Taking your home gym to the next level.

I asked for Blog ideas on my Instagram.

One of the questions was in regards to what can you add to a home gym that already has all the standard pieces of equipment assuming that the gym has. You know, power rack weights, barbell, deadlift platform or somewhere to pull deadlifts from, and zero to ninety bench.   All the basics are pretty much covered.

I want to stress a very important aspect of this and that is, it doesn't matter the items that I'm going to suggest. What matters the most are the items that you're actually going to use, that are going to build your weak points, and that are going to enhance the training program that you're currently doing.

You don't want to bring items in because it's cool or you think looks cool. You want to bring items in that are going to make you a better lifter and that are going to enhance your training experience. Otherwise, all it's going to do is be a waste of money that should have been spared on something else or saved for something bigger to get later.

Lat Machine

With that in mind, the items that I would add after the standard pieces have already been put in place would be a lat machine with a high-low point. It has to be a stable machine. It has to be a quality machine because you want something that's going to last. It doesn't have to have a weight stack, it can be plate loaded.

The reason for that is when you're looking at a piece of equipment to add in any home gym, but really any gym for that matter, unless you have thousands upon thousands of floor space and disposable income to pretty much buy whatever you want is you want to get the piece of equipment that you can do the most exercises with.

If you do decide on a piece of equipment that can only do one exercise, it better be a really damn important exercise for you from a rehabilitation standpoint or a weak point standpoint for you to be able to make any type of investment in it. Otherwise, you want to go with the piece of equipment that's going to offer a huge array of exercises.

You can do hundreds of movements with a high and low pulley.  Pulldowns, Face pulls, pull throughs, belt squats, pushdowns, extensions, face curls, low rows, pull down abs, etc

Yoke Bar

The second piece would be a yoke bar.

I recommend that for really any training facility because when it comes to training your lower body, there's a lot of restrictions in a lot of exercises that you can get pulled out. If your shoulder gets screwed up, if your arm gets screwed up, if your elbow starts to get beat up, a lot of leg exercises especially in a home gym are going to be done with the barbel on your back or you're going to be holding dumbbells in your hands.

If your arm or arms gets screwed up in any way whatsoever, your leg training becomes pretty much stuck to Bulgarian split squats with a slow tempo, walking lunges, some type of lunges maybe with a weight vest, and so forth. When you have a yoke bar, you're still able to squat. You're still able to do good warnings. You're still able to do lunges. You're able to do a ton of different exercises that I will put a link to in article to show all the different exercises that you can do with the yoke bar. That's one bar that I think is after you get a straight multipurpose bar, it's a necessity for any gym is to have SS Yoke Bar.

Chains

The third item on my list is chains. There's so many things that you can do with a few extra set of chains, especially if you have the training grenades or some kind of a single handle or single cable handle attachment. Movements ranging from extensions, curls, side raises, rows, flies, presses, etc. You can also attach them to any bar for squats, pulls and presses.

Anything that you can basically do with the dumbbell, you could be able to do with chains. What it's going to change is the strength, which is going to help to benefit your training a little bit more and you can add the chains to the squat bench edge and so forth. Those would be the top three items after you have everything that's required that I would suggest.

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