If you’re into fitness, I’m sure you’ve seen or heard of at least one home gym. Maybe you follow somebody who has a home gym. They have become pretty popular since 2020, but is it right for you? While they’re great for some people, they’re not for everybody. Let’s compare the key differences of owning a home gym vs getting a gym membership with a commercial gym.
I have had both a home gym and a gym membership for over a year now and have seen benefits and drawbacks to both. The key things to take into consideration for each type of gym are the benefits and drawbacks of each, the types of fitness goals each is suited for, how your location affects your choice, the time investment each requires, and finally, the cost comparison.
Benefits and Drawbacks Comparison
Hours: A lot of gyms are now open 24/7 or close to it, but not all are. A home gym is always open for business any time any day.
Equipment: On one side of the equipment argument is quantity. A regular gym will have much more equipment and many more options than your home gym probably will. This means a bigger variety of workouts you can do and probably more muscle groups that you can target/isolate.
On the other side of that argument though is availability. A common frustration at a gym is waiting for a piece of equipment or a weight to be available since other people will want to use it. At home, you never have to wait; it is your private gym. The drawback to availability at home though, is that you’re limited to what you’ve purchased and what you have space for.
Privacy: That privacy is something that a lot of people value. At the gym, privacy is not an option. They are open areas that might not be cramped but are not spacious either. They want to fit as much equipment in as they can for their customers, and you are only 1 of them.
At home, you have a private area where nobody else is around (unless they live there). This can help tremendously if you have any kind of social anxiety, are self-conscious, lack confidence, or are uncomfortable with your body image. This privacy also means that you control the environment: placement of things, temperature, music, lighting, décor, etc).
Travel/Time: Whether a drive to a commercial gym would be 5 minutes or 20 minutes, travel time is always a factor. One of the biggest reasons people stop going to the gym is the travel time. Whether is legitimately becomes an issue, or just becomes an easy excuse, a lot of people will eventually say “I don’t have the time to go to the gym”.
With a home gym, that excuse becomes hard to justify, even to yourself. The travel time to a home gym is seconds. This makes it easier to fit into a busy schedule since you can fit most regular workouts into a lunch break.
Kids / Childcare: Most people who have kids would probably tell you that everything has to be planned around the kids (in addition to whatever they planned around before). Another common setback to working out is parents not knowing how to workout while their kids are around, especially small ones. If you have kids and want to go to a gym, you either have to find a gym that offers childcare services and then plan your workout around those hours and conditions, or find a separate childcare center. And while we all like to tell people that our kids are “perfect little angels”, they aren’t always. This can lead to your workout getting cut short if your child is having a bad day or acting out and your gym tells you to come get your kid.
At home, there are several easy solutions to working out while your kids are around. The first option is to block off the gym, or to make a blocked off play space in your home gym. For example, my home gym is in the garage, and we did both. We put a baby gate up at the garage door to block off the gym. We also have a portable playpen that we can set up in the garage. Because it is your space, you have the flexibility to block off spaces or carve out spaces where your children can still be near you while you work out. Another option is to workout while they are sleeping/napping, but my kids don’t always take naps. Lastly, if you are just doing calisthenics or body weight workouts, you can do a lot of those exercises while playing with your kid (but I know that is too distracting for some people). There are many creative solutions at home to this roadblock to working out, one that my wife and I have had to navigate.
Distractions: Speaking of distractions, a home gym can be full of them. Because you are still around your everyday distractions like kids, your refrigerator full of snacks, your phone, the TV, and your games, it can be hard to focus. Most people won’t tell you this, but you usually have to be self-motivated to workout at home. It is also up to you to set the environment like music and décor, which are also big motivating factors for a lot of people. Its easy to slack off when nobody is around to see.
At a commercial gym, there are minimal distractions. You traveled there to get a workout in just like everybody else. The gym has already put up (hopefully inspiring) décor, they (again, hopefully) play music, and everything there is centered around working out and pumping iron.
Fitness Goals
Your fitness goals are also important to take into consideration when choosing between a home gym or a gym membership. Each type of gym has a few fitness goal types that they are better at accommodating than the other. To generalize, there are a few different types of fitness goals:
Maintenance Goals (just maintaining a specific level of fitness)
Performance Goals (specific target to improve cardio or muscular strength, endurance, or flexibility)
Body Composition Goals (weight loss, lean muscle gain, large muscle gain, muscle sculpting)
Competition Goals (usually heavy weights, fast cardio times, and 1 rep max/personal record)
Learning Goals (beginners, going from 0 reps to 1+, and exploratory fitness).
Home gyms are especially suitable for maintenance goals and work well for most performance and body composition goals, since you can purchase equipment which targets those goals.
Commercial gyms also work well for performance and body composition goals, since you will likely have the same types of targeted equipment there, but you are also paying for everything else that you don’t use to work towards those goals.
