A full home gym for under £100

Having a home gym is one of the finer things in life. Everyone needs to work out even if they don’t want to, and for the gym enthusiast having a home gym can make all the difference when it comes to really pushing yourself that little bit further and really meeting your goals.

It’s fantastic when you have a gym membership, they have huge range of equipment that you can use to get yourself started and progress into even the best of bodybuilders or Olympic lifters, however gym memberships are not cheap any more they can cost a lot of money and sometimes it’s just not what you need.

What’s worse is the time it takes to get to the gym as well, if you are hard at the time in your life have a super busy social life or work is a big commute, then getting to the gym after work or before even can be extremely hard to do. This is where home gyms come into their element and can be the best alternative to gym membership.

Why home gyms are the new future!

There is absolutely no question about it working out at home with your own gym equipment can seriously bring a new level to your workout. Not only will you have absolutely no excuse to get to the gym but you also will be able to spend more time in their each session as well as more time each week.

So in theory having a home gym may actually help you progress further as long as you have the motivation to do so! One of the really good things about having a home gym is the pressure free element to it. Working out in a gym alongside a load of massive blokes and superfit people can really really put a dent in your confidence and make you feel you don’t want to go and work out when really that’s all you need to actually go and do. So so that’s why home gyms really are the best.

I think one of the main drawbacks of home gym over a gym membership is the initial cost that you need to put up when you are looking to start your own home gym. Gym machines are not cheap and it’s not at all an easy process especially when you are looking at buying a lot of weight plates and bars, but you don’t need to be fully stocked at the beginning to start working out from home.

Essential pieces of equipment we recommend!

So whilst it would be great to have a whole dumbbell rack, loads of weight plates, Olympic bars and a whole power rack you don’t need this to start off. There’s a lot you can do with a few smaller cost-effective pieces of home gym equipment that in some cases you don’t even need to spend any money on a tool or can be purchased easily to get you started.

So there’s five key pieces of equipment we would recommend that and not expensive that will get you started in the home gym.

1.

No gym is complete without some dumbbells. And this is a great value set that we actually have ourselves in our house. These are really good small set of dumbbells that actually aren’t that expensive at all, they are however not the heaviest dumbbell so if you are looking for big set of dumbbells then maybe this is in the right set for you.

That being said this is a great beginner dumbbell set because it has a few different weight ranges and most importantly they are extremely easy-to-use and they have a good outside coating on them which means that they don’t get dinghies alone and if you do drop them on the floor nothing much happens at all and nothing gets damaged. This is perfect if you’re working out in a front room or spare bedroom where you have an expensive floor that you don’t want to break.

So this is definitely a great beginner set, the range of exercises that you could do with it is basically limitless and is there a set that you definitely won’t outgrow even if you become the biggest bodybuilder in the world every now and then you do need small dumbbells and they come with a super cool little carrier so that they look neat and store easily much better than some of the more expensive models that you can find on Amazon.

1.1 Alternative Dumbell Set

Here we have an alternative to the first dumbbell set that we recommended this is for gym users that perhaps need something slightly heavier than what we recommended above. So if you are an experienced gym user needing a little bit more weight then this is definitely the set for you and comes highly recommended we have this ourselves and it is a great accompaniment to the set above because it allows you to work with much heavier weights.

One thing we loved about this dumbbell set is that whilst is easily adjustable and comes with a wide range of different weight plates, you can use these weight plates on any other dumbbells as well. Plus they’re fairly easy to find so you can always increase the amount weights that you have in the future. These dumbbells also have an adjustable extendable pipe which makes it much easier to make into one long bar, which is perfect as you essentially have two different bars from one set, which is epic because sometimes you do need to have different bars of different workouts. So we definitely recommend having this set in your home gym.

This set comes with 15 kg of weight, so even for a beginner or intermediate gym user this should give enough range to you any sort of exercise that you actually want. Similar to in the gym user adjustable weights so you don’t get stuck with just one dumbbell size.

Plus for the money currently at time of writing they are under 50 quid, this is seriously good value for money. I doubt you’ll find a better weight set for your home gym for less than 50 quid. Plus being purchased from Amazon, delivery is ridiculously quick and we actually had ours next day. 

