Mistake #10: Believing extravagent claims

Don’t let a salesperson or marketing materials seduce you with claims that a home gym provides “targeted fat burn” or “a complete body workout in just 4 minutes a day.” The truth is that no exercise can burn fat from a specific part of your body, and no one can get a full-body workout without a real time commitment. Remember that the hardest part of getting fit is not selecting your equipment, but selecting a well-rounded exercise and diet plan and sticking to it over the long term.

Mistake #9: Ignoring your workout preferences

If your workout routine focuses on large muscle groups, you don’t need a home gym that provides an infinite variety of small muscle group workouts. If you hate riding a bike, you don’t need a home gym with a cycling station. Think through the exercises you actually plan to perform, and make sure the home gym you’re purchasing does a good job supporting those exercises. Don’t pay extra for stations you won’t ever use.

Mistake #8: Passing up installation help

The more elaborate the home gym, the more difficult it may be to set up. Remember that weight training equipment is heavy, and don’t skimp on purchasing installation help to move the equipment into your space an set it up. The last thing you need before you start using your new equipment is to throw your back out!

Mistake #7: Forgetting the other users in your home

If you have a roommate, spouse, significant other, or kids who will be using your home gym, you may want to consider equipment that supports multiple users working out at the same time. Multiple users usually require multiple weight stacks, which will increase the price and weight of the equipment and may increase its overall footprint as well.

Mistake #6: Getting a lightweight weight stack

At a minimum, most home gyms should include a 200-pound weight stack. If you are just starting out but have goals to lift substantially more than 200 pounds for any exercise, make sure that the equipment you’re purchasing can expand for additional weight, and find out where you can purchase the additional weights beforehand.

Mistake #5: Overlooking shoddy building materials

High quality weight training equipment will typically be built from 11- or 12-gauge steel, use framing that’s a minimum of two inches square, have welded joints, and have a chrome or enamel frame finish. Weight stack systems should use nylon-reinforced fiberglass pulleys and aircraft-quality nylon-coated cable. Plastic parts or surfaces, joints that you bolt together yourself, or any other sign of cheap construction are warning signs that the equipment will not hold up to the wear and tear of regular use. The manufacturer’s warranty for a high-quality piece of equipment should include a lifetime warranty for the frame, a minimum 3-year warranty for bench padding and upholstery, and a minimum 1-year warranty for moving parts.

Mistake #4: Ignoring the space limitations in your home

If you don’t have the space to set up your home gym properly and perform all the exercises on the equipment, you shouldn’t buy that equipment. Period. Get out your measuring tape and see how much room you actually have to spare to set up the equipment. As you look at machine dimensions, make sure there will be a buffer around the footprint of the machine when it’s fully set up so you can safely get to each station and perform the full range of motion without hitting a wall, a ceiling, or a ceiling fan. Consider protecting your floors with foam, rubber, or other synthetic mats.

Mistake #3: Blowing your budget

You don’t need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on machines to be able to perform a full-body workout program at home. If you’re on a tight budget, consider whether a simple set of resistance bands or free weights combined with some other basic accessories (like a bench or exercise ball) may be enough for you to perform your workouts. The majority of the benefits of a home fitness routine can be achieved on a small budget, so figure out what your cash flow situation is and start with an equipment investment you can really afford.

Mistake #2: Compromising on comfort or form

The fastest way to lose your motivation for working out is to pick a home gym that is uncomfortable to use or, even worse, causes injury. Make sure the equipment you’re considering provides adequate space to perform each exercise and that the grips, benches, and other contact points with your body are comfortable, suitably padded, and easy to wipe down and keep clean. Home gyms come in a variety of shapes and sizes, some of them folding up to small footprint in order to live in tight apartment quarters or home basements, but the more compact the footprint, the higher the risk that some compromises have been made to the machine ergonomics.

Mistake #1: Buying before trying

Even if you plan to buy your equipment online, no amount of online research will give you the complete picture of a piece of equipment. Find out what local retailers carry the equipment you’re interested in, and ask if they have floor models set up that you can use in the store. Bring your towel and water bottle and perform a complete set of exercises from your workout on the machine you’re considering.

Now that you know the top ten mistakes to avoid when purchasing a home gym, you’re ready to start looking at the many equipment options out there. A good place to start your search is our equipment guide section, where you can read about the best weight training equipment to achieve your specific training goals, work in your space, or fit your budget.

• Although buying online may not be the best option for some types of weight training equipment, such as higher-end home gyms, if you are in the early stages of evaluating equipment options or are planning to buy simpler equipment, Amazon is a great place to start looking for weight training equipment and read buyer reviews.
• Consumer Search does a great job aggregating both buyer and expert reviews about home gyms and providing a summary of top picks for certain types of home gyms. Unlike most other product review sites, Consumer Search also provides a relatively detailed report summarizing the sources they drew from, the credibility of those sources, and the most pertinent or interesting information they found after reading loads of expert and buyer reviews. Unfortunately, Consumer Search provides no coverage of reviews for free weights, benches, or other forms of weight training equipment other than home gyms.
• Many retailers (such as Sears, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Overstock.com) gather buyer reviews on their websites, but searching through the separate websites of multiple retailers to get a complete picture of what buyers are saying is awfully tedious. Buzzillions helps to solve this problem by aggregating buyer reviews from a large number of retailers and providing a number of convenient filtering and sorting options that allow you to use buyer reviews to narrow down a list of potential products based on keywords in the buyers’ reviews, like “Easy setup” and “Quiet operation.” Buzzillions covers product reviews for multiple types of weight training equipment, not just home gyms.

Some other sites that may be worth visiting if you still can’t find a buyer review for the equipment you’re interested in are Viewpoints and Epinions. Viewpoints has a somewhat limited weight training products listing compared to many other product review sites, but the reviews themselves are generally helpful. Epinions has a staggeringly large weight training products listing, but not every product listed has associated product reviews, so I would suggest you visit Epinions only to do a final check for any useful buyer reviews for a specific product after you’ve narrowed down your shopping list using the resources mentioned above.