Build a Home Gym for Your Muscle-Building and Fat Loss Workouts: Part 2

In part 1 of this home gym series, we talked about the basic and primary exercise equipment for a home gym setup.  Here in part 2, I’ll outline the extra accessories and workout tools to further complete your home gym.

photo credit: combust

You’ll see additional pictures of more equipment from my basement gym.  These accessories aren’t must-haves but they do enhance the strength training and fat loss experience by providing you with more options for exercise choice, selection, and variation.

You don’t have to buy all of these equipment.  You can get a tough, intense, and highly productive workout with just the basic equipment outlined from the  first article: olympic bench, power squat rack,  and a 300 lb. barbell free weight set.

No two home gyms are alike because people choose to go with certain equipment.  Buy the basics first and get your home gym set up first, then worry about the extraneous and supplementary equipment.  Don’t worry about getting the latest equipment of workout gadgets.  Go with what is productive and necessary to begin your strength and conditioning workouts.

So here are the supplementary accessories and exercise tools you can add to your home gym arsenal.

Weight Vest

A weight vest can be strapped onto your body to provide additional resistance for bodyweight and compound movements like pushups, body weight squats, chinups/pullups, dips, burpees, and even hill sprints.  The additional loading provides an enhanced degree of difficulty and method of progression.  Body weight movements will become easier over time and a weight vest is the perfect tool to supply an extra load to make your workouts more difficult and harder .

One of the main priorities of working out is to make sure you have overload and progression.  Progression is one of the training principles of exercise.  If your workouts aren’t becoming more difficult over time, your body will have no reason to adapt.

With strength training, you simply have to train with heavier and heavier weights over time.  Pictured on the left is my V-Max weight vest capable of an additional load of 40 lbs.  from weightvest.com.  There’s a total of  8 pockets.  You can add two  2.5 lb. plates in each pocket, and totals 40 lbs. of weights evenly distributed on all sides and angles.

The weight vest is also perfect for those training to be in the military as its an exceptional tool for bodyweight training and conditioning.

Rucking, long distance marching, running hills, short sprints, and calisthenics are given an added degree of intensity and difficulty with a load weight vest.

Weight vests cost from $40 to $200 depending on make, model, and capacity for loading additional weights.  I recommend weightvest.com since they offer a lifetime warranty and guarantee.

Check out the first 50 seconds of this YouTube video showing how Ross Enamait from RossTraining.com uses a weight vest for ab wheel rollouts, pullups, dips, and various bodyweight conditioning drills.

Ab Wheel

You can also see he uses an ab wheel for rollouts.  An ab wheel is an effective tool for working and strengthening your abdominals, lower back, and overall core musculature.  Ab wheel rollouts are difficult at first but they build strong, lean and dense ab muscles once you work at it.

Ab wheels are also versatile.  You can do two arm variations, one arm variations, standing or knee variations or double wheel variations.  You can pick one up for about $10 on amazon and sporting goods store.  Visit RossTraining.com for more info.

Visit RossTraining.com for more info.

Weight Belt

A weight belt for chinups, pullups, and dips can also be used to add extra resistance.  If you’re focusing on dips and chinups, eventually your body weight will not be enough resistance to provide a challenge.

You can easily work from going to doing a few reps using body weight on pullups and dips to easily cranking out 15-20 reps over time.

You want to have a harder and tougher workout with progressive overload.  A weight vest provides the solution to strap on weight plates for a tougher workout.  Just load up some weight plates, strap the belt onto your hip and crank out the reps.

Pictured above is an Ironmind De Rigueur cloth weight belt capable of 1,000 lbs. loading.  It’s versatile and portable as I can just slip it into a gym bag whenever I travel to other gyms.  I can also attach a loading pin for easy weight attachment.

A cheaper weight belt option is one of bodybuilding.com’s leather weight belt with chains, though the loading is limited as the chains may break with anything more than 150 lbs. Most people are not even close to chinning and dipping with an extra 150lbs. attached to their hip so the bodybuilding.com belts would be a perfect, alternative choice.  Weight belts cost around $20 on the low end to about $50 for the high end Ironmind model.

Rings

If at any time you get inspired with bodyweight conditioning and training, check out the Elite rings from ringtraining.com.  Ring training is a whole new dimension of training since you’re training using a large variety of bodyweight movements suspended in air (without lying down on a support like the bench) with the support of the ring equipment.

Gymnasts train primarily on rings and bar.  You can to.  You can get insanely strong with ring training.  The basic body weight exercises can be done on rings, pullups/chinups, pushups, L-sits, leg raises, muscle-ups, you name it.  You can apply dozens of variations of every bodyweight movement on rings.

Loop the ring setup onto the bar of a power rack or parallel bar/chinup/dip station like pictured on the left shown in my basement gym.  The straps are adjustable to different heights for varying difficulty and elevation.  And like the weight belt, it’s also portable and you can carry it anywhere.

An alternative to rings is the TRX suspension trainer that’s been quite popular these days.  It’s more of a “high tech” equipment and basically works the same way as rings.

Chinup and Pullup Doorway Bar

In part 1 of this seris, I mentioned the parallel dip/chinup/pullup combo station.  If a full station is too expensive, you can buy a portable chinup/pullup doorway bar for $15-20.   Buy one that’s attachable to the top of a doorway without the hassle of screwing it on permanently.

Just hook it under your doorway and you're good to go.  Pick one up at amazon.  It'll only set you back $20-25 for a good bar.  No need to buy the more expensive bars.  They're all the same.

Manilla Rope

Now this may be unconventional but a piece of 5 to 7 feet 2 inch manilla rope is also a nice addition to your home gym arsenal.  Loop it around the chinup station or bar for rope chinups and pullups.  You can use it for assisted one arm chinups.  The above video with Ross features him doing weighted pullups on a rope.  Strength training is not limited to free weights. Train with variety and in multiple dimensions.  I first got the idea of training with ropes with my body weight routines from Ross Enamait of Rosstraining.com

Personally, I also like to do some kind of low-impact stress cardiovascular training using high intensity intervals and moderate intensities.  Treadmills are fine and so are regular stationary bikes for cardio and maintaining heart and lungs health.  I like to mix in some form of resistance so I have an airdyne schwinn stationary bike.

Exercise Bike

With an airdyne bike, the harder and faster you pedal, the more resistance is applied and generated through the wind.  Wind resistance is generated as you pedal harder and harder.  A computer module keeps track of time, calories burned, and distance traveled in miles and km.

The price might be steep for you at $600 but you can still get a decent cardio workout with just plain old running.  The investment is worth every penny since it is much cheaper than a reliable treadmill which can set you up $1,500 to 2,000.

And there you have all the extra accessories and exercise equipment that I recommend.  There are no fancy thousand dollar machines or clever complicated gimmicks.  What I recommend is what I personally own and use to train.

Make a final decision right now to build a home gym, if you have the room in your garage, basement, or room.  You can get a great strength training workout for building muscle and losing fat with just a few basics.  Olympic bench station, barbell set, a rack, and maybe some collars and weight plates as extra accessories.  It doesn't take a lot of money.

If you want a home gym now, build one today.  Don't delay.  What's the point of delaying?

Train Hard.  Train Safely.  Train Smart.

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave a comment below or email me at ZQH245@gmail.com or ZQH250@gmail.com

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