Very busy garage gym, but it does the job!

Our Practical Garage Gym Setup

Like many active folks in the Spring of 2020, my wife and I found ourselves without access to our fantastic local CrossFit® box due to local lockdowns. We loved that style of varied HIIT training and had always pined for our own space to supplement that experience during “normal” times as well. It was time to start seriously thinking about a garage gym.

Did we really need a garage gym? In theory “any” space could work as a place to work out but in practice that never felt as immersive or focused as it did in a gym. Pushing aside tools or kid’s toys to get in some semblance of a workout in the living room or bare garage, totally intermeshed with daily life and surroundings always felt like a compromise.

You might look at our gym in the photo above and think “damn, there’s a lot going on there”. And yes, there is. Clearing out our entire garage to make it “just” a gym simply wasn’t an option for us so we had to get creative and make the space work for multiple uses. Let’s dive into it.

Functional Gym Requirements

I wouldn’t describe us as extremely hardcore athletes but I do waterski competitively and in general both my wife and I like to work out 3–5x per week and do a mix of cardio, strength, and HIIT-style training to stay in shape. In our case it was important that the space could accommodate at a minimum the following exercises:

1. Wall-ball shots
2. Olympic lifts (Snatch, Clean, Jerk) with full barbell drops if needed
3. Power Lifts (Bench Press, Deadlift, Squats)
4. Wall Climbs & Handstand Pushups
5. Pull-Ups, strict & kipping
6. Plyo Jumps/Box Jumps/Jump-Overs
7. Cardio: Indoor Rowing and Air Bike
8. Dips
9. Knee Raises, Toes-to-Bar, “hanging” abdominal work
10. Kettlebell and Dumbbell work

Gym Design Constraints

When designing our garage gym I had some real-world constraints to balance with gym functionality which is why I very specifically call this a practical home gym setup:

1. The garage space is a 24' x 24' (7.3m x 7.3m) detached, uninsulated, garage with no drywall– extremely standard 1960’s-style American suburban garage setup with 48" joist spacing and 8' joist height. There are millions of these throughout the USA so it should be pretty familiar territory.
2. Garage still had to function as a 2 car garage whenever needed and as a 1-car garage, minimum, at all times. This was super important.
3. As a major DIY guy, the garage still had to function as a workshop with a workbench and room for tools to work on things.
4. At least one bay of the garage had to be free front to back for occasional boat storage.

This is a lot to ask for one room, but I was determined to make it happen. Here’s how I did it.

The Flooring

I can’t over-emphasize how transformational the flooring aspect of this project was. As soon as the floor was in, the space immediately felt like a real workout venue.

Good flooring immediately gives you the ability to comfortably do any floor-based movements like burpees and the ability to drop loaded barbells on the floor. Seems so basic and rudimentary but man did this make an impact.

I chose stall mats from Tractor Supply Co. for our gym, making a 12' x 12' area out of (6) 4' x 6' mats arranged in a 2x3 grid. The mats are flush with the back wall and offset slightly to one side. If 2 cars are parked in the garage, the second car’s front wheels do end up on the mats (the car takes up approximately half of the mat area when it’s there) and with this particular product there’s no effect on them from the weight of the car.

The mats weigh an astounding 100lbs each so I do not have them fastened to the floor in any way. The installation process is nothing more than simply dragging them into place.

The Rack

Aside from the flooring, the rack is by far the most important part of this gym space. The rack provides support for bench and squat movements, and is additionally foundational for pull-ups, dips (via the Matador attachment, more on that later), and myriad accessories and accessory work. Even something as simple as having an anchor for band work or stretching is so handy.

Though the overwhelmingly popular home rack solution seems to be some sort of folding rack option, I ended up bucking that trend and instead choosing the fixed-in-place Rogue RML-90 SLIM rack.

The Rogue RML-90 SLIM is a super-solid “Monster Lite” series rack with 3"x3" uprights made out of 11 gauge steel. It only protrudes 16" from the wall studs which saves a ton of space in the garage.

I very specifically did NOT want any folding rack option for two reasons:

1. I knew that once it was folded back in this multi-use garage space, stuff was inevitably going to be put there in the way of the rack and that would be additional friction to actually deploying it and using it. The footprint of the rack needed to be claimed at all times by the rack.
2. Additionally, and this is very important: the rack had to be useable with both cars in the garage. The extremely minimal 16" depth of this rack allows for this.

The Monster Lite 3"x3" uprights are compatible with a host of accessories that I use all the time including the Matador dip bar and spotter arms. Being lagged directly into the wall studs via the Rogue mounting plates, this rack will take the entire wall down before it fails me in any way.

The Wall Ball Target

This seems like a trivial detail to bring up, but a lot of thought went into this little square of plywood. How do you find a 10' tall spot in a garage with 8' ceiling joists that will work with the garage door open or closed and not take up additional wall space?

Luckily, this garage has 48" joist spacing which is very common with this type of structure. This gives us a nice gap between the wall and the first joist, with 100% access all the way up to the rafters of the garage.

With the rack only protruding 16" into the space that left me a little 32" gap for wall balls, and a perfect mounting point on an existing diagonal brace. It certainly calls for accurate throws but it works really well and enables this totally fundamental full-body movement.

Looking up from directly in front of the rack

Limitations & Wish List

In general, this space has served us well for what it is. There are a few things I wish we could do that we can’t:

1. Partner workouts are really tough in this space, it just gets tight with two people lifting and swinging large heavy things.
2. Pull-ups are generally limited to strict pull-ups, there’s enough room with the slim rack to do a little kip but that’s about it. This is not really a downside.
3. No way to do bar muscle ups (nor ring muscle ups for that matter).
4. No heat or insulation. Makes for some chilly workouts in the winter but a hairdryer heats the bars up fast and once you get moving it’s generally tolerable as long as temps don’t get much below freezing.
5. Minimal storage. Since the garage is used as a functional garage for a family, there’s stuff everywhere. You have to get creative with the available space for sure.
6. Ceiling height is a pain point every where but almost every overhead movement can be done somewhere. Gotta pay attention though. There is even a certain spot that I can do double-unders in as long as I keep everything compact and tight, this actually helps my technique on this movement.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll talk about the various equipment we selected for our garage gym!