2. Resistance bands!

Resistance bands are key and integral to any home gym without a doubt. Resistance bands can be used for almost any exercise or any type of gym equipment that you will have used in your previous commercial gym. 

These resistance bands are something that we only recently got actually and wished we had from the beginning of our home gym journey. These resistance bands are epic because whilst they have foam handles and feel like you’re using a piece of equipment, they can easily be adjusted to different resistances and weights. 

They are all colour-coded so it’s really easy to add on extra weight when you are doing different exercises and need more resistance or less. This set also comes with a door anchor so you don’t need anything in particular when using this set to be able to just get on and get going. For under £20, this is one of the best things that you can buy for your gym. 

It doesn’t matter what exercise you are doing, or what your favour machine in the gym is, there is a very high possibility that you can replicate it with these resistance bands. One of my favourite exercises to do with these resistance bands is actually chest flys, which is something I assumed I would never be able to do again outside of a commercial gym, however these make it completely possible and actually feel better than some of the Smith’s machines.

Whilst these are really cheap as well, we have used these extensively over the past couple of months and have no questions over the quality of these until. If you check out the link above you can see the Amazon reviews which is how we came to buy these in the first place. There are over 600 positive reviews and these are absolutely awesome resistance bands. Comparable to the TRX system however TRX whilst is fantastic just as an affordable for a home gym starting out.

3. Kettlebells!

Kettle bells are essential to your home gym. They are such a versatile versatile piece of equipment for almost any exercise that you can dream up. So they have pride of place in our home gym. They come in a range of different weights and sizes, but to start with we recommend something you are comfortable with holding, it’s better go small rather than too heavy if you think that you are gonna use a cowbell lot in your workouts.

Kettle bells are also great because they don’t take up much space but you can also do a huge amount of workouts with them. From kettle bell swings, shoulder shrugs, arm curls and then straight into some of the more Olympic lifts, you can utilise account of out into almost any of these workouts. Some of my favourite exercises to actually do are Turkish getups and these were basically invented to be used with a kettle bell.

So these are perfect for any sort of strength training workouts and when you really Wanna just switch it up and get moving on something new, we always recommend grabbing a kettle bell. There are no end to the amount of workouts that you can do with these.

The set above comes in a range of different weight sizes as well.

4. Gym mats

No home gym is complete without the correct flooring. When you’re working out your often on the floor an awful lot of the time, and there is nothing worse than working out on a cold hard floor, it hinders your progress and stops you from working out the way that you should.

So that’s why these gym mats come into play. They are seriously awesome, they interlock, so they form a huge area to the space that you actually need as well as providing a goods amounts of protection to the ground below.

These are perfect if you, like me, end up throwing your weights on the ground after you have finished a set. This make sure that you don’t damage the ground and don’t damage the weights. Perfect as well if you actually lose control of the weights making sure that you don’t damage anything, so these really offer safety as well as functional.

Plus over anything else they look really really cool and completely finish off your home gym space! Let’s be honest everyone wants to make their home gym look good for the gram!!

Working out what you need in your home gym

So hopefully the list of equipment that we have given you above should give you a bit of an indicator as to where we think you should start when creating your home gym. But really is about working out what you need from your home gym and the kind of workouts that you undertake will essentially dictate what equipment you need.

Hopefully the advice that we are giving you above should give you some indication that it doesn’t cost a lot of money to fit out home gym and is much much much cheaper than a gym membership.

The home gym revolution is one that is definitely on the rise and can be transformative to your life, the extra time that you will save not travelling to the gym will make all the difference to your life and your workouts (and also your bank balance!!!). Gym memberships are not cheap at all and just by fronting up a couple of months gym membership to start your home gym will make all the difference. One thing that we did when we started our home gym was we put in a good bit of money to get some equipment start with, but then we also use the same amount of money that we would have been spending on gym memberships every month to buy a couple of new pieces of equipment or to save up and buy something big!

Since doing this we have increased the amount of equipment we have so so much and we now have a power rack, tons of weight plates and so many different piece of equipment that were never bored with our home workouts.

So what are you waiting for get started now!!