The Home Gym; Weights and Bars

Next up we have arguably the most important part of my home gym: the heavy stuff!

First, we have the Olympic weights set. I purchased the bar and most of the weights very cheaply from some guy off of Craigslist a few years back. I bought some additional 45 pound plates from Play It Again Sports to round out the set.

The barbell is a cheap/basic CAP barbell, and most of the plates are CAP as well. I suspect that this was one of those entry level 300 pound package deals. A handful of the 10 pounders are “Sports Authority” brand, which I believe are from Dick’s Sporting Goods.

The bar is pretty “meh”. The knurling on the barbell is too tame for my taste and the chrome finish tends to chip off. Eventually, I intend to upgrade to a Rogue Ohio Power Bar.

The plates work. Due to the fact that there are a few different brands, the 45s don’t stack together on the bar as tightly as I would like, but it’s a minor complaint. I don’t see myself upgrading/swapping out plates anytime in the foreseeable future. I also don’t see the point in buying new plates in general. In my opinion, the second hand market is the best option here. If I were to buy different plates someday I would aim to buy a complete matching set. At this point I also don’t have a need for bumper plates since I’m not doing any lifts where I need to drop the weight.

And now we have these lovely gems:

What we have here is a pair of PowerBlock Pro EXP dumbbells. As far as adjustable dumbbells go, it doesn’t get any better than this (in my humble opinion). I purchased these with the first expansion pack so this set is adjustable up to 70 pounds. You can get an additional expansion pack to take these bad boys up to 90 pounds, but the 70 pound set is sufficient for little ole’ me. I may upgrade to the 90’s at some point for things like farmer’s carries or heavy rows (if I’m feeling ambitious), but it’s not a high priority.

The Pro EXP series is urethane coated which means you don’t hear the plates clanking around as you lift them. I haven’t used the regular un-coated Powerblocks so I can’t say whether or not this would bother me.

My only complaint is that due to the shape/design of these, you can’t effectively do goblet squats, which is a bummer because this is an exercise I really enjoy. The closest thing I’ve been able to come up with is landmine squats, but they don’t feel quite the same and the setup takes longer. I’m considering buying an Olympic dumbbell handle to use with my Olympic plates so I can do goblet squats again. It would be a relatively small investment, wouldn’t take up much space, and wouldn’t require me to buy any additional plates.

Other than the goblet squat limitation, I love these things and I plan on having them for a very long time. I used to have several dumbbell handles with the spin-lock collars and a ton of standard weight plates, which honestly worked just fine, but they did take up a lot more space and couldn’t be adjusted as quickly. With the PowerBlocks, I can change the weight super fast, which is great, especially for drop sets or shorter rest intervals.

Sticking with the theme of heavy objects, next up is my Rogue 24kg Kettlebell:

Ok It’s time for a little story. For a hot minute I thought I was going to pursue Kettlebell sport, and had purchased several competition style kettlebells from Kettlebell Kings. In case you’re wondering, competition style kettlebells are all the same size regardless of the weight, and the handles are wider and flatter, allowing you to more easily slip your hand through the handle on movements such as snatches and cleans. Both are important features when it comes to kettlebell sport. While Kettlebell sport is fun and fascinating, after experimenting for a while, I realized that I’m more interested in strength and aesthetics. Kettlebell sport is more about technique and endurance, so training for kettlebell sport wasn’t the right fit for my specific goals. Due to this change in interests and the fact that they took up quite a bit of space, I decided it was time to let the competition bells go and switch to something that better suited my needs.

I still enjoy kettlebells, especially for things like swings, cleans, snatches, and overhead press. Lately I’ve been pretty much only using my Rogue bell for swings, which is one of my favorite movements. In fact, I love swings so much that I would keep a kettlebell around for that reason alone!

This being said, I would like to have a few additional matching pairs of kettlebells to allow for greater exercise variety. After doing a bunch of research, It seems like adjustable kettlebells may be the way to go. There are a bunch of different adjustable kettlebells on the market, but up until recently, all of the models I’ve seen have either looked really cumbersome and awkwardly shaped, or were too lightweight for my needs. Early this week I discovered the Rep Fitness Adjustable Kettlebell. It looks like it would feel like a regular kettlebell and seems well built. I would eventually like a pair of the 24kg version that can be adjusted between 16, 18, 20, 22, and 24kg. At $169 a pop, it’s a fraction of what you would pay if you were to buy individual kettlebells.

But for now, I’ll keep on swingin’ my Rogue 24kg!

Last up, we have a recent addition to home gym: The CAP Olympic Hex Bar

I love hex bar deadlifts, but I am not diggin’ this bar. I suspect that I got a lemon as the bar seems to be slightly torqued and the handles look a little crooked. I’ve noticed that I have a harder time feeling balanced using this bar compared to other hex bars I’ve used.

This was one of the cheaper hex bars on the market, but for something as basic as a hex bar I didn’t think it would make a noticeable difference. I also had a hard time justifying spending a considerable amount of money on a specialty bar. I may consider contacting the seller to see if I can get some sort of refund. It’s a stretch especially considering I’ve used it multiple times, but It’s worth a shot.

This being said, I’m still getting some good use out of this bar. I will be posting a video in my training log where I put this thing to use.

