👉 For more info on this episode, check out the Coaching Corner Podcast website.

Hey there 👋 I'm personal trainer Jayd Harrison, and in this podcast episode I give tips for starting a home gym for beginners.

When starting a home gym, I recommend beginning with resistance bands. This versatile type of equipment is relatively inexpensive, takes up very little space, and is great for helping you to develop some foundational strength as a beginner.

I also recommend getting 2 exercise mats for floor exercises (a thicker exercise mat and a thinner yoga mat).

Both resistance bands and exercise mats can be easily stored away in a closet or drawer when not in use--which makes them great for smaller home spaces (check out the equipment recommendations list below for links to recommended products).

If you'd like to work out with weights, I recommend getting a set of adjustable dumbbells--either powerblocks or spin-lock varieties. These take up minimal space and are relatively inexpensive when compared to full sets of individual dumbbells.

When you're ready to advance your weight training as an intermediate lifter, I recommend investing in a sturdy barbell, plates, and plate collars. These will allow you to progressively overload your exercises using as much as a couple hundred pounds per exercise. At the same time, it's also a good idea to get a sturdy squat rack--which will allow you to practice exercises like the barbell back squats and bench press.

Some barbell exercises (like squats and bench press) are much easier to do if you have a squat rack or power rack to hold the weight between sets. The Fitness Reality squat rack is a surprisingly inexpensive and good-quality rack that can be ordered from Amazon (check out the equipment recommendations list below). Make sure to also get a set of J Hooks to hold the weight between your sets.

Equipment Recommendations:*

Bands:

• Fit Simplify Mini Bands
• Tube Bands
• Superbands

Mats:

• Exercise Mat
• Yoga Mat

Adjustable Dumbbells

• Power Blocks
• Spin-Lock Adjustable Dumbbells

Bench

• Adjustable Bench

Barbell & Plates

• Bells of Steel Barbell
• Olympic Plates
• Plate Locks/Collars

Squat Rack

• Fitness Reality Squat Rack Power Cage
• J Hooks

*These are affiliate links and purchases made after clicking will in part support the Jaydigains Coaching Corner Podcast

Programs

Check out my collection of DIY programs for building beginner strength, delivered via the ABC Trainerize app. DIY programs are $27 monthly, cancel at any time:

• Beginner Body Sculpt Foundations (Bands)
• Beginner Body Sculpt Foundations (Weight Training)
• Beginner Body Sculpt Foundations (Full Gym)

For more training tips, make sure to subscribe to my channel, and check out my training programs and personal training at https://jaydharrisonfitness.com

All Terms & Conditions apply https://jaydharrisonfitness.com/terms-conditions

Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains, and in today's episode I'm going to go over some tips that I gave my Twitch channel for how to build out a home gym. If you're a beginner to fitness, no matter your starting point, there's always something that you can do to build strength and improve your fitness, and this episode is going to give you a step-by-step process for how to pace buying equipment with your fitness journey when you're starting from scratch. We start from resistance bands and exercise mats and work all the way up to when you're ready to actually bring a squat rack and barbell and plates into your home gym. Make sure to check out the show notes below for links to the equipment that I talk about in this episode. If you're watching this episode on YouTube, you can find those links in the description of this video.

Now, keep in mind as we move forward that when I was recording this, there was a little bit of a hiccup and the audio namely on some of the scenes, there's music in the background and on some of the scenes there's no music in the background and I recognized this when I was doing the editing and really thought about scrapping the entire episode, but there's still a lot of really good information in this episode, which is why I've decided to go ahead and go forward with publishing it. It's not really a big deal and you might not even really notice it a whole lot, but I do want to make sure that I recognize and point out to you guys that I know that it's there and I've made sure to fix that in my following streams. And if you're interested in joining me for one of my Twitch streams, I would love to have you there.

