Home gym: How much does it cost to set up?

Barbells come in a wide variety of weights, lengths and sizes – which do you choose?

For beginners to lifting who aren’t too fussed about creating their own modular weight system, it can be quite cost-effective to buy a barbell set together with weights. For example, this barbell comes with 65kg of weight plates and costs $189.

It’s important to note the weight limit, though. You may not be able to simply slap on an extra 20kg of weights on this thing, because a barbell for home use may not support that much.

Also, check that it comes with sufficiently small weight plates (the smallest should be 1.25kg at most) because you will need them to increase your lifts safely. If your budget allows, it helps to get a set of what’s called “fractional weight plates”, but these are optional.

Powerlifting purists who do lots of deadlifts and heavy squats would want to skip the barbell set and invest in a proper Olympic barbell instead. These are what gyms use because they’re standardised and can handle much heavier loads. You can buy an Olympic barbell for about $50 on Lazada.

You’ll need to choose the weight plates to go with the barbell too. There are even more options here because the price varies hugely with the quality and material of the plates.

Metal plates are the cheapest (starting from about $4 for the smallest, 1.25kg) but you’ll need to make sure your floor is sufficiently protected.

For heavier weights, you might want to spend more on for rubber-coated plates (from $6.50 for 2.5kg) or bumper plates (from $18 for 5kg) which are safer for your floors and are less likely to startle your downstairs neighbours.

DirectHomeGym has a good selection of weight plates of different types.

This will most likely be the bulkiest item in your home gym, but honestly, it’s not THAT big – it’s about the size of a wardrobe and you can keep all your gear in it.

If you lift heavy, check the specs of your power rack to make sure that it can support the weight you want to lift.

If you’re trying to target your chest and arms, you definitely need a weights bench for bench presses and the like.

While you might be tempted to use that old IKEA shoe bench to start with, eventually you’ll probably want to buy a proper bench for better stability, comfort, and ability to support heavy weights without creaking alarmingly.

Benches are relatively cheap compared to the other items on the list, but you will still need to budget for it. The most basic one costs $60 from Decathlon. Multi-position benches also exist, but these are more for dumbbell work, so it’s optional.

One extra benefit of having a good solid bench is that you can use it in HIIT exercises such as tricep dips and step-ups.

Go to any gym and you’ll see people dicking around with dumbbells, even though they’re actually kind of unstable and can be dangerous to use (hello, wrist injuries).

That said, having a couple of small free weights around is useful for targeting and activating small muscle groups.

Dumbbells are by far the cheapest option. Instead of getting a bazillion of these and cluttering up your home, you can opt for the kind that looks like miniature barbells so you can customise the weight on each bar. Decathlon sells them at $35 per set, so that’s $70 if you want a pair.

Kettlebells seem like just the trendier version of dumbbells, but they work your body differently. It’s more dynamic: You engage many different muscle groups when swinging or lifting them, and kettlebell exercises can get your heart rate up. The cheapest place to get them is, again, Decathlon, which sells them for $18 (4kg) to $80 (20kg). You can start with just 1 or 2.

No one above the age of 7 does pull-ups for fun, which is a shame because it’s such a great workout and requires practically zero equipment. In fact, you probably already have a pull-up bar at home (pretty sure every Singaporean man has gone through that phase).

While gyms like Ritual have fancy, gymnastics-style pull-up rings, a simple bar is enough to get started with. You can very easily find one on Lazada for less than $20 – the no-drill kind which you can simply jam into a doorway.

If you can’t do a single pull-up (no shame there) you can work your way up to it by doing bodyweight rows on your squat rack. It’s easier to go up when your body is diagonal rather than vertical. Or use a chair under the pull-up rack for support.

The TRX suspension trainer sounds like a crazy high-tech piece of equipment, but it’s really simple, cheap, and actually quite fun.

It’s just a thick stretchy cable hanging from overhead. You grab the handles and perform exercises while hanging from it, which pits your muscles against your body weight (so the heavier you are, the better the workout is).

A set costs only about $30 to $40 on Lazada or Taobao, so even if this isn’t a mainstay of your fitness routine, you can still hang one in front of your TV and goof around on it from time to time.

