Day 6: My Workout Space

When it comes to working out, my goal is to be strong and healthy. I don’t particularly care about building bulk and I very much do care about avoiding injury. As a result, I only include bodyweight exercises in my workouts.

Because I only do bodyweight exercises, I really don’t need much in the way of workout equipment and my workout space is pretty minimal.

The Bare Essentials

Many of the exercises I complete require nothing but a little open floor space. Exercises such as pushups, squats, lunges, planks, and flutter kicks require nothing but about 20 square feet of open floor space.

By tossing in just a few extra pieces of equipment I’m able to complete nearly every exercise in Mark Lauren’s book, You Are Your Own Gym.

The book includes explanations for how you can use household furniture and objects–couches, doors, tables, and so forth–to complete your workout. That’s exactly what I did for about a year. However, back in March we moved to a new house where I’m able to have a dedicated workout space and I’ve since pulled together a few dedicated pieces of equipment.

Let me tell you, while I appreciate that this particular program is so flexible, it would be hard for me to go back to using a table for my Let-Me-Ups and a door frame for my Let-Me-Ins.

My Workout Space

I have a workout space set up in my basement and it consists of five items:

  • A rug to give me just a little bit of padding and protection from the concrete slab when performing exercises like pushups and planks that involve getting on the floor.
  • A power stand for pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, and hanging leg lifts.
  • A specially-proportioned saw horse (wider and shorter than a standard sawhorse) which I use for Let-Me-Ups.
  • A couple of cheap tie-down straps wrapped around a support beam and attached to row handles which I use for Let-Me-Ins.
  • A plywood box which I use for box jumps, seated dips, and to elevate either my hands or my feet to make various other exercises either easier or more difficult. It also fits perfectly within the footprint of my power stand which then allows me to perform assisted dips, assisted pull-ups, and assisted chin-ups.
One of my favorite features in the house we just moved in to back in March is the large basement which makes an ideal workout space.

With just these pieces of equipment, a little creativity, and several different workout types, I’m able to complete countless workouts of different intensities with different goals in mind.

2 thoughts on “Day 6: My Workout Space”

  1. Nice setup! I added rings to my portable pullup bar so that I can do Inverted Rows/Let Me Ups, and ring push ups. Bodyweight is the only way to go, for me at least.

    Reply
    • I want to add some rings. The basement ceiling is just the exposed floor joists and clearance is probably ~12 feet. That would make it ideal for a set of adjustable rings to use for ring pushups, ring pullups, dips, inverted rows, etc. How did you get started with rings? I worry a little about hurting my shoulders. I’m really very much sold on bodyweight exercises vs weight training – at least for my purposes.

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