Where commercial gyms are especially suitable are for competition and learning goals. If you are a beginner or focused on learning about working out, most commercial gyms have staff and trainers who can help you out if you are brave enough to ask for it. If you are training for a competition, you probably want a decent variety of equipment that you may not be able to fit in your home gym. They also require a lot of weight, which can be very expensive to purchase at home, but is readily available at commercial gyms. Lastly, if you are training at that level, you will probably eventually want to seek help or advice, whether it is from a trainer, other gym-goers, or just getting a spotter for a particularly heavy lift.
Keep in mind, these fitness goal categories are looking at them from a macro level and while I’ve tried my best to generalize them, your specific fitness goal, regardless of category, will have an impact on which type of gym is better for you, but you will have to personally decide which is better for your particular goal(s).
How Location Affects Your Choice
While it has little impact on the benefits of commercial gyms, location can have a large impact on whether a home gym is suitable for you, which still impacts your decision-making process. The only real impact of location on a commercial gym is which gyms are within reasonable driving distance. This will limit your choices of commercial gyms.
I chose to go with a commercial gym that is about 20 minutes away from where I live. There were many closer gyms, but they didn’t offer what I needed. Since I don’t need to go to a commercial gym every day, it also makes the drive more tolerable for the quality I get out of it.
As for home gyms, location has a large impact. Do you live in an upstairs apartment, town home or condo? If so, you should probably avoid certain large equipment that would bang on the floor and get complaints against you. Do you live somewhere that experiences very hot or very cold seasons? If so, you may need to make sure your home gym is in a climate-controlled environment, or at least insulated and covered during extreme weather. Do you have an entire garage/shed to use as a gym, or just an extra bedroom? This will affect the size and quantity of equipment that you can purchase for use at home.
This could be a whole other blog post, but the point is that where you live and where you would put a home gym affects what your potential home gym could look like.
Time Investment
The upfront cost of owning a home gym can be significant (but doesn’t have to be). But if you buy high quality equipment (buy once, cry once) it will last you for a very long time and will eventually pay for itself.
At a gym, membership fees may increase over time, and you don’t have any investment in service fees, that money is spent and gone. You are also more likely to buy things in the gym, like water, drinks, snacks, and other services.
If you have multiple people at home who use the gym membership, those fees will multiply, whereas with a home gym, you pay the same for the equipment no matter how many people use it.
Cost Comparison
Finally, we get to the costs. There is the upfront investment cost, the monthly/maintenance cost, and the return on investment (ROI).
The upfront cost of a gym membership is whatever they charge you for a sign-up fee, and that’s it (minus any hidden fees that I haven’t experienced yet). It’s the smallest of your gym membership costs.
The upfront cost of a home gym is the largest cost of owning a home gym, but it is also more of an investment than a cost. There are ways to lower the price of buying gym equipment, like buying used and buying targeted essentials rather than large purchases like power racks. But either way, most workout equipment retains its value well and is heavy, so you will be paying a premium.
I plan on writing a blog on how to build a home gym and I’ll explain how to plan your purchases and maximize how far your money goes.
The next part is the monthly cost. For a commercial gym, that is the price you pay each month for access to the gym. This fee will increase with additional services that you add on (like saunas, towel service, etc), and if you have other people in your house who use the membership. This fee is the same no matter how much or how little you use go to the gym and use their equipment.
With a home gym, there is a small maintenance cost that most people don’t think about: cleaning. You should clean your gym regularly even if you’re the only one using it. This only adds up to a few dollars per month, if that, however.
Lastly, and most importantly in the long run, is the return on investment (ROI). For a commercial gym, there is no monetary ROI. You pay a service fee to use a facility. When you stop paying, you lose access to the gym. With a home gym, however, your money spent on equipment is never just gone. If you decide to sell a piece of gym equipment later on, you can recoup part of your initial upfront cost. Maybe you want to upgrade a piece of equipment, or maybe you just don’t need it anymore.
Commercial gyms are cheaper upfront, but if you consistently go to the gym for years, home gyms become the better investment in the long run.
Conclusion
Sometimes, you may even want both a home gym and a gym membership. I have had a pretty complete home gym since January of 2020, and I am still expanding it here and there. As of 2021, I also have a gym membership and a personal trainer. My plan is to have a personal trainer for at least a year, along with the gym membership.
Having thrown myself into the deep end of exercise, I realize there are a few more pieces of equipment I want for my home gym, a few which are expensive. But after I acquire those, I plan on using my home gym exclusively. I’m blessed enough to have a garage to fit all this in and the ability to afford the upfront investment. My fitness goals by next year will also all be attainable with my home gym.
Each type of gym has unique benefits and drawbacks. Each is suited for different purposes, with some overlapping. It is ultimately a personal choice, taking everything into consideration, which is better for you, your goals, your space, and your financial situation.