High-intensity exercises, like Crossfit or Tabata-type workouts, tend to involve these large boxes – typically requiring you to launch yourself onto them and back down very rapidly.

Box jumps are undoubtedly a great workout, but unfortunately plyo boxes are really expensive for what they are (wooden boxes). Most go for at least $80, but the cheapest one I found is $48 for a 40cm high one from DirectHomeGym.

I wouldn’t go jumping on any old wine crate to save the cash, though. Plyo boxes are reinforced enough to survive your body weight bashing and smashing onto the surface multiple times.

If you’re going to be dropping weights, jumping, etc. at home, it’s probably a good idea to protect the floor and cushion loud sounds with some sort of protective rubber mat.

Those interlocking foam mats that people buy for babies’ playrooms are a good option and you can find pretty affordable ones on Lazada. For example, this basic black one works out to be about $13 per square metre while this wood-patterned one costs about $24 psm.

Alternatively you can line the floor with any combination of rubber mats, yoga mats, training mats etc. which you can get for as cheap as $3.90 per piece. You can secure them to the floor with some humble 3M tape.

Either way, choose something that’s as non-slip as possible, because the last thing you want is to break a body part while working out.

Speaking of body parts, you might also want to consider adding a mirror to your home gym. Not just for admiring your body, but also because it’s important for checking your form.

Full-length mirrors are pretty expensive, though, so if you’re on a budget you can just buy mirror tile stickers instead, which can cover a 1.2m x 1.2m space for under $20.

Assuming your home gym takes up about 2m x 2m, you should be able to add floor mats and mirror tiles for about $100.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to building your home gym, so feel free to add anything else you enjoy, like a yoga mat and props, battle ropes, punching bag, etc.

One thing I’d suggest is a little corner with amenities like fresh towels, water. If you follow specific workouts or videos, it makes sense to put your iPad and workout checklists here too, just so you don’t have to go in and out of the “zone” looking for these miscellaneous items.

If you don’t have the entire room to yourself and are occupying a corner of the living space, for example, it’s nice to be able to separate your home gym from the rest of the room to minimise distractions. Moving a bookshelf or hanging some light blinds from the ceiling should help with that.

Time for some maths.

Here’s how much it would cost to set up a cheap basic weightlifting-only home gym in Singapore:

As you can see, the bulk of the costs lie in the barbell, weights and power rack. If you’re not keen on lifting with barbells but want to create your own mini Ritual Gym instead, the cost is absurdly low:

Since the non-lifting stuff is so affordable, let’s have a look at “the works”:

That’s right – even if you invest in a full-blown home gym, you can break even in 6 months.

You’ll notice that I left out cardio machines like stationary bikes and treadmills, which are of course completely fine to add to your space. These things cost about $400 to $800 each and suck a lot of electricity, so I personally would rather go outside and run or cycle for free.

If you’re sitting on the fence about dropping $1K on a home gym because you don’t know if you’ll actually use it, you can reduce the cost even further by buying the big ticket items (squat rack, barbell and weights) off Taobao.

The Chinese phrase for “squat rack” is 深蹲架, and if you want to narrow it down to cage-type power racks, search for 框式深蹲架 (“frame squat rack”).

To give you an idea of prices, I did a casual search and found power racks going for $250 to $300, compared to $800 and up in Singapore. Many sellers also sell the full set (rack + barbell + weights) from about $500 to $800.

But the real killers are (a) shipping and (b) assembling it yourself.

Given that a full set can weigh a monstrous 100kg, I don’t think I need to explain why shipping from China is going to be pretty expensive. But I have a solution: Sign up for EZBuy Prime for 5 days and order it there. That’ll bring your shipping costs down to $9.90 (Prime membership) + $2.99 (flat shipping fee).

As for self-assembly… Well, if you’re the sort who would pay for IKEA installation, I can’t help you there. But I think that since all the parts are very big, it should be fairly easy to see how they fit together. Just make sure you triple-test the result for stability. Good luck!

This article was first published in MoneySmart.

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