Having a space dedicated to fitness in your home is the ultimate commitment to having a healthy lifestyle. This also allows you to save a lot of time as you won’t need to spend any time taking the commute to your local gym. While home gyms are great, designing them can be a bit tough. You’ll need to design an effective workout routine that’s going to work at home. This is going to be far more difficult if you don’t have any machines. 

One idea would be to buy the machines. But you need to keep in mind that these fitness machines can cost upwards of thousands of dollars. You thankfully don’t have to break the bank to have a fantastic and effective home gym. Here are some tips to create the perfect home gym that will suit your taste, keep you energized, and will help you look  and feel marvelous!

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Think about the décor

When you go to your gym or even search online for pictures of gyms, what do you see? Are there any similarities or common themes? Most gyms will try to make the gym look energizing by having bright colors. Not all gyms will do this, but many of them will as this is a huge part of color theory. Your surroundings are going to help you either feel pumped and motivated or they’re going to make you feel sluggish. It really depends on how you decorate it.  Energizing décor such as bright colors, bright natural sunlight will help with the energized feeling.

You’ll want to pick bright colors such as orange, red, electric blue, or may even neon colors as these will be the blood pumping. The room you select needs to be put into consideration as if it’s somewhere dark and dreary such as a basement, you’re just going to tread through your workout without feeling much inspiration to push it. So be sure to pick and decorate a room that’s going to help you, not get you to slack.

Mirror Mirror on the wall

If you’re at the gym, you may have wondered why people look at themselves in the mirror right? These aren’t just about being image obsessed, mirrors have a good purpose when exercising. They can help keep you in check such as your posture whenever you’re exercising. It’s best to have one installed in your home gym, one of the floor length ones if possible.  Full-length mirrors are very affordable and seeing your reflection every day is going to help out with fine-tuning your form. You’ll be able to pick up on small imperfections that could be affecting your performance when exercising.

This is also going to help the room as well. Mirrors reflect light, so if you have your mirror right across from your window, you’ll be getting far more light in the space. Mirrors can create this illusion that even the smallest of spaces are big. This will help you feel less claustrophobic if you’re in a small room that’s filled with large exercise equipment.

Have a sufficient amount of space

One of the down sides of having a home gym is the lack of space you’ll most likely have. It’s easy to just pick a spot and place workout equipment on it. But is this truly effective? Not at all!  You need space in order to have a good workout. If every single corner in your room is filled, that’s only going to make it harder to have a good space.

Something to think about is maybe skipping out on exercise gear and think about alternatives. For instance, if most of your workouts are going to be cardio oriented, do you really need an exercise bike, elliptical, or even a treadmill? You could instead have a jump rope or a small trampoline. These are far more affordable and they take up less space. The same could be said for weights. You can have a small wrack of free weights rather than a whole bench and bar set up. You can still have just as good of a workout without any of the big expensive machines. 

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The space is comfortable

You need to consider how comfortable your space is going to be. Is this room the hottest room in your home? If so, you’ll need to figure out a way to cool it off such as looking into an air conditioning company. Is the room often drafty? Is this a room where neighbors or passersby can easily look in? You want to make sure that you’re picking a room that you’ll be completely comfortable in using for your workouts. So this is something that definitely should not get overlooked.

Stay organized

It’s best to keep this space nice and tidy just like a regular gym has theirs. You can have an open cubie where you can keep your mats, resistance bands, small workout gear, and maybe even your clothes. Using something like this means you won’t have to use up much of your floor space (meaning more movement on the floor for you).  Do you want your gym to have a TV? Look into getting the TV bolted into the wall, as this is going to help with reducing the floor space as well.

Protect your floor

As stated earlier, it may be better to opt into free weights rather than a whole set. Most homes are not sturdy enough to handle weights being dropped on it. That can potentially cause a lot of harm to your floors and the overall structure of your house if you’re not careful. But even if you’re not throwing weight but plan to do things that are high energy such as jumps, you’ll need the floor to absorb that impact. Investing in foam mats is a great alternative as this is going to protect your floor and it’s going to help with protecting your joints as well. These are very affordable and you can even purchase commercial grade interlocking ones if you want to get very official about it.