Deth

I’d say the main interest for this began when my dad died of a heart attack and I had my thyroid taking out due to cancer. We went to a local gym and did the boot camp there, so eventually we picked up a rower for at home.

The rower is in my opinion by far the greatest piece of cardio equipment to have. You can make it as hard or as easy as you want.

Then we ended up with a training bar for practicing lifts with some light bumper plates. Rack and more plates came next the regular bars as gifts to each other, and more equipment here and there as gifts.

We picked up rubber mats at tractor supply to do the floors last summer, and the 4 x 3 ones we got worked out great for our needs. They were a little easier to handle and don’t get slippery from sweat or humidity like the horse stall mats the Crossfit gym used.

Grabbed a 32KG kettlebell last year and a sandbag over the summer. The sandbag was a great investment overall. It’s a great way to change things up and taking up less space than a bar, it’s much easier to work out together in the garage. Especially since I got my own sandbag for Christmas.

We just got a sled and that’s going to bring some fun and pain to the alley once we get a dry day to use it.

Last summer we started following Street Parking ’s programming and for the most part, we’ve really enjoyed it. The price is right, too. They seem like they want to help people. Before that, I was doing my own WODS, but the problem with that is I’d tend to pick things I like (squats) and skip things I don’t like

Having our own gym in the garage gives us so much freedom and flexibility to work out on our schedule and not what’s convenient for someone else. Unlike Crossfit, we get to warm up and stretch how we see fit, rather than the one size fits all class setting. Weather or holidays have no effect on our gym hours.

Although some of our equipment was a bit pricey when we bought it, ninety percent of it should last as long as we do give or take a little wear and tear. It’s not unreasonable to think I kettlebell could break if dropped and it land just right, or a bumper plate could wear out. We don’t abuse our shit and don’t intend to, so we shouldn’t really have much of a problem. We consider it to be an investment into our healthy futures.

Our garage gym is easily one of the best investments that we’ve made into ourselves, and the whole pandemic thing truly reinforces that thought for me. Our home gym is always open. It’s even open during holidays and inclement weather, and at any time of the day we want to use it. Most if not all of our equipment should theoretically last us the rest of our lives.