They are a lot of fun and it's a great way for you to interact with me in real time. I go live on my Twitch channel, Twitch.tv/jaydigains on Tuesdays and Fridays at 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. And without further ado, let's go ahead get started. Learning how to build out a home gym from scratch. You can still get in shape, you can still get really fucking strong If you don't like to go to a gym, right? You can get some pretty good muscle definition working out at home. And one way to do that is to do body weight training. If you are going to be working out minimal equipment, you can totally do it. I would recommend though, instead of just going full equipment free, I would recommend investing in some resistance bands because there's certain movements that you need to practice in order to get a well-balanced physique and just for the health of your body, like the health of your shoulders, your hips and stuff where you need to be pulling things.

So there's different kinds of movements that we practice that we add resistance to. There's push movements that are pretty easy to make more difficult and make more challenging to turn into a challenging exercise. It's a lot harder when you need to work on pull strength. So I like to use resistance bands and that's what I recommend for my clients because the resistance bands give you that resistance and they're pretty light. You can travel with them, you can pack. If you are somebody who travels a lot, you can pack them very easily into your suitcase. They don't take up any space at all. And so I recommend resistance bands. There are a variety of different types of resistance bands, so what I recommend is getting, there's three different kinds and I do think that it's a good idea to have a set of all three kinds.

So the first kind that I recommend is called a mini band, and the mini band is like a little loop band, and the ones that I have started my clients with for many, many years are the fit simplify mini bands. Why I like these in particular is because they are rated so they're rated for resistance. So the light one is the lightest resistance level, and when you're just starting out and you're just starting with working out and you're using resistance bands, I say start with the lightest resistance band. Learn the technique of the exercise, and that might be challenging enough for a lot of the exercises using the lightest band might give you that muscle burn that you're looking for towards the end of every set, right? Over time, as you get stronger, you're going to need a heavier band. So then you go on to the number two band.

I think it's very important to have a sense of progression, especially when you're working on strength training or when you're working on muscle building. It's important to track your progress because it's slow, right? Burning fat and building muscle is a very slow progress or slow process. It takes time, but you can track consistently on a week by week basis. You're able to do more reps or you had to do the number one band for a couple of weeks and now you're doing the number two band and then a couple of weeks later you're at the number three. So it's helpful to sense your progress and it can help with motivation. It's very helpful with motivation when you can see on a week by week basis. You may not see any change in the mirror, but you do know that a couple of weeks ago you were struggling with the number one band doing a set of 10 on some exercise, and now that's too easy and you got to use the number three band.

For me, that's why I like to use the graded bands. I like to make sure that they have some kind of rating so that I can record that progress. My clients can record their progress as they get stronger. It's very helpful for motivation. That's what I recommend. If you're going to be starting a home gym, I do recommend you start with resistance bands, but make sure that resistance bands that you get are graded for their level of resistance so that you can track your progress and of course, keep a journal, make sure you're tracking your workouts so that you get that sense of progress. So that's one kind of band that I think you should have in your toolkit in your home gym or if you're traveling or whatever. So that's the mini bands and that's the first thing that I would buy if you're just going to get one type of equipment.

I would this first because there's a lot that you can do with just the second kind of resistance band that I think is very helpful to get is they're often called tube bands because they're a tube, they're the ones that have handles. You can use these for different types of exercises. I like these. You want to make sure that they have some kind of an anchor so that you can anchor the band to a door or something like that because there's exercises that are just kind of hard to do with a mini band kind of exercises specifically I'm talking about are things like face poles. So you see how you can anchor the band to the top of the door, so I can do that. Let's see, my chest flies, band chest flies, this is another one. So the band's secured to the door behind me, and this is the kind of movement you can't really get with your mini bands.

