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There’s a case to be made for a simple, bare-bones home gym. You can get very far with bands, a chin-up bar, and a kettlebell. Some of the most effective exercises out there are bodyweight-only. It’s more important to get good sleep and master your diet than it is to have top-of-the-line gear. Studies show that the amount of weight used during a workout doesn’t matter as much as the effort exerted by the lifter.
But let's be serious. Studies also show that people feel better working out on heavy duty equipment—not that we needed peer review to believe that. Call it the “new gear” effect. By that logic, building out a home gym in the most over-the-top and luxurious way possible is the quickest path to maximal gains. Sure, few people need elite equipment. But investing in an elite setup certainly doesn’t hurt.
There’s also another use case for a borg’d-out home gym. The deep, esoteric pieces of exercise equipment tend to be more functional, and more in line with how people move day to day, than the middle-of-the-road items we build our workouts on over at chain gyms. Cable columns and manual treadmills target the postural muscles that sometimes get short shrift from barbell work; reverse hypers go after the glute and hamstring muscles that get put to sleep when we sit. Even the most luxurious gyms don’t have all these important pieces of functional equipment. The best-case scenario at one is no line at the squat rack—but not what people need. A borg’d-out gym isn’t about softer towels or better hand creams, but the price one must pay to get in a good workout and not have to listen to Top 40 music. Below, some of our favorites.
Freemotion Dual Cable Cross machine
Is cable work better than barbell work? Maybe: Exercises like lat pulldowns help “separate” the torso from the hips, and don’t compress the spine.
Airbikes help build up both strength and conditioning—try some on and off sprints to start.
Rogue’s unsuitably named Donkey is two machines in one: a reverse hyper and glute-ham developer, which each blast posterior chain muscles as they leave the spine alone. This should be the first thing you buy.
Rowing, when done right, hammers every muscle in the body and builds up VO2 max; this version is good looking enough to be carried in the MoMA store.
A programmable hybrid treadmill that feels like a manual, designed to get you an Olympic medal.
Running stairs is time honored training protocol among fighters and football players; this unwieldy machine offers a high intensity workout at low impact.
An all-in-one gym that takes up a small chunk of wall; it’s the logical and most ornate way to set up a squat rack in your home. (Check out the comments to see set-ups in action.)
Landmine work offers the best and most fun workouts outside a boxing gym. Set up this rack with a barbell, and program in a “corkscrew” and jerk a few times a week.
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