Well that wraps it up for the heavy stuff! In future posts I’ll show you my janky bench and rack and also will have another post dedicated to various accessories.

See you soon!

2020-05-23 Training Log: Hex bar Deadlift 355×8

2020-05-23 Hex Bar Deadlift – 355×8

Well, It’s nothing to write home about but this felt infinitely better than it did last week. I noticed that the left side of the bar is lower than the right as I’m lifting. I don’t know if the issue is with me, the floor, or the bar. I will say that the bar seems to be defective. It appears to be slightly torqued and the handles are a bit crooked. I feel much less balanced using this bar compared to other hex bars I’ve used.

This being side, I do tend to favor one leg, so this could be what’s going on. To add to the complexity of the situation, the floor of our apartment is far from perfectly flat. At any rate, I was happy with pulling 355×8 today and I look forward to some heavy singles next week!

Tour of my home gym

Yep. I’m one of the lucky ones that happened to have a decent home gym setup pre-quarantine. This is due in part to the fact that I’m a homebody, and sometimes I just don’t have it in me to be in public making my “oh my god I think I’m gonna die” face.

Setting up a home gym in a tiny bedroom of an upstairs apartment with low ceilings proved to be an interesting challenge, but I’ve found ways to make it work. Well… mostly work. Despite these somewhat limiting surroundings I’ve been able to squat, bench, deadlift and perform probably about 80% of the exercises I would typically do in the gym. That being said, a lot of the exercises I do in the gym I do because I can do them; not because they are “better” exercises. Sure, there are a few that would be nice to do at home (leg extensions come to mind), but I have all the necessary equipment to get in a great workout with sufficient variety.

Over the next several posts, I’ll outline what I have in my home gym, why I have it, what I like about it, what I don’t like about it, why I bought it, and any other random tidbits that come to mind. I hope that this helps spark some ideas for how to make things work in your own space.

Today I’ll focus on what happens outside of the official lair. This is the overflow, or “pre-gym” space if you will.

The Deadlift “Platform“

In case you didn’t already know, deadlifting on carpet sucks. Having something squishy under your feet doesn’t really lend itself well to pulling heavy weights off the floor.

I bought a case of these interlocking gym floor squares off of Amazon a while back and they work in a pinch. They effectively accomplish two goals:

1) Preventing damage to the floor (and hopefully helping me keep my security deposit) and

2) Keeping the downstairs neighbors from filing a noise complaint.

I like that they are cheap and allow me to deadlift on hardwood floors. What I don’t like is that the “interlocking” feature isn’t perfect and the squares sometimes tend to pull apart. This could probably be solved by adding a little duct tape on the bottom. Since I’m in a rental space and plan to move to a house in a year or so, I didn’t feel it was wise to invest in more expensive gym flooring.

The Saving Grace… Skylights!

Standing overhead press is a “must do” movement for me. Given the low ceilings in our apartment, standing barbell overhead presses are out. The skylights allow me to at least press dumbbells over my head, which is better than nothing. Because the standing barbell press is such an important movement to me, the low ceilings have proven to be the biggest limitation of the space. On top of that, the configuration of my current bench and rack don’t allow for seated military barbell presses either. On the bright side, if it weren’t for these sky lights I wouldn’t be able to do any form of standing over head press. Crisis averted!

The “Clutch”

What can I say? It’s a pull up bar.

As I’m sure scores of calisthenics athletes would agree, if I had no other piece of equipment besides a pull up bar, I could probably get by just fine.

So why this pull up bar? Here again, there were a few limitations of the space that I needed to work around. The low ceilings didn’t allow for a hanging door frame pull-up bar, and because it’s a rental unit I didn’t want to drill into the door frame or the ceiling.

I was initially very dubious of buying a pull-up bar that relies solely on tension to keep the bar in place, but after installing it I’ve got to say…this thing isn’t going anywhere. It’s a pretty ingenious design that pushes harder into the door frame as you pull down. Apparently, this bar is rated to hold 400 lbs. Having felt how solid this thing feels, I believe it. I don’t plan on testing it but I also don’t foresee myself doing pull ups with over 200 lb. hanging between my legs in my lifetime (and hopefully not gaining a couple hundred pounds either!)

What do I like about it? Mostly, the fact that it allows me to do pull ups. It also allows me to attach resistance bands and my Spuc Inc Econo Lat Pulley system. This greatly increased my exercise options, which is another reason why this piece is so critical.

What I don’t like is that due to my door frame being narrow I can’t comfortably use a wider grip. You can see in the photo that there are two adjustable fabric/foam pieces for gripping the bar, but they don’t fit outside the brackets. I usually grip the bar outside the brackets on top of the black plastic part that wedges against the door frame. The problem is that there isn’t enough space for me to comfortably grab the bar so the brackets tend to dig in to my hands a bit. The bar does extend out to accommodate wider door frames, so it’s not’s really a limitation of the bar itself.

Well that’s about it for what happens outside of my official workout space. I’ve been very intentional about keeping my workout gear out of the main living area to reduce visual clutter. Most of my exercises can be in the confines of my roughly 8’x10′ bedroom and all of the gear itself is contained within.

In my next post I’ll dive into into the depths and show you where the real work gets done. (Ok I think I’ve been watching too much National Geographic…)

Until next time, stay safe, happy, and healthy!