You can't get this movement, the flies with mini bands. So it's very helpful to have these. That's why I'm a big fan of the two bands that you can see secure to the door. Just make sure that the door isn't going to fly open. Make sure that it's actually anchored. And again, these I like in particular because they're weighted, right? One says it's 10 pounds, one is 20 pounds, one is 50, one is 40, one is 30. So as you are getting stronger, as you're progressing and you're recording your workouts and what they are, you can be like, I use the number 10 band for 15 and then now I'm using the 20 pound band for 10. So you can track your progress and you can see your progression over time. And again, that's very, very important for everybody, but especially in the beginning when you're a beginner, you need to celebrate your gains.

You need to track your gains. It's going to feel like when you look in the mirror, when you step on the scale, you might not notice a whole lot of difference. You may feel a difference, your clothes may be fitting differently, but otherwise you got to take all the wins that you can get. So I like to make sure that we're tracking the progress, so get something that's actually labeled. And then the other finally, the other kind of band that I recommend is what are called super bands or monster bands, and they're kind of like the mini bands where they're like long loops. It's just this is a lot easier to deal with on certain exercises than using a tube band with handles. Sometimes the handles are a little bit much to deal with. So I liked super bands in particular for exercises like this, but where they really, really shine is the deadlifts.

So this is my favorite way to use the super bands is for this exercise in particular, but there are a bunch of other exercises that I like it for. You can also use super bands if you are trying to learn how to do a pull-up, you can use super bands or monster bands to give you a boost. Those are the three kinds of resistance bands that I would say fill out your home gym with first because there's so much that you can do with those bands to start building muscle without ever having to worry about lifting weights. Another thing that I do also recommend for a starting home gym is some kind of exercise mat. I think that it's a good idea to have two, so like a thick exercise mat. This is one of those thick gums. I love these exercise mats for doing anything on the floor.

If you are going to be on all fours to cushion your knees, or if you're going to be doing something like crunches and you want to give a little bit of cushion to your spine, something nice and thick and juicy like this guy, that would be my recommendation. But if you are working out barefoot and you're going to be doing standing exercises, I would recommend a thinner mat, like a yoga mat. So this is a yoga mat. It's a lot thinner and it's good for if you're going to be doing standing stuff, well, it doesn't show if you're doing squats and stuff and you're working out barefoot, you don't want to be standing on a squishy mat because that is going to add some instability. That's going to make everything a lot harder. You're going to be more likely to fall. So that's why I like to say have two mats I like about the yoga mats is that they're also very grippy.

They got a nice little grip to them as well. So that's what I recommend for a starter. If you want to get in shape, you want to build out a home gym, you don't want to go to the gym and you want to start building muscle or you want to start exercising, you want to start working out. That's the equipment that I would start out with, and it's pretty cheap when you think of how expensive a home gym can get. Weights are expensive, they just are. They always have been. And then especially since the pandemic, they got very expensive, but bands are pretty cheap. Mats are pretty cheap. So you could get a little starter home gym with just mats and bands and start building some muscle and start building some core strength, which is really, really important. Start building out your mobility and then over time you can begin to add more resistance using equipment like weights.

But again, the bands are always going to be a good starter. That's my recommendations for starting your home gym, getting started, make some gains with very minimal equipment. I do think as a beginner, if you're just starting, you've got to keep in mind the more barriers you put up for yourself, cost barriers, space barriers, where am I going to put all this stuff? The less likely it is that you're going to actually start or the longer it's going to take you to actually get started. So I say start minimally, start with those very minimal priced stuff. Start with to stuff that takes up the minimal space and is going to present minimal risk of injury. So that's why I say bands and mats start there. There's a lot that you can do also if you're like, okay, so I get this stuff and I don't know what the fuck to do with it.

I got you. Literally, you can work with me as a personal trainer, but not everybody can afford personal training. It's like a couple a hundred dollars a month, right? It's like a couple hundred dollars a month. Even a moderately priced personal trainer is going to be a couple hundred dollars a month a lot of times. But I do actually, I made my programs that I put my beginner clients through, I made them like DIY, self-guided. So if you want to do one of my programs as I program it for my clients, I have those available and you can use the same app that my clients use. It's just that you're not going to get a custom workout. I'm not going to build it for you and then customize it for you. But you can come here, you can hang out and I'll tell you how to customize it for yourself. But the minimal equipment program, that's the one.

