen space or basement might be intersecting with what you’re planning to do in your garage and should be looked at for potential issues.
Your garage may seem like an isolated area of your house, but it is still a connected and holistic part of the whole. The last thing you want to do is attempt to work on it and encounter other issues that make you stop and get frustrated. You want to focus on workout machines and making a comfortable environment, not whether some electrical line or flooring joint is in the way, and gauging your surroundings is part of this process. As you begin to refinish your garage and empty it out, rely on local recycling companies to pick up your debris in order to streamline the process.
Your Garage Door Is Essential
When constructing your home gym in the garage, it should be obvious that your garage door is an essential part of that. While you probably don’t have to spring for commercial garage doors to replace your current ones, it is worth noting that they should be inspected before you start construction or organization. You should also decide whether you intend to ever use your garage as a vehicle/storage space ever again so that you know whether to install new garage door hardware, or have someone seal it shut for maximum comfort.
If you plan on using your garage as a vehicle storage space in the future, you’ll probably want to plan against sealing it up. But then it also makes sense to replace the garage hardware with the latest technology in order to “future proof” it against upgrades in the future that make your garage sub-par. A quality garage contractor will be able to answer all your questions while still fitting within your budget.
Make Sure Your Garage Is a Critter-Free Zone
When you’re building a home gym in the garage, it should seem obvious that you and your invited guests want to be the only ones present in a clean space. And by that, we mean that there are no unwanted critters or insects that would warrant a pest control call in exasperation. But if you’ve never checked the space for such critters, it truly is hard to know. If you live in a cold weather area, mice and rats may seek out your garage for refuge from the elements while ignoring the fact that your gym is not stocked with cheese.
A quality pest control company will be able to evaluate your needs while enabling you prevent against unknowns. This means not only sealing up entryways where things can get in, but also spraying deterrents so that insects and pest will not gravitate toward an area. They are also adept at being able to install low-cost traps and other mechanisms with which to discourage pests from making your home gym in the garage a hang out space.
In terms of making your space a clean one, it would also be worthwhile to contact any number of mold remediation services and indoor health experts to make sure that you’re not unknowingly ingesting harmful pathogens. Black mold, mushroom spores, dust and other debris are sometimes not able to be filtered out with an HVAC system or other filtration mechanisms and need to be detected by an expert.
Don’t Neglect Plumbing
It might seem odd to think about, but when you’re thinking about constructing a home gym in the garage you shouldn’t neglect plumbing. Even if you’re not planning on building a separate gym bathroom or sink, the act of constructing your home gym may disrupt other utility areas going into your house such as sewer, water, and electrical. Depending on how you end up laying or ripping up your floor, walls, or garage door you may run into a whole host of issues. At the end of the day, nobody wants to have a team of emergency plumbers show up at their house to stop a leak or hand them a large bill, so it’s best to guard against these things.
Plumbing can be useful though, in so much that you can consult expert plumbers about how to construct and add truly helpful elements to your home gym in the garage such as a filtered water station. Instead of having to drag yourself inside the house every so often in order to get water from the fridge or tap, you can have one of those fancy water stations installed right in your very own gym in which to drink from. The price will range depending on how complex the system is, what type of filters are used, and how old your home is, but if you budget for it you will be able to swing a very nice upgrade.
Last, but not least, plumbers may also be able to provide you with quality spaces like another shower or sauna in your home gym. Depending on how much space you have and how much you’re willing to spend, you may want to complete your home gym in the garage with a relatively cheap shower in which to hose yourself off after a particularly brutal section, or a nice sauna in which to recover after a tortuous day at work or with the dumbbells. These may seem like complicated endeavors to the layman, but to an experienced plumber they should be no big deal.
Keep Air Circulating
It’s important to have a healthy amount of air circulating within a home gym in the garage, especially if you have to keep your door closed. Whether it’s winter and you’re trying to keep the cold out, or you simply want privacy from the neighbor’s prying eyes, you’re going to want to consult with an air conditioning services company to try and find out the best solution for you. Not only do you want to try and keep the temperature stable in your home gym, but you also want to make sure that if your garage is prone to mold, dust, or other debris that you’re filtering that out of the air before you breathe it in.
Deep breaths and shallow, fast breathing are all a part of various workout routines. Especially if you get going at a rapid pace in your home gym in the garage, you’ll want to make sure that the air you’re breathing is as pure as possible and filtered out by some sort of quality HVAC system. If you live in a relatively dry area, you might also want to focus on getting a humidifier installed so that your workout space doesn’t leave you dry and heaving for water prematurely. If you live in a humid environment, you might want the opposite so that your equipment or space isn’t a haven for mold and other water-loving organisms.
Create an Audio Space Worth Pumping Iron In
If you’ve secured all the necessary workout equipment for your home gym in the garage, then you’re probably ready to spend a bit of money on extra frills that make it more comfortable. Your wood floors are beautiful and it’s important to protect them with wrestling mats or some other grip surface. Having large speakers in which to blast music, listen to podcasts, or jam to the radio can make a workout infinitely more enjoyable and really recreate that “gym” experience that people pay for.
When you’re installing nice speakers and trying to get the perfect audio setup in your home gym in the garage, you’ll want to consult a contractor or company that is experienced with the home audio solution you desire. All sorts of factors go into trying to find the best setup and technology, and the physical makeup of your garage will help decide what you can use and what’s simply a waste of money. You may have to install acoustic padding or finish the walls in your garage for maximum sound quality, both questions you should ask about.
The benefits of working out to music have been studied and seem to be generally positive. In fact, scientists and bodybuilders alike have noted how music can distract the mind and body away from the particularly stressful exercises that one might sometimes have to engage in to get a full-body workout. This may enable you to work out longer, harder, or achieve previously impossible fitness goals while jamming to your favorite tunes. In a similar vein, listening to audio books or podcasts can be a great way to jam information into an otherwise dull workout routine that leaves you stuck in your own head. Not only are you getting healthy by exercising, but you might be able to learn something on top of it.
Rest, Relax, and Recuperate
If you’ve managed to heed all these tips about how to craft the perfect home gym in the garage, you might be tired before you even hit the dumbbells. That’s OK, you’ve earned a little bit of relaxation time. In fact, relaxing and recuperating is an essential part of working out so that your muscles can have adequate time to build themselves back up. Work out too long without a break and you’ll be putting yourself on the road to seeing your family physician for exhaustion or other issues. Find out the correction nutritional supplements (whole foods or otherwise) for you to ingest after working out and enjoy the break. You’ve earned it!
In trying to craft the perfect home gym in the garage, you may have also forgotten that your garage is still technically a garage. You may view it as a workout space, but the local recycling company doesn’t know that if their receptacle is still outside waiting to be picked up on recycling days. Try not to forget that contractors, traveling salesman, and garbage men are still going to view this area as a garage, so you should continue to put things in their place and lock it up tight so that no one bothers it. It’s not being paranoid, it’s simply an organizational tip.
Our last tip on how to enjoy your home gym in the garage is to invite over other people with which to share the space. You don’t have to teach yoga classes or become the next weightlifting champion, but there is something about sharing a healthy space that brings out the best in people. You’ll want to make sure that anyone you invite over has proper knowledge of how to work out safely and use any machines you have, but other than that you can both work out at your leisure or follow similar routines. Perhaps you can even charge people in the neighborhood or friends for the privilege.
