What's up, good people of the internet, it's Josh here from Top Form Fitness and once again it's time to do it with you. Today I want to talk about how to set up your own home gym, because let's face it, home gyms are just awesome. Some of the obvious benefits of having a home gym include saving yourself a hell of a lot of time, saving yourself money, you don't have a gym membership fees, all the travel expenses, parking, etc. Less travel time, which I just mentioned. Obviously that makes it extremely convenient, which reduces the excuses you can make for not getting your workout in. You can choose whatever kind of music you want to listen to, like... And some people like to blast that in a gym instead of being forced to listen to it on your iPod. So that's obviously a benefit. And you can have whatever toys you want to have in your gym, so all accessories, chains, bands, all sorts of different gadgets, you have stuff you pick up off the side of the road. You can throw it in your home gym, as there for you, it doesn't matter how it looks, it's yours. Obviously you can decorate it with whatever pictures you want, bodybuilding pictures, scantily clad bikini models, whatever you like. So what are some of the basic pieces of equipment that you need to start your own home gym? Let me take you on a tour of my dungeon. Welcome to the barbarian stronghold. First let me take you on a tour of the gym and talk about what I would recommend if you're just starting out with a basic home gym for beginners. This is the sort of equipment that I use when my main concern was space and cost. So this is what I recommend. First of all, just a basic format for doing your floor exercises, a stability ball. Now believe it or not, there are some good exercise you can do with stability ball if you're just starting out. Suspension straps, so some sort of exercise suspension straps. This is a pretty cool piece of equipment called the USA. But you can also just use any straps that, like I've got these at Home Depot, car straps, or like the jungle gym, the TRX, any of those, almost something to that as well. Next, you need some bodyweight training accessories so that you can get the most out of your bodyweight workouts. Because when you're first starting out, you're going to be using mostly bodyweight exercises and bands. So you need a chin up bar. Obviously I have one on my rack, but when you're first starting out, when I first starting it out, I just use one of those door mounted chin up bars. And I'll also post a link to that here as well. And it's starting to do dips on. Now I really like these because they take up very little space, they attach on to my rack, but you can get the stand-alone dip stands as well. Or you can get a chin dip station. So they have these units that have the chin up bar and dip bars all in the same unit. They take up very little space and you can usually get them used on like Craigslist or Kijiji for very little money. In addition to that, bands are a great form of resistance that take up very little space and cost very little money. So I've got a bunch of powerlifting bands here. And then even these very basic bands with the handles on bands that come in different tensions are excellent if you're first starting out as well. So that would be my basics for starting out. And then I would progress up to using three weights for resistance. So the first thing I would get if you're starting out at a home gym and you want to get into three weight is a 300 pound barbell set. Now these are pretty inexpensive even if you buy them new, but you can usually find them used as well. So getting some plates. Now I just have these upgraded to rubberized ones, but I started with some used metal plates that were all rusted and I just cleaned them up, and got them very inexpensively. And a good solid Olympic bar. So a 300 pound Olympic weightlifting set would be where I started. Once you get your 300 pound weight set and I go get an adjustable bench. And again you can use them to find these used if you check on Kijiji or Craigslist. Now if you want to get into this loss, you're going to have to have some sort of rack. Now the power cage would be your best investment if you have this space for and the money. And you can again get these used or new. But if you're just starting out and what I used when I first started out with this, the independent squat stands. So they're just like two separate stands that are adjustable. You can put the bar on and tree and see them all close to picture of that as well. Okay now you can see over here dumbbells. So you know these aren't a necessity, but they're really nice to have. A barbell will work fine. But as you can see I have a Olympic adjustable dumbbells. I have the standard adjustable dumbbells and some preset dumbbells as well. You could get a whole rack of preset dumbbells, but that takes up a lot of space and is pretty expensive. Now my pride and joy of my home gym is the glute ham machine. So the glute hamstring developer. Not an necessity, but if you have the money and the space for it, I would definitely recommend it. Okay the final level of investment, if you want to get into it and you don't want to have a lot of free weights around, would be a functional trainer or a cable pulling machine. Personally I didn't see any for that. Some people prefer to have it just a cable machine in the corner. It is pretty versatile. You can do a lot of exercises on it. I opted for a cable holding attachment on the back of my rack. So if you can see here I have an adjustable stack. Those up to 200 pounds. You can add weight onto that as well. And that's a great accessory. Definitely not necessary, but it does increase the number of exercises you can do. So it's a little bit more versatile. As far as cardio goes, I mean I do have a stationary bike here. But in my opinion, really not necessary. You can do body weight exercises for cardio such as burpees and jumping jacks and mountain climbers, except you can go for a run. You can go for a real bike ride outside if the weather permits. So you know a lot of people start their home gym with like a treadmill or a bike. I would make that your last option in a home gym investment. And then you have all the gadgets and accessories as well. So you can have like an ab wheel, my power wheel here. I find that comes really handy for core training and I have all sorts of accessories, bells, wraps, straps. All sorts of gadgets. I got my moon boots over here. Now as you can see over here, I have a number of different bars. The Olympic bars, hex bar, easy curl bar, and a number of different attachments from my rack. Those are optional. Once you start to build your gym and it evolves naturally, you might consider picking up some of that. Some other accessories that are great if you're just using body weight training as a chin dip belt where you can throw some extra weight on to doing your body weight exercises. And over here you see I have my weighted vest. And of course don't forget chalk. Every good home gym needs some magnesium carbony. Now if you're going to be training seriously, I'd also recommend you get some floor mats to protect your floor and also protect your weights. These are those really dense gym mats you can get there, I believe four by six. The rest of the floor is those jigsaw mats. So it basically looks like this. I buy them in sets of four at home depot or something that's pretty cheap. This is actually the most important component of a home gym is a picture of Arnold. So make sure you get at least some picture of you, even if it's just ripped out of the old magazine and that will make your home gym complete. But the main advantage of having a home gym is that you can do whatever the hell you want to do. So you can do your home gym mats, you're looking over your shoulder, telling you you can't use chalk or you can't listen to that kind of heavy music. So I hope you found that helpful if you're looking to set up your own home gym. If you have any questions, post them down below and until next time, stay strong.