This one uses the bands and it uses all three of those, the Supermans resistance bands and mini bands. So this runs for six months. So in six months you'll learn how to use that equipment and it starts from the very, very beginning and by the end of the six months, you'll be ready for intermediate workouts. So you'll start building some muscle, you'll start burning some fat. You'll learn about how to build muscle. This program, it's just $27 a month, so way cheaper than having a personal trainer, but it's a program that's created by a personal trainer. The only thing that you don't get is my eyeballs on you checking over your stuff and giving you direct feedback, but if you want the direct feedback, you can just join the community and post your technique videos to the technique channel so you can still work with me. It's just that you are not buying my time, essentially, you are not buying my time every week where we're meeting for a session or where I'm looking over your log and giving you advice and checking your forum on a one-on-one basis. So that's a really economical way that you can get yourself started.

Shoot, you can't see it. I'm sorry. This one, this is what I'm talking about. I'm sorry you can't see it. So if you go to my trainer, i.me and I'll post a link for the YouTube video. The links will be, all of the links for this will be in the comments, not the comments, well the comments, but also the description. But you scroll all the way down the Minimal Equipment Foundations program for beginners. So if you're just starting your home gym, you want to start with bands, minimal equipment, just do this workout plan, just follow it, and if you have any questions, you can just ask me in the Discord. So it's not like you don't get any of my attention, it's just run this program with my clients and I've refined it over years and years and years, and it's a great way to get a well-balanced overall physique. And the other thing that you also get is my coaching content. So my foundations to muscle building content. So it's like a course. So if you want, you can read all of that stuff and you learn about building muscle and how to work out effectively. So it's basically the coaching program. It's just without my eyeballs on you. If you reach a point where you're like, okay, I want to actually learn how to lift weights, I want to do weight training, I would start by getting some dumbbells. I would start with dumbbells first.

There's a lot of weights when we talk about weight training. There's barbells, there's dumbbells, there's kettlebells. Oh gosh, what else? I mean, those are the main ones. There's machines. There's machines that are considered weight training, like cable machines. That's my favorite kind of machine is the cable machines. So there's a lot of options. So it can be very overwhelming. What I would say is get some dumbbells and if you can find some good quality adjustable dumbbells, that's ideal because then you could get, I'm trying to remember my clients. I have some clients who have kind of tried a couple of different adjustable dumbbells and there were some that were just really shit quality and fell apart, and then there's others that are good quality. I'm not super sure on that one. I can't really give exact recommendations because I don't use adjustable dumbbells except the kinds. No, that's not true. The ones that are more guaranteed to not fall apart, I forget. I do actually use adjustable adjustable dumbbells, just not the ones that are cliquey, I guess. What did we call these? I grew up with these. These are the ones that I grew up with. I remember being five years old in my basement where my dad had his home gym when I was growing up, and this is the kind of dumbbells that we had, the spin lock ones. It's just I never what last year even knew that they had a name. But anyway, this is a type of adjustable dumbbell. They're a pain in the ass because they take

Five seconds to take the lock off and then you adjust the weight. You put on the weight and then you got to

My ADHD cannot. I hate it. But however, these are the most likely, they're the most sturdy. These are the most likely to last forever. Forever. These will last you forever. They are sturdy as fuck. It's just that they are, they're just like you for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds and then 10 seconds to put that back on. So when you want to change your weights, that's like almost a minute long process. So when you're trying to find just the right weight for an exercise and it's like 20, no, it's like minute, a minute or so to add more weight or adjust the weight. That's the thing that makes them the pain in the ass. However, in terms of stability, durability, these guys will last forever.

