Start with Wall Shelves and Turn Your Garage into a Gym

If you’re tired of lugging your gym clothes and shoes around in a duffel bag, paying high membership fees, and having to wait to use the machines, a public gym may not be right for you. However, if you’re into physical fitness, you may have thought about turning your garage into your own private gym. If you are serious about it, you can do it! Starting with wall shelves, you can turn your garage into a gym.   Wall Shelves Work To keep your workout space organized, start with wall shelves. This way you can keep smaller equipment together and always know it’s within arm’s reach. Garage wall shelves are constructed of heavy gauge steel for strength and durability. Shelves often come two to a pack with a hardware kit included. Most are easily installed with one or two people. You can attach wall shelves to wall studs or solid concrete walls. It’s easy to get a custom fit for your garage space with several sizes: 1’x4′; 1’x6′; 2’x4′; 2’x6′. You can go all out if you want and get a motorized shelf to keep your smaller equipment up and bring it down when you are ready to work out.   Rack ‘Em Up If you use dumbbells, you’ll need a rack along the bottom of a wall so they won’t be lying on the floor for you or anyone else to trip over. On the other hand, if you have a weight machine, it will take up a lot of floor space so you could probably get by with just a few free weights. For bars and grips, mount a rack on the wall to hang these, too so they’ll be up and out of your way. When you have your equipment organized, you can find everything you need, when you need it; thereby saving yourself precious workout time. Check out the organizational skills on this garage gym!   Floor Space Concrete flooring is quite unforgiving, so you definitely want to add thick rubber matting to create cushioning  for your joints and a non-slip surface. There are several types of mats, but to customize your space, use the ones that are like interlocking puzzle pieces. That way, if you ever want to change the garage space, the pieces will be easy to rearrange. In addition, because rubber flooring can be quite heavy, interlocking tiles are easy to place for a DIY garage gym. If you don’t want to cover the entire floor at least put the pieces under your equipment. When it comes to equipment and floor space, less is more. No need to overstock your new garage gym right away. You need room to move around. If you feel cramped in the space it can be a bit stressful. Ensure there’s plenty of space to walk between the equipment as well as some open space for working out when not using the machines.   Equipment The equipment needed will be different for each person. The best determining factor will be the amount of floor space in your garage. So measure the garage space that will be used for your gym and then you can decide if you need to add additional equipment. Following are a few thoughts to help you get started:

• Free Weights or Weight Machine
• Full Length Wall Mirror – to check your form while lifting
• Stationary Bicycle
• Treadmill
• Elliptical
• Step

  Take Your Temperature If you want to feel the heat in the winter and a cool breeze in the summer, and you have the budget, you can install heating and air-conditioning. But before you do be sure to add insulation to make it more energy efficient. You could be okay in the winter since once you warm up and start lifting or spinning, you’ll feel fine, hot even. But high summer temperatures and humidity can give you heat stroke if you’re not careful. Invest in air conditioning, even if it’s a small unit. Temperature control is up to you of course. Your needs will depend on the climate where you live. Box fans and space heaters can be a hazard, so choose wisely.   Let There be Light Your psyche may benefit from new lighting for your garage gym, especially helpful during the winter months. Get lighting that provides a brightness similar to the outdoors. That way during those long, dark winter nights you can still dream of spring, especially if you tend to have seasonal affective disorder.   Music to Your Ears Music is motivating. Even if you don’t really feel like you want to work out, put the ear buds in, crank up the volume, and imagine yourself in beast mode taking over the world. When it comes to music in your garage gym, if you’re moving about too much for the ear buds, a Bluetooth speaker can do the job, especially for a smaller space. If you want “surround sound” think about placing speakers around the gym. Keep in mind that if you’re working out with the garage doors open, your neighbors may not appreciate your music as much as you do so keep the volume manageable.   Maintenance Keep your equipment in pristine shape by wiping it down regularly and disinfecting it, too. For equipment with moving parts, oil them regularly to keep everything moving smoothly. Finally, as a safety check, inspect all equipment for signs of wear and tear. Do not use any equipment that needs to be replaced.   Conclusion Having your own space to work out with your own equipment is no doubt the best reason for setting up your garage gym. Start with an organizational plan that begins with wall shelves to neatly and safely store the equipment you have now. Later, you can buy additional items. Okay, let’s get to work!