So if you're going to get adjustable dumbbells, I hate to say it, but these are the ones that I recommend. These are the ones that I recommend also because they act like regular dumbbells the most, they're pretty sturdy. Once you put the lock on, once you spin the lock on, it's pretty sturdy. It's not going to wobble around. But power blocks, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Power blocks, they are a lot faster to change out the weights. If you're trying to figure out what weight you want to be using for an exercise, it's just like a matter of seconds to just be like, that's too light. You just put it back on the stack and change what plates you want on it. So that's a lot faster to change. The problem with these is they are a lot less sturdy. They don't act like dumbbells in the way that if you had regular dumbbells, they're pretty stable.

There's a lot of wobbling and jiggling around, which makes these a little untenable. So I know a lot of people who use these kinds of adjustable dumbbells. It is just something to keep in mind. It takes up a lot less space than the adjustable dumbbells, the spin lock ones, the spin lock weights, they take up more space. I have a little tree that my weights are kind of living on. I dunno if you can see because it's way back there. Hold on, let me, that little tree back there is for my adjustable spin lock dumbbells, right? So it takes up more space. The spin ones look like a pain. They are, but again, they're more sturdy, so in that way they're kind of safer to use. I've heard horror stories of the power blocks of my clients. They had a set that the plates just kind of fell off of one day while they were using them.

I don't know that it was necessarily the power block, like the brand name, but it was something similar. It was a similar type of dumbbell and the plates just kind of fell out. And then I'll have to ask them what brand it was. So that's just beware. But I do think that dumbbells are a good one to start with because there's a lot of exercises that you can do with dumbbells. You don't need a whole lot of weight, especially when you're just starting with weight training. You're just learning those dumbbells, especially the adjustable ones. You'll be able to progress. You'll be able to add more weight over time. That's so much better than just getting a couple of five pound dumbbells and a couple of 10 pound dumbbells because you are going to progress out of that really quickly. That's the problem with people are like, oh, I'll just buy a couple of hand weights.

Don't do that. Don't do that. You are going to grow out of those so fast and they're not going to give you the stimulus that you need in order to achieve your goals. If you want to get toned and you want to build muscle, little five pound dumbbells are not going to cut it. That's why I recommend the adjustable ones so that within a very small space you have five pounds or you have 50 pounds and some of them do go up to 50 pounds on each side. It's just that this particular set goes from three to 24 pounds.

That is going to give you so much more progress and gains than just getting a set of five pounds and a set of 10 and a set of 15. You can still work with that, but you are going to outgrow that very, very quickly and you're going to reach the point where in order to get the stimulus that you need, you're going to have to do a lot more exercises and your workouts are going to be very, very long. So that's what I recommend. And again, if you want to learn how to lift weights, you can work with me. I am taking on clients. I do have openings in my personal training program. You can go to my website for that and if you want me to teach you how to work out with the band's, same thing.

I can teach you. I am taking on clients, but then there's also if you just want to get my program and you want to get my teaching, you want to take my program that I teach my clients through, then just go to my trainer eyes page and you can subscribe. It's just $27 a month for basically getting a personal trainer's course and all of the content that I use and everything that I would teach you, you just do it yourself and those programs. I have the weight training one, the beginner's weight training, one browser display. So if you want to learn how to lift weights, that's the weight training one. If you have your home gym, you have your little adjustable dumbbells and you've added the weights to it, do this program or you can just hire me for personal training. But again, that's what that is for. And then there is a full gym program. If you are using a full gym like machines and all of that, the full gym program uses the cable machines. It uses a couple of the other machines that are pretty common to the gym, to most gyms, like leg press machine and all of that.

But this conversation is specifically about getting started with a home gym, getting started in fitness with a home gym, building out a home gym. So again, start with the bands is what I would recommend. Bands get an exercise mat and start with that. And then when you want to progress and if you want to learn how to do weight training, weight training is going to take your gains to the next level. You'll get serious gains working with weights and you have options for that. But I would recommend if you're specifically working with a home gym, get an adjustable set of dumbbells either with a spin lock or get the power blocks if you have the time. I mean, sorry, if you have the space, if you have the space, if you have the money and the funds, then you could get a full set of dumbbells, right?

I have a client who did that. He went ahead and he purchased a full set of dumbbells that go from five pounds to 50 pounds and he has the space and he has the funds for that and good for him, really? That's awesome. If you can do that, then that's going to be the best. That's better than power blocks, better than the little spin locks. But not everybody has that space and not everybody has the funds for a full set of dumbbells. And then if you are interested in weight training, it's going to be a little bit before you even are ready to get on the bar to do barbell squats and barbell deadlifts, right? Because the barbell Olympic barbells are 45 pounds, like 22 kg. So at least get your squats, get your chest presses, get your Romanian deadlifts with the dumbbells up to a point where you're able to do 45 to 50 pounds for that exercise.

And then you can think about adding in some barbell work, and you don't necessarily need to get a squat rack for that. You can just get the barbell itself and start working with the barbell and the specific bars that I would recommend for a home gym. You can't go wrong with just a Ohio bar. Like I said, the barbell itself is going to be about 45 pounds. So you're ready for the barbell when you can do chest presses, squats, deadlifts with 45 to 50 pounds with using the dumbbells. And the reason why it is good to kind of switch over to the barbell after a certain point is that it's going to be more stable. It's really awkward if you're doing dumbbell front squats and you have a lot of weight after a certain point, it's just kind of really wobbly and finagle to hold the weight up.

When it's the dumbbells, the barbell gives you some stability because you're holding it in place and one side stabilizes the other. So that's where it can be a really good thing to switch over to barbell training. And then the way that you progress from there when you're using a barbell is you add plates, you add plates onto the sides. So with your plates, you have your plates, but you also want to make sure that you have some plate locks, right? They're sometimes called clamps. Clips. Clips. Sometimes they're called clips, and these secure the weights onto the barbell. So when you put weight on the barbell, you slide this on and it keeps the weight from moving, and that just is good for safety. You don't want the weight wobbling around. You want it to stay nice and nice and secure. At Texas Bar is also a good one if you can get it.

You just put your weight on. Look at my baby weights though. Look at these. Hold on. So when we're talking about types of plates that you can use, you can fit on your ride. These are my favorite can. These little babies. Little babies, I highly recommend getting some baby weights. These are just two and a half pounds, which especially when you're starting to learn how to bench the difference between the bar itself at 45 pounds and then you put one little two and a half pound on both sides to bring it up to 50 pounds. The difference between 45 pounds and 50 pounds is huge when you're a beginner. So there's nothing wrong with starting with the baby weights. Get the baby weights. They're my favorite. So I was coaching a client who's brand new to Bench the other day, so that's why I have them on here.

So you slide on the weight and then you use whatever clip. I like both of these. These are both great. This one super easy to break though. These guys get smooshed sometimes in the gym, so they got to get replaced. This was actually a present, a Christmas present from one of our community members, CMO at Its Rising. He got me these, they're like, you pinch them like that and it slides on. They're really cool. They're a little weighted. They're a little weighted, so some of the clamps are going to be weighted. They'll add a little bit of weight to your bar, which sometimes you want, right? The plastic ones add like no weight, so you want to make sure that once you get to adding weights, get some little clips, some little clippies, some little clippies. Lemme get you a link for those guys too, especially the ones, oh my God, did you guys know that those were I have two.

I have two. I have these guys who are pink, and then I have a pair that's green and it's either the green ones or the pink ones, I can't remember. One of them is a present from a client who graduated from my weight training foundations program. He worked with me for, I think he got through the program, I want to say in six months. I think he worked with me for six months because there's a three month version that I put people through, and then there's a six month version. I think he, did he do the three month or did he the, I can't remember. He completed, he graduated, whatever. He graduated, he wanted specifically to learn how to lift weights so that he could fly on his own like a baby bird. And so he completed the program and at the end he gave me the present and you know how he did it?

He dropped it off at the gym that I worked at. Didn't say a thing. He didn't say a damn thing. He didn't text me, he didn't tell me anything. He just left the present up at the front with the person who was working at the front desk and then she came and she was like, Hey, there's something here for you. And I went up and I unwrapped it. It was like a present. It had the little, I still have it on my phone. I still have. I took a picture of it and I posted it to Instagram. It was the cutest thing. Anyway, that's such if you work with a personal trainer and you want to give them a present that is such a sweet present, give them little barbell clips. We love those. We love them. We love them. They're the best. You can never have too many.

You can get them in blue, you can get them in green, you can get them in pink. That's what I have. I have the pink and I have the green ones. You can get them in purple. You can get them in red or yellow. Actually, I have another pair. I'm not lying. I love these things because they're so cheap little doodads and it's like I have ones that are round like this, collars, that's another thing that they're called collars. Sometimes they're called collars. Where's the other one that's more round? It doesn't have the little, okay, and then these are the ones that I would say maybe you don't want to fuck with. I've worked in a couple of different gyms. I grew up in the gym, so I can say this. In my experience, everybody hates these. If there's a little plastic clips available, most people are going to fight over those and then people are going to avoid these.

The plague, and here's why they are hard. You have to squeeze them. There's a lot of tension, and if you just did a set of deadlifts and your grip strength is already shot, you don't want to be squeezing. Another thing when your grip strength is already tired, and that's why people hate them. They also make this terrible noise. If you don't maintain the tension and you're sliding them on the bar, they get stuck and then you have to squeeze again, and then you got to, you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? They're so annoying. Hey, that's a Canva picture. This is a picture from Canva, but you can see how they're squeezing it and you got to fit into right into, and then it's like a condom that doesn't fit. They're so annoying, man. I hate them. Especially like this person right here.

I think it's a woman. This bitch right here. Do you think she wants to be squeezing this stupid collar clamp lock thing? No, she doesn't. She wants to be resting her hands, but here she is. This is what the fucking gym that she's going to invest it in because they knew that people wouldn't steal these because nobody fucking wants them. Cheap ass gym owners will invest in these fucking locks because they know that no one's going to steal them. So anyway, you can get 'em if you want to. You can get 'em if you want to. That's your own peril. It's your funeral. Personally, I would recommend one of these Cuties boys bought a pair of your own in your gym bag. That's what I recommend. If you're going to be going to a gym, you might as well have your own plate locks. Oh, we should talk about benches.

We should talk about benches. Of course. From this point on, when it comes to getting a squat rack, when it comes to getting plates for the bar, when it comes to getting a bench, there are a lot of options out there. It's very difficult for me to say, this is what you need. I recommend this specific brand, get what you can get. But what I'll say is with a bench, I think it's a good idea, especially if you're a beginner, is to get an adjustable bench. Get something that can be adjusted to be like an incline or a decline or a flat bench. That's because there's a lot of ways that you can change the exercises to progress your exercises by adding an incline or adding a decline to them. So I do recommend an adjustable bench, something like this, and read reviews. I have used so many different benches.

I think I have a Gold's Gym one, it's kind of old and wobbly, something that's going to lay flat. My clients have a huge variety of them. If you do get one that has a key lock thing like this, I don't know what that's called actually like a push lock. Just make sure when you are using these and you're adjusting the bench every time that you adjust it, if you pull that little thing out, make sure that it is all the way pushed in every single time you use this bench. I'll make a video at work tomorrow where you can see what I'm talking about. They have adjustable benches there. You just want to make sure that it is all the way pushed in because I have seen it happen in the past where someone has been working on an incline bench and that little thing isn't pushed all the way in and they're in the middle of lifting, and then boom, the bench kind of falls down.

You don't want to see that. So just make sure that every time you're using this equipment, you make sure that everything is locked in anytime you make an adjustment. The reason I like adjustable is, again, you can sit the bench up like this for incline stuff. I like this one. It has a decline variation, so you can do decline, and this going to allow you to hit the muscles from different angles. There's different exercises that you'll be able to do and access if you have an adjustable bench. I do like it when they have these things as well, because if you're doing decline stuff, you have a place where you can hook your feet in, and again, this unlocks a bunch of other exercises that you can do. So an adjustable bench is what I would recommend if you're adding a bench to your home gym.

When it comes to squat racks, you can do something pretty simple, like a very basic power rack that has just the two sides here. This one just has the two sides. That's going to take up less space in your home gym than a cage. A cage is a squat rack where this closer to this or closer to this, the benefit of having a cage, if you have the room for it, is it safer? You can put safeties in and you can squat inside the cage and put safeties up like these guys here, and that is just going to make your squatting or your benching safer because if you drop the weight, it's going to be much sturdier being held or caught inside this cage here, versus you can put safeties up on something like this. It's just less sturdy. This is more likely to tip over, especially if you don't have the weights secured at the bottom here.

So that's the difference that if you have limited space available, getting something like this is fine. Then rice lifts off of a very simple stand this, it's fine. Just like that's the main difference between the two. The kind of safeties that you can use are going to be the ones that I actually prefer. Even though I have a squat rack and I can squat in the cage, I don't like to, I use these, they're basically like extended J hooks here at the bottom. Oh, that reminds me. If you're getting a squat rack, there are some accessories that you need to get with it. Otherwise it's not. A lot of squat racks will come with these accessories. If you order a squat rack, they'll come with these accessories, but if it doesn't come with these accessories, you'll need to buy them separately. One of them is J hooks, and the J hooks are the things that the bar rests on.

You put them on the squat rack at these different levels, and that's what the barbell rests on between your sets. Okay, so you'll want to make sure that you have two J hooks and make sure that they are the appropriate kind for the squat rack that you have. I say that because different squat racks have different hole sizes, and so you want to make sure that the J hooks that you're using are fitted to the squat rack that you have. And so you can set this up for squatting and you can set it up for benching. The biggest problem with cheaper racks is they have proprietary mounting styles, so you can't get attachments exactly. If you get proprietary squat racks like this, the only kinds of safeties that you can use are the safeties that are made to go with this rack. And the J hooks that you can use are the J hooks that go with this specific rack.

Exactly. So this is the one that you think you would recommend. Fitness, reality, squat rack. Ooh, it's pretty cheap. That's just $300. That's nice. Oh, yeah, and look standard. Yeah, you can just kind of use standard accessories with that as well. The other thing about cages, they're just more sturdy, but then also you can add attachments like these guys up here, that's the back that you use. It's fine. Yeah, there you go. It's just that they take up more space. They're sturdier, but they take over more space. That's all. So we covered squat racks accessories. You want to get some safeties. This video or this picture shows a different kind of safeties that is a little bit different from those extended J hooks one, the extended J hooks one like this. They're the same as those hooks up there, but it's just that they're longer.

The problem with those is that when you're squatting, you have to stay very, very close to the rack so that if you do fail, you'll be able to let the bar rest on those safeties. However, sometimes when you're trying to stay close enough to the bar so that you could, if you needed to bail, you could leave the bar on the safeties. It's close enough to the rack that you hit the J hooks on the way up. So that's kind of annoying, and that's why I mean, a lot of people prefer to squat inside the rack and have safeties that go across the rack like this. That way you can center yourself in the middle of the rack without having to worry about bonking the front or the back of the rack with the weights or with the weight. If you would like more tips on getting fit and getting strong building strength, make sure to join the email list on my website. That's jaydigains.com or jaydharrisonfitness.com. And remember, I am taking on clients right now, so if you're interested in working with me as your online personal trainer, check out my website for more information on that. Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains, and I'm so happy to have had you here. I will see you guys next time in the next episode. Have a wonderful rest of your day.